Intro Communication - Term Paper Example

Your full full October 13, Option # 2 – Verbal Communication Language is a social practice of associating meanings to the words. It covers the rich complexities that a person faces during the process of communication. If a person wants to communicate in a language other than his/her own language, he/she first needs to know the meanings of different words used in that language. Language makes a person aware of the feelings, emotions, and perceptions associated with different words and that awareness helps a person create suitable meanings for those words.

Language not only adds meanings to the words but also enhances the ability of a person to use those meanings for constructing sentences.Language plays a considerable role in creating meanings of words. In every language, there are different sets of words and the rules for constructing sentences. Those rules also play their role in creating meanings of the sentences. For example, English-speaking people cannot understand the meanings of the words, which belong to some other language, such as, French language or Spanish language.

They need to find the meanings of those words in their own language in order to understand those words. There is a very strong relationship between meanings and language. A person can understand the meanings of only those words, which belong either to his/her mother language or to a language to which the person is familiar. For effective communication to take place, the role of understandable language is very important. A person needs to have complete understanding of the language, which is to be used for communication.

When scholars refer to language use as polysemous, they are actually referring to the use of those words, which have different meanings in different languages. Every language has its own set of vocabulary and standards, which play an important role in distinguishing the meanings of the words used in one language from their meanings in other languages. Understanding of polysemy is very important for effective communication to take place in real life situations (Alberts, Nakayama, and Martin). The reason is that there exist many words in almost every language, which have more than one meaning.

So in order to know the real meaning of what the other person is speaking, the ability to distinguish between different meanings of the same words is very important. Some words have same spellings but produce different meanings. For example, an English word ‘bat’ has two meanings, which include a stick used to play cricket and an animal. Similarly, the word ‘pupil’ also has two meanings, which include a student and a pupil that exist in an eye.Polysemy not only refers to different meanings of the same word but also refers to different meanings of whole sentences.

Meaning making and polysemy are such aspects of communication can be linked to intentionality. A person can use polysemous words to criticize others. Similarly, advertisers intentionally make use of such words in their ads, which have more than one meaning. They not only use single words but also use sentences or phrases, which produce different meanings in different situations. Therefore, we can say that meaning making and polysemy are can be linked to intentionality.Works CitedAlberts, Jess, Thomas Nakayama, and Judith Martin.

Human Communication in Society. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Allyn & Bacon, 2009.