ABSTRACT
At first glance this extract from Morgan and Welton’s eminently useful textbook See What I Mean? seems to be out of place. First they are discussing the dynamics (specifically the role of feedback) of interpersonal communication. Second they are exemplifying a model which, as they themselves point out, ‘is clearly better suited to the description of face-to-face interaction than to the more remote processes of the mass media’. But this is to stop short of both the extent and the implications of their arguments. The passage just quoted continues ‘but remnants of the same psychological interaction can still be seen in more distant communication’ and then makes its further point explicitly: ‘while I am looking at a photograph, painting or film, I am interpreting it and formulating some kind of response’. What quickly becomes apparent is the capacity of models to embody arguments about what communication is (and is not). Osgood and Schramm’s model may rather more straightforwardly describe conversations between people. It can also go some way to address those essential negotiations that go on between texts and their readers. Feedback<xref ref-type="fn" rid="fn12_1"> <sup>1</sup> </xref> in Interpersonal Communication
The briefest, sparest means of conveying your message is rarely the most effective. You need to consider the psychology of the receiver, who is actively absorbing what you have to say and checking it against previous knowledge. The active listener is constantly evaluating our talk through such questions as:
Does this make sense?
Does this person have an axe to grind?
Do I like this person?
How does this fit in to what I already know?
What am I going to say when it comes to my turn?
When two people are engaged in a conversation, they respond continually to each other’s statements: while I recite my tale of woe, you will make regular brief responses, either through changes in your facial expression or through interjections: ‘Uh-huh, oh really, well I never, oh your poor thing, that’s terrible.’ Without this kind of feedback, my flow of words will probably dry up; I need to have confirmation that you are still listening and that you understand what I am saying.
There is a well established technique in television and radio whereby the interviewer nods encouragingly at the interviewee in order to prevent any hesitation in the flow of words. Even in a television interview which has taken place in the street or in someone’s home, the face of the interviewer will appear from time to time asking questions or nodding encouragement; and yet the economics of television are such that only one camera will have been used. These shots are filmed after the interview and are skilfully edited into the final version to suggest a continuous event. Many of these inserts are of the journalist’s head nodding: the effect on the viewer at home is that the veracity of the interviewee’s statements is supported by the nodding head of the supposedly impartial interviewer.
Anticipated or actual feedback is an essential factor in the psychology of communication, and one which plays an essential part in Osgood and Schramm’s (1954) model: https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315015675/226b3f40-5b37-44b5-af78-bdb6d3feb3fe/content/fig12_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
As a representation of interpersonal communication, this has a number of advantages over the account of Shannon and Weaver. First, it makes feedback a central feature of the process, rather than an optional extra added onto a one-directional basic frame-work. Second, it is a dynamic model: it helps to show how a situation can change. In addition, it shows graphically why redundancy is an essential part of the process: since the participants are interpreting each other’s signals while they encode their own, they need some spare capacity in the system to leave space for this interpretation to function. Both ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’ are modifying their intentions at every point in the exchange.
This model is clearly better suited to the description of face-to-face interaction than to the more remote processes of the mass media, but remnants of the same psychological interaction can still be seen in more distant communication: while I am looking at a photograph, painting or film, I am interpreting it and formulating some kind of response, which may be expressed to a companion or completely internalized to form an element in a later communication of my own. Behaviourist psychologists such as Vygotsky have referred to the thought process as ‘internalized dialogue’, a concept which relates closely to Osgood and Schramm’s model. They suggest that young children’s thinking grows out of the dialogues which they hold with adults. Problems are solved by an exchange of question, answer and instruction. As time passes, you can hear a child continuing the dialogue in the absence of the adult, but playing both roles. Later the dialogue becomes silent, but is still taking place inside the child’s head. Photographers, painters and film-makers, as they plan their compositions, will try to anticipate the interpretative processes of their ultimate audience: this, too, may take the form of an ‘internalized’ dialogue’, where production and anticipated interpretation interact with each other to stimulate the creative process.
For both sender and receiver, feedback is vital. Without it, the sender cannot be sure if the message has even been received, still less whether it has been greeted with disagreement, disbelief, misunderstanding or bored complacency. There is no way of knowing which points to labour, nor which are likely to be key issues for future development. For the receiver, on the other hand, feedback is the means by which dialogue can focus on more fruitful areas and skip less interesting matters.
(Morgan and Welton 1992: 26–8)