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