Chapter 4: Traditional Models of Human Communication
Chapter 4: Traditional Models of Human Communication
This chapter reviews traditional theoretical models of human communication, from both the discipline of communication and other areas of study. It focuses on the “code model”, a generalized model outlining the traditional conceptualization of how human communication works. After describing this model, it identifies several shortcomings with this model, most notably the range of everyday situations and experiences that it cannot adequately address.
To explore, visualize, and study how processes work, scholars will often create models. Models are essentially (simplified) representations of an object, process or system that depict relevant functional or structural qualities (Pavitt, 2010, 2016). How the process of (human) communication works has been a longstanding topic of scholarly and philosophical interest, and has been approached (from various angles) by scholars from a number of different disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics, psychology, education, and communication. Members of each discipline have developed models focusing on different features or aspects of the communicative process, sometimes in specific contexts. As such, many different conceptual models of human communication, and of sub-processes involved in it, have been put forward.
Models in the Discipline Communication
Within the field of communication, three general categories of models have been put forward to describe the process of human communication: linear, interactive, and transactional models (e.g., McCornack, 2010). If you have taken an introductory course in communication, you have likely encountered one or more of these models.
Linear models (e.g., “source-message-receiver” models) of human communication present communication as a series of activities moving information from a source to a receiver. One prominent example of this is Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) model. In this and other linear models, a source packages (i.e., encodes) information content into a message that can be transmitted (which these models often refer to as a signal). The source then sends that message through a channel to a receiver. As the message travels through the channel, noise—conceptualized as environmental factors that interfere with message transmission—can distort the message, or prevent it from reaching its destination. Assuming the message is able to reach its destination in some kind of recognizable form, a receiver detects and accepts the message (including any changes to it made by noise during transmission). The receiver then unpackages (i.e., decodes) the sender’s message back into information content. This completes the process of information being transmitted via messages (or signals) from source to receiver. As you may have guessed, this model draws heavily on telecommunications and signal processing as analogues for human communication.. This results in a number of shortcomings, the most obvious of which that much human