Constitutive View of Communication

Background: Communication Models

Early communication theory took the form of models. In a classic communication theory textbook published in 1972, C. David Mortenson defined a model as a systematic representation of an object or event in idealized and abstract form. A model of communication is a still picture of a moving process. Models of communication are useful in identifying the basic components of the communication process and how they are related. A model aids in conceptualizing processes of interest and in generating questions for richer forms of theory. Models are helpful as metaphors that guide our ability to visualize concepts of interest in terms of one another as they help us to clarify complex processes. However, communication models are oversimplified and mask complex processes that cannot be modeled, often leading to premature conclusions. Models are very limited and thus are best thought of as only a most rudimentary form of theory. The earliest known models of communication were developed by Aristotle in his theories of rhetoric and proof. Aristotle's purpose was prescriptive—to instruct others to be effective persuasive speakers.

Contemporary communication theory is descriptive—its purpose is to describe, explain, predict, and/or control communication phenomena. Early-20th-century views of communication were highly mechanistic, treating communication as a machine-like process wherein information or messages are depicted as traveling through channels. These mechanistic models are also known as linear models because the communication process is depicted as a line. The most influential linear model is Shannon and Weaver's mathematical model, developed to help telephone engineers design efficient ways to transmit electrical signals from place to place. The Shannon-Weaver mathematical model was essentially a line from left to right that traveled through boxes, depicting an information source sending a message through a transmitter (encoder), which transforms the message to a signal, sending it through a channel that is affected by noise. The signal then passes through a receiver (decoder), which transforms the signal back to a message that finally reaches its destination. The Shannon-Weaver model was not meant [Page 176]to describe face-to-face human communication, but it provided a baseline from which to do so.

Numerous models of face-to-face human communication were based on the Shannon-Weaver linear model. Scholars of human communication took a message-centered approach in modeling communication. The most basic form of linear communication models is often called a model of communication-as-action, depicting a sender (or a source or a speaker) transmitting a message through some channel to a receiver—still a line drawn from left to right. In 1960, communication scholar David Berlo coined the term SMCR to describe this type of linear model, denoting the model components of sender (or speaker or source), message, channel, and receiver. Models that depicted communication-as-action were unsatisfactory because they were too heavily focused on the sender or source of the originating message.

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