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Some things to consider with regard to
communication:
A text, whether spoken or written, is not
itself a message but only a vehicle for a message. Also, it is not
independent of speaker and hearer. In fact, in any act of discourse, we
have to recognize not only the message but:
the sender and the receiver and their relationship; the code (the words
themselves--lexical choice, sentence structure, intonation, etc.; also, which
language is in use);the verbal context (other related messages, or
other parts of the same message, and you can draw circles outward to include the
entire linguistic history of both participants);
the channel or medium;
and the concrete context (actual objects and
events in the participants' environment[s] and known to them--and circles could
be drawn outward to include the whole culture[s] in which the participants live
and move).
All of these elements affect the outcome. Think how
much is going on in each; there can be particular strain arising from any of them. Consider
just the code, for example: supposing the sender's use of pronouns lacks
cohesion, or there are fewer connectors than usual, or she is using a
particularly high or low register of formality, or he resorts to
puns, abbreviation, ellipsis, idiosyncratic word choices, malapropisms,
etc.
The verbal context always constrains the
sense of individual words or phrases or sentences. Temporary conventions arise,
for instance, either implicitly or explicitly, some of which may even conflict
with longer-term conventions. As for the larger verbal context consisting of the
language history of each participant, one of them may deliberately draw in
other messages, by means of quotation or allusion, say, that the other has no
access to. And of course they will each be accustomed to certain ways of using
words.
Or the message itself can be a very difficult one
to encode and decode. It might be a surprising or complex or unpleasant message.
It can include things that have not been experienced or imagined
by the receiver.
When participants have a "long and broad"
shared verbal context that makes them likely to use the code in similar
ways, when they have good command of the code itself, and when they are
operating in similar concrete contexts, the communicative results will obviously
be much better than they are otherwise. Using a channel that reduces ambiguity
also helps ensure that what the sender sends is received by the receiver. For
example, face-to-face talk provides lots of redundancy in the form of
voice, gesture, facial _expression_, etc. to disambiguate the message, and also
means that there is a shared [immediate] concrete context.
Under the sender and receiver themselves we
can consider, among many other things, their state of mind, motives, etc.
on the given occasion. If there is limited good will or confidence,
for example, all of the other variables can be favourable and the result
will still be poor.
Additional note: translation will magnify any strain already arising from
other elements. It is the source of strain in its own right as well,
since different languages are spoken by groups that live or have
lived together and therefore entail different concrete contexts.
Debbie
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- Re: [TruthTalk] Fw: Fictitous interview with Karl Barth Debbie Sawczak
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- Re: [TruthTalk] Fw: Fictitous interview with Karl ... Debbie Sawczak
- Re: [TruthTalk] Fw: Fictitous interview with Karl ... Debbie Sawczak
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