Both verbal and nonverbal communication share their foundation in symbols. Symbols represent something else, they stand in place of an object or idea. For example, the word “chair” stands for a chair, but you can’t sit in the word. You can only sit in the actual object, while the word simply represents that object. Another example is the word “tree,” which merely represents the living thing, you cannot climb a word, only what the word represents.
Short on Time? Get Expert Nursing Help
Our nursing writers can handle your essay, care plan or case study from start to finish.
The same principle applies to nonverbal communication, which we will study later. For the purposes of our lesson on symbols, take the American flag. The flag is an artifact, a channel of nonverbal communication you’ll learn about later. The flag is also a symbol. The flag itself is not America, or patriotism, or freedom, it merely represents those ideas. This is why, in Johnson v. Texas , the supreme court decided that it is constitutional to burn the flag. Burning the flag is a form of speech protected by the first amendment, but more importantly for us, the flag only represents our country. Therefore, burning it is not treasonous, because you can’t destroy a country by defacing a symbol.
What does all of this have to do with As you might ask? There are three principles that apply to symbols, and they can all be arranged as the three A’s of symbols:
Arbitrary : As you’ll read in the text, words are arbitrary symbols, so the English word “tree” and the Spanish word “arbol” look and sound different while they represent the same thing. This is because there is no “tree-ness” in either word. They mean tree because a group of people agrees that they mean it.
Ambiguous : All symbols have multiple potential meanings, and those meanings are sometimes not clear. As you’ll learn from your text, words have multiple meanings, both connotative and denotative.
Abstract : The idea that you can’t live in the American flag any more than you can sit in the word chair or climb the word tree. Symbols are standing in place of something else, so they have meaning only in our minds. This also means that words can’t do anything or make anything. We use them to construct messages, but the whole process is based on a set of symbols that don’t really “exist,” so meaning is in the people who use them, not the words themselves. The Three As of Symbols
