ABSTRACT
The models we have considered so far have all, in varying degrees, emphasized the process of communication. They assume basically that communication is the transfer of a message from A to B. Consequently, their main concerns are with medium, channel, transmitter, receiver, noise, and feedback, for these are all terms relating to this process of sending a message. We now turn our attention to a radically different approach to the study of communication. Here the emphasis is not so much on communication as a process, but on communication as the generation of meaning. When I communicate with you, you understand, more or less accurately, what my message means. For communication to take place I have to create a message out of signs. This message stimulates you to create a meaning for yourself that relates in some way to the meaning that I generated in my message in the first place. The more we share the same codes, the more we use the same sign systems, the closer our two “meanings” of the message will approximate to each other.
