Often, in traditional classrooms, communicative …show more content…
Is there a need to define the term, and if so, what is and is not language? If we, as a society, label language a means of communication, then all living creatures have language. What makes human communication so special and worthy of a unique term is this. Human communication is a learned symbolic system of communication instead of an inherited one. Each word in all languages associates to an idea, an action, or an object. However, these sound and symbol correlations are not ubiquitous, as The Bard would say, “That we call a rose…” for instance, what in English is a “dog”, the French would refer to as “un chien”. Both words represent a specific animal, the same animal, and upon hearing the sound, speakers of both languages conjure the image and accompanying traits of a dog to mind.
Where does this association come from? Simply put, culture. Culture drives the meaning of words. For example, if a person from the United Kingdom were to ask an American if he could “bum a fag”, the American, unless familiar with British slang, may have a completely different idea of what this man was asking for. Now, if said British gentleman asked the same question while gesturing to an empty pack of cigarettes, he lessens the chance for miscommunication whilst demonstrating the sound to symbol association. Therefore, it is reasonable to link this image association to gestures and body movements, as some gestures are universal, while others are