COMMUNICATION as CONTEXT depending
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 506 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Methodology or model |
BATESON bluntly states: “… without context, there is no communication” (1973, p.378) and explains his view through an example: “A phoneme exists as such only in combination with other phonemes which make up a word. The word is the context of the phoneme. But the word only exists as such — only has 'meaning' — in the larger context of the utterance, which again has meaning only in a relationship” (Ibid). He could have added:“…and in a specified language”.
D. BÖHM and F.D. PEAT express a very similar idea when they write: “In communication, meaning unfolds in the structure of the language, and meaning unfolds into the whole community and unfolds from the community into each person… ”The explicate form of all this is the structure of society, and the implicate form is the content of the culture, which extends into the consciousness of each person“ (1982, p.185).
This could indeed be considered a general ecological principle: nothing makes sense or has survival value without properly defined connection and communication with a specific context.