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
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 7:29
AM
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Fw: Fictitous
interview with Karl Barth
Q:When we misapprehend the meaning of a fellow TTer,
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