Charles F. Hockett - Key Contributions - Hockett's 13 Design Features of Language

Hockett's 13 Design Features of Language

1. Vocal-Auditory Channel: Much of human language is performed using the vocal tract and auditory channel. Hockett viewed this as an advantage for human primates because it allowed for the ability to participate in other activities while simultaneously communicating through spoken language.
2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception: All human language can be heard if it is within range of another person’s auditory channel. Additionally, a listener has the ability to determine the source of a sound by binaural direction finding.
3. Rapid Fading (transitoriness): Wave forms of human language dissipate over time and do not persist. A hearer can only receive specific auditory information at the time it is spoken.
4. Interchangeability: A person has the ability to both speak and hear the same signal. Anything that a person is able to hear, they have the ability to reproduce through spoken language.
5. Total Feedback: A speaker has the ability to hear themselves speak. Through this, they are able to monitor their speech production and internalize what they are producing through language.
6. Specialization: Human language sounds are specialized for communication. When dogs pant it is to cool themselves off, when humans speak it is to transmit information.
7. Semanticity: This refers to the idea that specific signals can be matched with a specific meaning.
8. Arbitrariness: There is no limitation to what can be communicated about and there is no specific or necessary connection between the sounds used and the message being sent.
9. Discreteness: Phonemes can be placed in distinct categories which differentiate them from one another, such as the distinct sound of /p/ versus /b/.
10. Displacement: The ability to refer to things in space and time and communicate about things that are currently not present.
11. Productivity: The ability to create new and unique meanings of utterances from previously existing utterances and sounds.
12. Traditional Transmission: The idea that human language is not completely innate and acquisition depends in part on the learning of a language.
13. Duality of patterning: Meaningless phonic segments (phonemes) are combined to make meaningful words, which in turn are combined again to make sentences.

While Hockett believed that all communication systems, animal and human alike, share many of these features, only human language contains all of the 13 design features. Additionally, traditional transmission, and duality of patterning are key to human language.