Given some of the recent arguments on the board (which I haven't kept up with at all) I thought this may be of interest, it's taken from my Speech class' text book. They propose a model of communication that is the result of two parties' joint creation of meaning, rather than involving only a sender of information and receiver..
Meaning is social.This implies that no one individual, either sender or receiver, can control "the true meaning" of a statement. A speaker who has violated a social norm cannot get off the hook by saying, "I did not intend that to be offensive, so it wasn't." Neither, though, can a single receiver unilaterally control what a statement or action really means. A thin-skinned listener is not justified in overreacting to a rather innocent comment by declaring, "I just felt offended, so that statement was offensive." Probably most of us have been involved in these fruitless and frustrating arguments in which one person tried to insist on his or her meaning of a communication event.
Meaning is contextual.
Similarly, few disputes about meaning are settled by pulling out a dictionary. This implies that words or messages alone cannot tell us "the true meaning" of the communication. Con-text is that which surrounds a text. Words take their meanings not just from a dictionary but from all that surrounds them as they were uttered. A message can be repeated identically, but its meaning will never be identical if the context has changed. Thinking about meaning this way takes into account when and where a statement was made, who was present, what happened before as well as the tone of voice and expression that accompanied the utterance.
Meaning is contingent.
This implies that no sentence or act frozen in time has acquired its "true meaning." What something means has to be interpreted within a chain of events. A speech may begin with a story that sounds authentic and is later exposed as an example of what the speaker opposes. Meaning becomes clear as it unfolds in the interplay between speakers and listeners. Often we do not know what something meant until we reflect back on an entire encounter.
Ultimately, meaning is negotiated by discourse communities.
In cases where the "true meaning" of a message is contested, appeals to the words themselves, or to the speakers intentions, or to the listeners' response have all been shown to be inadequate. Therefore, meanings are worked out over time by larger groups who share some common agreements and who come to build others. What counts as sexual harassment in the workplace, for instance, is not settled by a single court case or congressional hearing. The meaning of the term is hashed out in speeches letters to the editor, and countless conversations in offices. Groups whose meanings included every friendly comment found their definition rejected. So did those whose meanings excluded everything except direct physical assault. Gradually, a range of meanings of the term within contemporary U.S. culture comes into general understanding. Because these meanings are social, contextual, and contingent, they will continue to change.
The Speaker's Handbook, Jo Sprague and Douglas Stuart
"It is not so much that you use your mind wrongly--you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease." -Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now