Communication and non-communication
Sometimes, fascinatingly, things hover ambiguously between communication and non-communication, as in the case of the wink/twitch (Sless and Shrensky). Imagine sitting in a train and the man opposite you closes and opens one eye quickly while looking straight at you. Is he winking at you or twitching? By analyzing this example carefully, we have been able to show the subtle nature of the boundary between communication and non-communication. The difference between treating the phenomenon as communication or as non-communication turns out not to be a characteristic of the phenomenon itself but rather a characteristic of our description of the phenomenon. Put another way, it is what we—experiencing the phenomenon—bring to its apprehension: the beholder’s share again.
In the case of communication, when we read something as a text, we apply a quite specific schema that implies a notion of an author. We do not need a clear idea of who the author may be, what their purpose or intention was, or the nature of the message they wanted to present. If we believe something to be the product of an author then we treat it in a distinctive way. We try to make sense of it in a special way, quite different from the way we would try to make sense of it if we regarded it as a natural phenomenon. Treating something as communication leads us to ask questions about intention and semiotic systems. Treating something as a natural phenomenon leads us to ask questions about causes and effects, a quite different type of inquiry leading to quite different descriptions and explanations.
Equally, as the author of texts (using the term “author” in a broad generic way), we imply a notion of a reader. Again, this notion can be quite vague, and often is, but the presence of this implied or inferred reader is a defining characteristic of communication from the author’s point of view. There is thus a symmetry between the author and reader positions. But, importantly, these are different positions in the communication landscape, and the presence of the text both joins and separates them.
Tags: Communication