[COMS 311] - Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam (43 pages long!)

• School: Cal Poly
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMS 311
• Professor: Barbara Shea

Document Summary

Especially important in helping understand what goes into a message (parts and how it"s organized structurally) Language forms (use) are important while language structure is arbitrary (only when meanings are attached to structural features of language does it come to represent. Language: a formal system that can be analyzed apart from its use in everyday life. Speech: the actual use of language to accomplish a purpose. When you speak, you use language but also adapt it using speech to achieve communication. Nonverbal codes: clusters of behaviors that are used to convey meaning. Syntactics: the way signs are organized into systems with other signs. Pragmatics: refers to the effects or behaviors elicited by a sign or a group of signs. Nonverbal codes possess several types of structures: they tend to be analogic rather than digital (continuous, forming a spectrum or range, like sound volume and the facial expressions.