Models of Communication
Aristotelian view of communication
Aristotle
Students of communication often use models to try to present a simplified version of communication, containing the essential 'ingredients' only. With a bit of luck, these models should help us to tease out the factors which are common to all forms of communication. If we can do that, then we can hope to judge how effective a communication has been, find our where it went wrong if it wasn't successful and improve it next time.
Like most of the other models in this section of simple models, the model proposed by Aristotle is a linear one. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle tells us that we must consider three elements in communication:
- the speaker
- the speech
- the audience
If you just think for a moment about the variety of communication acts, you shouldn't have too much difficulty seeing those elements। In some cases, of course, Aristotle's vocabulary doesn't quite fit. In the example of you reading the newspaper, no one is actually 'speaking' as such, but if we use, say, the terms 'writer' and 'text', then Aristotle's elements can still be found.
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