Toward a Critique of the Message Construct in Communication Page: 34
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34
semantic, or "meaning problem," and the pragmatic, or
"effectiveness problem." Only when a basis of reliable
signaling is established, he argues, does it become possible
to deal with the meaning of messages or the behavior
predicated on them.
Notably absent from Shannon and Weaver's (1949) model,
and a good indication of just how early a technical model it
is, is the feedback from receiver to sender. Introduced
in "cybernetic theory" by Wiener (1948), it has become one
of the most widely used concepts in communication. While in
one sense feedback refers to a response indicating something
like "message received," more significantly it refers to the
control the receiver exercises on the sender. A true
cybernetic response alters the subsequent output of a
sender, in effect reversing the roles of the participants.
Summary. "Cybernetic regulation," "coding," and
similar technical concepts of information theory became
popularized in textbooks of communication with titles such
as Hopper's (1976) Human Message Systems. The terminology
provides a consistent set of metaphors with which to discuss
otherwise ambiguous phenomena, associating some of the
oldest of human experiences with the modern field of
information science. However, the expropriation of terms
like "information" and "meaning" for use as technical
constructs became the source of some of the most severe
criticisms of information theory (Littlejohn, 1989, p. 50).
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Wilson, John K. (John Kenneth). Toward a Critique of the Message Construct in Communication, thesis, August 1991; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500253/m1/37/: accessed May 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .