Communication Theory

C. David Mortensen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351527521
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Communication is the most complex and elevating achievement of human beings. Most people spend up to 70 percent of our waking hours engaged in some form of communication. Listening and responding to the messages of others occupies much of this time; the rest is taken up by talking, reading, and writing. An additional consideration is the rich assortment of nonverbal cues humans share, which also constitute a form of communication. All together, the stream of verbal and nonverbal information that bombards our senses is composed of as many as 2, 000 distinguishable units of interaction in a single day. The kinds of interaction change constantly: morning greetings, cereal labels, bus signs, charts, traffic lights, hate stares, graffiti, coffee shop chat, gestures, laughter, and head nods: The themes are endless. All of this constitutes subject matter for the study of communication.The book seeks to acquaint students with a basic understanding of the process of human communication. The breadth and scope of subject matter is adaptable to a number of approaches to the first course in communication, whether theoretical, practical, contemporary, or traditional in orientation.The framework of this book introduces five topics of central interest to the field of communication theory. Part I describes the process of communication as it unfolds in face-to-face environments. Part II considers the symbolic significance of interpersonal behavior. Part III examines the organization of communicative acts and shows why human interactions tend to become more synchronous over time. Part IV explores the complex problem of understanding other people, demonstrating the tendency of understanding to become intersubjective. Part V accounts for the communicative significance of several basic human environments--communities, organizations, media, institutions, and culture.

Part I
THE TRANSLATION OF HUMAN EVENTS

Human language translation is often associated with the ability to understand the essential links between one language or code and another. We speak of a translator as someone who can identify a word or message in relation to a corresponding set of terms in a different linguistic system, establishing connections from say English into Spanish or from German into French. What is less widely recognized, however, is that translational activity also occurs in the ordinary use of conventional language. In fact, any person who uses language may be viewed as a translator simply because everyone uses language in unique ways. To translate means to transform, to impose one’s own interpretive slant on the way things are perceived. Translation occurs, therefore, whenever people attempt to place their own unique frame of reference on some form of human experience. Such a performance need not require an exhange of words nor even any direct acknowledgment of another’s presence. The concept of translation refers rather to a host of subtle and intricate acts sustained by the sheer willingness of a person to assign significance to human events.

Translation must be sustained for human communication to occur. In face-to-face environments, a communicative act involves a source which transmits a message through a channel to a receiver the responses of which provide feedback to the initial source of information. This definition of communication may seem self-evident, but it is also potentially misleading unless interpreted with caution. It is important to recognize that translational activity occurs within a unified and integrated field of experience. Persons ordinarily interact without making sharp distinctions between source and receiver. Such distinctions are often tentative and provisional depending upon the shifting perspectives of the participants. This same elusiveness characterizes a definition of “message.”

It would be misleading to think of the exchange of a message as you would think of an exchange of some physical object. A message is not an entity or object that has an existence independent of the experiences of the people involved with it; nor is it something that is literally passed back and forth between interactants. In a strict sense, a message has no significance until some form of translation takes place. If you blink your eyes but no one notices, the movement occurred, of course, but not—and this is the crucial point—within the perspective of any other participant. From a communicative viewpoint, a message may be defined as any unit of information that functions as a link between persons who exist in a state of interaction. Informational linkages should be examined in the context of emotive or affective consequences. For instance, when the rate of information exchange is slow, the subjective feeling is often passive; when the rate is rapid, the subjective feeling is usually one of interest and excitement. The degree of change in the state of a message is directly related to the accumulative force of the translation process.

The distinction between what is available for translation and what is actually translated is quite critical. Communication is not continuously and automatically sustained just because people happen to be in each others presence. We cannot assume that everything that occurs between people in a face-to-face environment has actual communicative significance. Nor can we assume that translation occurs without breaks and disruptions. It is well documented that the human nervous system can handle only a limited amount of information and that one’s field of awareness is rarely an objective sample of the information potentially available. Moreover, just because you are in the presence of someone does not mean that you are necessarily present for that other person. Attention spans and involvement levels naturally fluctuate from one moment of conversation to another. There are also inevitable “blank spots” in meaning and momentary lapses in concentration which result in the presence of one person ceasing, however momentarily, to have any informational value for another. It is at such moments that the continuity of translation may become severely strained or disrupted altogether.

The continuity of translation depends on the maintenance of two distinct but interrelated modes of interpretive activity. One is known as decoding, the other as encoding. Decoding refers to the logic or procedures used to interpret the behavior of another person, and encoding refers to the standards used to create one’s own performance. We decode while listening or watching someone talk, and we encode while actively conveying information to another. Both decoding and encoding involve personal logics that help regulate and monitor performance. In formal systems of communication such as telegraphy or Morse code, the logic of translation is governed by a formal set of rules. In informal systems of expression, such as laughter or play, the logic of performance tends to be regulated more by intensity of feeling and subjective involvement.

Problems in understanding coding logic arise not only because of the complexity of factors involved in understanding other persons, but also because complex configurations of forces operate at the same time. Communication may well qualify as the most elaborate and intricate form of human experience. Everything is in a state of flux—the participants, their messages and codes, and the variations of information in their immediate surroundings. This quality of elusiveness makes the study of communication interesting, but it also creates problems. With so much going on at once, it is often difficult to know exactly what to look for and what to ignore. Since we cannot possibly consider all of the subtleties of a given act of communication, we need guidelines—basic reference points—to help us locate what is most apt to be significant. The essays in this section are designed to serve as road maps for our inquiry; each one specifies in broad terms some fundamental determinant of communicative experience. Communication occurs in a context of change, and people react differently to the forces of change. Change is threatening to some, while others find it necessary for growth. In “Communication; the Context of Change,” Dean C. Barnlund examines the strategies people use in their attempts to cope with change. Among the defensive reactions are avoidance, silence, psychic withdrawal, noncommittal replies, verbal cocoons, detours, formulas, doubletalk, and isolation. Barnlund considers ways to escape these selfimposed defenses and discusses the need for communication based on mutual involvement and responsible selfdisclosure.

The problem of change is also related to the amount of information that can be processed within a given segment of time. Decoding and encoding both require the selection of certain units of information from a larger set of alternatives.To be fully intelligible, these basic units must appear in a proper sequence or pattern. We perceive change as shifting patterns of organization. In “The Mathematics of Communication,” Warren Weaver examines a host of factors that determine the potential for accurate transfer of information from source to receiver. Historically, this essay is important in clarifying the impact of channels, noise, signals, uncertainty, and redundancy on the detection of information.

When viewed in a broader context, the concept of a channel refers to the medium used to transmit messages from source to destination. We tend to associate channels with technical apparatus —telephone switchboards, microphones, bull horns, radio transmitters, and teletype machines. Yet there are many other types of channels. Blackboards and writing paper may serve as channels of information. Seating arrangements and architecture are also channels that influence the flow of information from person to person. Channels of communication operate at all levels of society; access to a channel facilitates interaction between individuals, machines, groups, organizations, and mass audiences. From a simple morning greeting to the activities of decision-making groups and larger intercultural affiliations, channels are necessary to assure continuous access and response. In their essay “Feedback,” Theodore Clevenger, Jr., and Jack Matthews analyze the web of personal contacts from the standpoint of feedback. The concept of feedback underscores the dynamic and evolving aspects of the communication process. Whether it is positive, negative, or indifferent, feedback has a profound impact on the flow of information. In ways that differ as widely as individual personalities, feedback alters the fabric of human information and the streams of reactions that are attributed to it.

The concept of human translation may be understood as a complex transaction between people and their environments. A transactional perspective emphasizes the wholistic and unifying nature of the interchange, with no sharp divisions in regard to the particulars that make the event possible. The key assumption is that everything is ultimately connected with everything else; changes tend to be dynamic and interdependent. In “A Transactional Model of Communication,” Dean C. Barnlund describes the evolution of meaning that takes place in face-to-face environments. Meaning is not fixed or given; rather, it is a creative act that Barnlund describes in a model of the general forces at work in the definition of a given situation. Models are like road maps; they provide orientation and direction but not detail. Remember, too, that models—like road maps—should not be confused with the reality they represent.

Translation depends, above all else, on the ability to perceive other persons accurately. Our perceptions are not merely a passive recording of objects and events; they are an elaborate and defiant creation of meaning. As George J. Simmons and J. L. McCall demonstrate, every phase of “Social Perception and Appraisal” actively involves the perceiver in the flow of sensory data. Only a small fraction of the human environment is ever recognized, and only a selective portion of awareness ever acquires personal significance. Sensory data are constantly sorted, classified, transformed, and recorded into patterns of unique interpretation and importance. Sensory thresholds, personal perspective, and expectation all help to shape what is salient in the experience of an individual person. Ultimately, what we experience as a message is nothing less than a transformation of data, complete with a margin of error that involves estimation, misinformation, and other reflections of the peculiarities of anyone who participates in the definition of the event.

It is often said that we can stop talking but we cannot stop behaving. As Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavivn, and Don Jackson demonstrate in “Some Tentative Axioms of Communication,” it becomes impossible not to communicate to the degree that our behavior influences the perceptions of other people. These authors consider the complex interplay between message content and human relationship and show how the impact of messages depends on the nature of the relationships in which they occur. Finally, they indicate how individual viewpoints give rise to unexpected ways of defining ongoing streams of communicative experience. This essay contains many exciting, if difficult, ideas, and you may find that a careful reading will lead to important self-discoveries.

1

Communication: The Context of Change

Dean C. Barnlund

Among the few universals that apply to man is this: That all men—no matter of what time or place, of what talent or temperament, of what race or rank—are continually engaged in making sense out of the world about them. Man, according to Nicholas Hobbs, “has to build defenses against the absurd in the human* condition and at the same time find a scheme that will make possible reasonably accurate predictions of his own behavior and of the behavior of his wife, his boss, his professor, his physician, his neighbor, and of the policeman on the corner.”¹ Although men may tolerate doubt, few can tolerate meaninglessness.

To survive psychically, man must conceive a world that is fairly stable, relatively free of ambiguity, and reasonably predictable. Some structure must be placed on the flow of impressions; events must be viewed from some perspective. Incoming sensations will be categorized, organized around some theme. Some facts will be noted and others neglected; some features will be emphasized and others minimized; certain relationships will appear reasonable, others unlikely or impossible. Meaning does not arise until experience is placed in some context.

Man is not a passive receptor, but an active agent in giving sense to sensation. The significance that any situation acquires is as much a result of what the perceiver brings to it as it is of the raw materials he finds there. Terms such as “personal constructs,” “social schema,” or “perceptual sets” have been used to identify the cognitive processes by which men render experience intelligible. As George Kelly notes, “Man looks at this world through transparent patterns or templets which he created and then attempted to fit over the realities of which the world is composed. The fit is not always good. But without such patterns the world appears to be such an undifferentiated homogeneity that man is unable to make any sense out of it. Even a poor fit is more helpful to him than nothing at all.”²

As the infant matures into adulthood he gradually acquires a picture of the world he inhabits and his place within it. Pervasive orientations—of trust or suspicion, of affection or hostility—are learned early, often at considerable pain, and through communication with significant other people. Every success or failure contributes in some way to his accumulating assumptions about the world and how it operates. Such cognitive predispositions are learned unconsciously, and most people are only vaguely aware of their profound effects. Yet they are, in the view of Roger Harrison, “the most important survival equipment we have.”³ Thus it is not events themselves, but how men construe events, that determines what they will see, how they will feel, what they will think, and how they will respond.

Such perceptual biases, taken together, constitute what has been called the assumptive world of the individual. The world men get inside their heads is the only world they know. It is this symbolic world, not the real world, that they talk about, fight about, argue about, laugh about. It is this world that drives them to cooperate or compete, to love or hate. Unless this symbolic world is kept open and responsive to continuing experience, men are forced to live out their lives imprisoned within the constructs of their own invention.

The worlds men create for themselves are distinctive worlds, not the same world. Out of similar raw materials each fabricates meanings according to the dictates of his own perceptual priorities. It is not surprising that nurtured in different families, inforced by different sources, frightened by different dreams, inspired by different teachers, rewarded for different virtues, men should view the world so differently. The way men project private significance into the world can be readily illustrated. Here is a group of people asked to respond to an ordinary photograph showing adults of various ages, standing together, and looking up at a distant object. The experimenter asks, “What do you see?” “What does it mean?” Some of the viewers comment on the mood of the figures, reporting “grief,” “hope,” “inspiration,” or “despair.” Others notice the identity of the persons, describing them as “peasants,” “members of a minority,” “Mexicans,” or “Russians.” Still others see the “ages of man,” a “worshipping family,” or “three generations.” Even at the objective level there is disagreement, some report three persons, some four, some five. When shown before lunch “hunger” is one of the first interpretations; after lunch this meaning is never assigned. A similar process of projection would see...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I The Translation of Human Events
• Part II The Symbolic Significance of Behavior
• Part III The Structure of Communicative Acts
• Part IV The Intersubjectivity of Understanding
• Part V The Environment of Communication
• Postscript
• Index