I found Halliday’s seven types of communication to be useful to my understanding of “communicative competence,” not only in a foreign language, but one’s own native language (223-224). Some of these categories represent skills that any communicator might want to incorporate into their repertoire. For instance, people of all ages might only be well-versed in instrumental and regulatory functions of language. Sadly, I’ve met plenty of these sorts of people. Some people only have the ability to communicate in a way that allows them to try to “manipulate” their environment to make things happen, or express “regulatory” statements that show approval or disapproval. In school, I think we learn to use the “representational” function of communication. That is, we learn to explain and describe knowledge. These are the basic three communicative functions I think most individuals graduating from a university will leave with.
The last four types I think are really helpful for enriching any cultural experience. The first is called interactional function. This is described as the ability to joke and understand folklore, cultural expectation and mores. This sounds a lot like cultural awareness. I think SDLAP this semester has really opened my eyes to the intricacies of Bosnian and American culture. After having to pay close attention to such things in a foreign culture, one becomes much more aware and even creative in the expression of certain idiosyncrasies in one’s own culture. The second is called the “personal” function of communication. It is the skill to express feelings, emotions, and gut-level reactions. It is very interesting to compare the ways in which certain emotions are expressed in different cultures. Similar to the interactional function, one can find studying another culture very helpful in one’s own methods of communicating feelings and gut level reactions. Again, the imaginative function capacity, which incorporates fairy tales, jokes, stories, and other creative work, is really enhanced by knowledge of another culture and language. All of these provide one with more tools in their own cultural tool box, in addition to bringing American phrases into the foreign domain. The last function is called the heuristic function, which is described as the ability to acquire knowledge about one’s environment. It is the inner philosopher in everyone. Learning about another culture and the ways in which they contemplate fundamental questions of our existence is, obviously, incredibly helpful to framing and thinking about such questions in your native language.
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