Understanding Communication: Signs, Signals, and Language

1. Concept of Communication

a) Value

b) Transmission through a Code of Signals

c) Sending a Message

Sending a message from a sender to a receiver in a code of signs. Communication is impossible without a code.

Difference between Signal and Sign:

• Signal is a hereditary reflection, not learned. It is the physical manifestation itself.
• Signs are universal units of communication and are purely physical, while a sign is of psychophysical nature, i.e., a signal containing conscious content intended to be understood, not just to trigger a response.

2. Do Animals Have Language?

No, because we define language as a sign communication system used exclusively by humans. Therefore, language is foreign to animals. Moreover, the power to create and use sign systems is uniquely human.

3. Is Music a Language?

No, it's not a system composed of units that oppose and relate to a particular material response, nor is it conventional or objective. Each person interprets music differently. If music incorporates lyrics, then it uses language, but it's not language in itself.

4. Meaning of Language

A social, conventional, and human communication system.

a) Human Faculty

Human faculty for the creation and use of sign systems.

b) Natural Human Language

Languages in general.

5. Definition of Signal

The signal is the universal unit of communication.

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6. Iconic Sign, Symbol, and Sign

• We call an iconic sign one that is motivated by similarity, i.e., it represents a reality and looks enough like that reality to be identified, even without prior knowledge of the code. Icons are mostly visual, but some languages have words based on sound icons, called onomatopoeia.
• We call a symbolic sign one that is not based on similarity but on the association of ideas.

We assume that the first symbolic signs must have been motivated, despite everything, by an indirect icon. Instead of copying an object directly, we use a copy of something we associate with it, making the association clear enough to implement the invention. Once this happens, the link between the object and representation can be decided simply by agreement without resorting to indirect icons.

Symbol Meanings of the Word:

1. Sign based on the association of ideas.
2. Converting material objects to represent an abstract idea.

How Many Elements are Needed to Build a Sign?

Four elements concur in a sign, two material and two mental:

1. Object (reality)
2. Idea of the object (mental)
3. Representation (reality)
4. Idea of the representation (mental)