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Understanding Communication | 29

appearance. If your goal is to make a good impression, adopt the style of the
people you want to impress.

Use of Time and Space

Time and space can be used to assert authority. Some people demonstrate
their importance by making other people wait; others show respect by being
on time. People can also assert their status by occupying the best space.
Apart from serving as a symbol of status, space can determine how comfort-
able people feel talking with each other. When others stand too close or too
far away, you are likely to feel ill at ease.

Verbal Communication

Although you can express many things nonverbally, there are limits to what
you can communicate without the help of language. If you want to discuss past
events, ideas, or abstractions, you need symbols that stand for your thoughts.
Verbal communication consists of words arranged in meaningful patterns. To
create a thought with these words, you arrange them according to the rules of
grammar, putting the various parts of speech in the proper sequence. Once the
syntax is formed in the mind of a person who communicates, he then transmits
the message in spoken or written form, anticipating that someone will hear or
read what you have to say. Therefore, language is the main aspect of verbal
communication. To begin with let us examine language as a symbol system.

Language as a Symbol System
Language may be thought of as the code, the system of symbols, utilized in the
construction of verbal messages. Language may be defined as a specialized,
productive system capable of displacement and composed of rapidly fading,
arbitrary, culturally transmitted symbols. The six characteristics of verbal
communication are (i) specialization and productivity (ii) displacement
(iii) rapid fading (iv) arbitrariness (v) cultural transmission.
• Specialization and productivity: Language is a specialized communica-
tion system and it produces creative responses and learned utterances.
Introduction of new words is another dimension of productivity.
• Displacement: Human language can be used to talk about things that
are remote in both time and space; one can talk about the past and the
future as easily as the present. It has the ability to displace concepts
and sometimes statements uttered in one place today may have effects
elsewhere tomorrow. Displacement, together with productivity, also
makes possible the ability to lie.

• Rapid fading: Speech sounds fade rapidly; they are short-lived.
They must be received immediately after they are emitted or else

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