Contrastive lexical semantics of 'communication' and 'language' in everyday English

The word 'communication' ranks as one of the "key words" of contemporary English, as well as a foundational term for various academic discourses. It is well to remember, however, that the word represents a highly English-specific concept, which lacks semantic equivalents in many languages, including European languages. Less obviously perhaps, the same goes for the word 'language', which is frequently counterposed to the broader term communication. This paper gives a contrastive lexical-semantic analysis of the meanings of the words 'communication' and 'language' in ordinary contemporary English, as represented in the Cobuild Word Bank of English. The analytical technique is the natural semantic metalanguage method (Wierzbicka 1996), which aims to resolve complex meanings into extended explanatory paraphrases framed in a controlled vocabulary of simple basic meanings.

My focus is on the contrastive semantics of notions of 'communication' and 'language' in everyday English, not on any discipline-specific or technical concepts such as "communication as information transfer". Nonetheless, the exercise brings to light specific aspects of these everyday notions which influence the orientation of different academic disciplines (communication studies and linguistics, for example), with consequences for the processes and prospects of cross-disciplinary cooperation.