The speech chain

When you use language you will you use it to communicate an idea
from your mind to the mind of someone else, language is not the only
way to do this there are many types of communication systems e.g.
honking a horn on a car, drawing a picture, using semaphore flags etc.

The key elements in any communication system are:

an information source, a transmitter, a signal, a receiver and a

destination.

When we use language as our communication system, one person

acts as the (information source and the transmitter), sending a signal to
another person, who acts as a (receiver and the destination(.

In order to act either as a source and transmitter or as a receiver

and destination, you must have a great deal of information stored as part
of your linguistic competence: that is, you know a lot about your
language the following outlines the communication chain as it relates to
language.

1. Think of what you want to communicate.

2. Pick out words to express the idea (semantics.(
3. put these words together in a certain order following the rules
(syntax and morphology)
4. figure out how to pronounce these words (phonology)
5. Send those pronunciations to your vocal Anatomy (articulatory
phonetics(.
6. Speak: send the sounds through the air.
7. Perceive: listener hears the sound.
8. Decode: listener interprets sound as language
9. Connect: listener receives communicated idea.

The previous illustration shows that for an idea to be

communicated from one person to another many steps must be carried
out:
 First, an idea of something to be communicated must be thought of.
Once the idea is there you have to put the idea into words that have
meanings these first four steps represent the "information source" in the
communication system.

Step 5, is a transmitter; in the step, the speaker actually gives a physical

expression to the mental representation of the message to be conveyed.

Step 6, is the signal itself, here, the sounds generated by the speaker
travel through the air to the listener.

The listener acts as the receiver in step 7, sensing the sound signal and
sending it to her or his own brain.

Step 8, encompasses steps 2-4 and reverse. That is to decode the signal
that has been perceived, the listener must also use mental knowledge of
phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics to interpret the sound as
language.

Finally, step 9, represents the destination: the listener has received the
communicated idea.