Re: [TruthTalk] Fw: Fictitous interview with Karl Barth

[Debbie Sawczak]

Oh dear, you drew a very Murphy-esque conclusion, Terry! And it of course illustrates the point--I note a tremendous lack of confidence (cf my second-last paragraph). Communication actually does happen in spades--praise be. Lots of people even get a pretty coherent message from Barth and agree about it. The number of factors involved in a process doesn't necessarily bode ill for its success.   I'm a bit puzzled by this reluctance you seem to have to acknowledge complexity, Judy, because complexity has a beauty and wonder of its own too, you know. Do you also deny that there is a complex engine in your car? Of course it's normal to ignore it and go about the business of driving. But when stuff goes wrong, OR even if you're just one of those people who is fascinated by engines (!!!!), you lift the hood. Both apply (the second one for me, at least) in the current situation. Fortunately, all this stuff mattered to the people who translated your Bible, too.      Good will, good will, good will!   Debbie  ----- Original Message ----- From: Judy Taylor To: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org Cc: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 5:55 PM Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Fw: Fictitous interview with Karl Barth You've got it Terry - why anyone would take such a wonderful and life-giving Word of Truth and try to make it so complicated and convoluted - is a mystery, but certainly not the mystery of godliness....  judyt   On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 16:38:59 -0500 Terry Clifton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: In other words, it is impossible to tell what Karl, or anyone else, is trying to say. Debbie Sawczak wrote: 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