We Use 4 Communication Elements
in Expressing Our Ideas

Not everybody stops to think about the basic 4 communication elements: The concepts; the reality or belief; attitudes and emotion; and the discourse aspect. They apply not only to the English language - they basically apply to the act of communication, whichever language you're speaking.

Imagine four circles, one inside another, representing different kinds of meaning function and the different ways of organising these functions. The communicative grammar we use on this website is based on the following aspects:

1. Concepts: they are the basic meaning categories of a language. We impart these in the form of words and phrases or clauses we use and they are usually smaller units than a sentence. Examples of concepts are: time, place, direction, duration, cause (see more)
2. Reality or belief: Here we deal mainly with sentences and these can be of various kinds. They can be statements, questions and answers, affirmations or denials, espressions of possibility and certainty. The words will convey the concepts from the above section but we're going to present them according to the truth and falsehood which we need to disclose in our communication.
3. Attitudes and emotions: We express these depending of the relationship between the speaker and the listener. The communication act has a social goal of controlling or influencing the actions and attitudes of the listener. It does this by using speech acts such as commanding, requesting, advising, promising and other ways of persuading. The aspect of point 2. above is used here, but it is 'adapted' to fit a different kind of social function. For example a question is not just a means of eliciting information, but it can also be adapted 'pragmatically' for the purpose of making an offer, or a suggestion. The aspect of language we're dealing with here is the actual utterance of the words, ie how we express our message, including stress, intonation and body language.
   
4. The discourse aspect: The last but not least important aspect of our communication is how we arrange and express our thoughts. There needs to be an order and a connection between our thoughts and the words we use need to be arranged in a specific order so that we communicate our message in the most effective way. This is where grammar gives us a multitude of choice in this matter. We can't use sentences in isolation - we do this in test & exam papers, but in conversation this is not sufficient. There needs to be a unity among our words and sentences, which is the subject of the text or discourse aspect of communication.