Communication: From Sign to Discourse

In any act of communication, we can distinguish a speaker (or sender or addresser), a co-speaker (or receiver or addressee), a code, a context, a channel and a message. Roman Jakobson defines six functions of language according to the emphasis placed on certain elements of the communication process: the expressive function, the conative function, the metalinguistic function, the referential function, the phatic function and the poetic function.

Verbal communication holds a privileged place in human life. Nonverbal communication is also important, but it is often less precise. Human languages are able to produce an infinite number of spoken, mental, or written statements with a limited number of units. This is possible because human languages are doubly articulated.

Saussure established a distinction between language (langue) and speech (parole). Other linguists, for example Émile Benveniste or Mikhail Bakhtin, prefer to speak about language and discourse. Benveniste studies how subjectivity is embedded in discourse. Bakhtin pays less attention to individual subjectivity and focuses more on the relationship between each new utterance and the social and historical framework in which it is produced and circulates.