From Language To Communication

The word "communication" conjures up such diverse images: telephones, computers, television, therapy sessions, intimate relations. Whether a message is fashioned from the grunts of cave men arguing, or reaches you after passing through computers and space, messages use some form of language to establish meaning. This book is organized around the topics that help to institute such meaning. It presents the most current and interesting thinking about language functions to direct us toward the various selective realities we inhabit.

The text is designed to introduce students to key topics such as meaning, discourse, coherence, language and mind, history of language, and communication codes. It organizes these issues around a focus on discourse and the structure of texts. There is less concentration on language and social categories like sex or class and more on how communicators use language as a resource to stitch a message together. The volume was written to fill the gap between strategic language used to achieve a goal and formal structures that are the scaffolding upon which we build messages. One of the few works that treats language as the fundamental resource of communication, this book will meet the needs of many in the area of language and discourse.