1 Principles of com Flashcards
What is communication?
“A way of promoting changes in the world - specifically of influencing others by using signs”
Mechanical vs Communicative actions
Components of communication:
- Unit: communicative action
- Producer (P): someone who produces a communicative action
Recipient (R: the recipient of a communicative action
Mechanical vs Communicative actions
Communicative actions:
- Used as an alternative to mechanical
- Involve the use of signs (things that stand for something else)
Mechanical:
e.g. growling. basic physical signals
is sign language communicative or mechanical?
communicative
Communicative actions: types of signs (Peirce, 1903)
Icon
Index
Symbols
Icon
e.g. an image of a cat
index
e.g. a sign, like pointing a finger
symbols
e.g. words
role of producer
to promote changes in R’s feelings, thoughts, motivations or actions (not forced)
Shannon & Weaver’s Transmission model
- Designing a mechanism to communicate messages
Over time people have used this model (not created as an explanation, but a machine) and it has misguided some communication
Communication is synergetic, Bateson
Synergetic = not linear
○ P doesn’t cause a change in R in a mechanical way ○ R's response depends on how they make sense of P's communication, actively
Pointing problems (Tomasello 2008)
○ Pointing = an index sign
○ Process generates 2 practical problems…
§ How to get across clearly? (P’s problem)
R’s outcome is not certain
a sign, something that stands for something else, r needs to make sense of it
problems with pointing
- message relies on r’s interpretation of it
potential for misunderstanding
also depends on r’s motivation to respond
outcome not certain
Another problem with idea of com as transmission:
it is interactive, not linear…
P monitor’s R’s response
R’s response works as feedback
Communication: Synergetic or Interactive
synergetic (non-linear)
interactive (feedback from each other)
Communication in the natural world:
- Wolves use signs (teeth baring + growling) to convey a communicative action (a ‘threat’)
○ Have specialised communication over time- Is this communication the same as human communication?
○ Does have intention, however is very different…
- Is this communication the same as human communication?
Wolf compared to human communication
wolf:
fixed/scripted
determined (genetics)
indiscriminate
unintentional
Human:
flexible
learned
recipient-designed
intentional
intentional communication
humans capable of this
can also be capable of unintentional comunication (e.g. if we answer a call with a croaky voice this communicated something unintentionally)
may not be the only species capable of it…
○ Flexible ○ Learned R-designed
Great Apes: Vocalisations:
It is still controversial whether great ape vocalisations are fixed, determined and done indiscriminately for any individual in the surrounding environment
But see Fischer (2021) and Schel et al. (2013)
Great ape gestures: intention movements
In other animals: genetically fixed (e.g., wolf baring teeth)
Example in great apes: infant-mother intention movement to request to be carried
- Flexible,
- Learned (there are different signs so we know it’s not just genetic)
- recipient-designed
○ P monitors R’s attention
○ R learns to anticipate P’s action
○ P learns to anticipate R’s response and waits
○ R discriminates between gestures done for them and for others
○ Persistence
(Rossano, 2013)
Some limitations of great apes’ intentional communication (4)
Referential limitation
Signal limitation
Temporal limitation
Action limitation
Apes: Referential limitation
communication between P and R only (no external referent)
○ Cannot triangulate (i.e. communicate that another ape would like to be carried)
Apes: Signal limitation
‘natural’ meaning only
○ Meaning is not conventional (not using words)
Apes: Temporal limitation
here and now
Apes: Action limitation
imperative only (Command)
Human communication features (compared to what apes cannot do)
can use external references (triangulate)
conventional meaning
temporarily flexible
many communicative actions
Where human communication comes from
pointing
Human pointing compared to great ape intention movements
- No referential limitation to human pointing
- (Still a temporal limitation, overcome with spoken, sign, and written language)*
- No signal limitation
- No action limitation: the same gesture can implement several different types of action
- What makes this possible?
*But see an exception to this limitation discussed in the key reading (p. 80)
Three principles of human communication: Clark, 1996; Tomasello, 2008
- Context: Physical setting. Infinite parts to a context
- Relevance: aspects of the context, needing to follow the physical context. Makes sense of a communicative action
- Common ground: awareness of previous knowledge/ shared knowledge
These are connected by cooperation…
helps P and R to solve their communicative problems
Cooperation
People’s search for the meaning of communicative signals is guided by cooperative thinking:
○ The context in which you and I are together
○ What is relevant to the activity/situation we are both in (not just me, egocentrically) e.g. mentioning a friend’s name, who you know many others but you think of the friend you have in common as that is the most likely topic.
What you and I know in commo
Summary:
- Human communication is synergetic and interactive
○ (not linear)- It is flexible, learned, and recipient-designed
- It follows three principles: context, relevance, and common ground
- These three principles require cooperative thinking and motivations
Reading: coded vs non-coded com
Pointing and pantomiming: (non-coded)
- Establishing an explicit code requires some preexisting form of communication that is at least as rich as that code. Therefore to understand communication we cannot begin with language (coded)
(sign language is coded as it contains complexities of human lang)
Reading: Pointing
“attention-directing” or “deictic gestures”
- Basic function is to point attention - Extra cognitive work must then be done to tell the social intention - Is gleaning the meaning behind a point reliant on the fact that we already know language? - However infants (before they have much/ any language) can use pointing to direct others and to communicate social intentions.
Reading: the cooperation model
Human cooperation is unique, involving shared intentionality
reading: creating common ground
context
- it is only because humans are able to construct with others various forms of conceptual common ground and joint attention that very simple pointing and iconic gestures can be used to communicate in complex ways— ways that go far beyond what great apes are able to communicate with their intention-movement and attention-getting gestures.
reading: Social motivations: helping and sharing
- Thus may use 3 general types of communicative motives:
○ Requesting: want help with something ○ Informing: want you to know something ○ Sharing: I want you to feel something (share emotions/ attitudes)
