Alexander Liss
It is obvious that understanding of a
conversation or even a publication prepared for a broad audience relies on
context. However, the complexity of mechanism of such reliance and the
complexity of structure of context used to interpret communication is rarely
appreciated.
Some context is provided by the message
itself, by circumstances of participants of the conversation and through
additional channels of communication as facial expressions and gestures.
A special class of context is provided by
shared knowledge related to the subject of conversation. This context is
roughly determined by previous information exchange related to the subject.
This information had circulated in the society and partially among conversing parties before the conversation in question.
An important part of the context is a
common educational background, which shapes structuring subject related
information.
The language of communication is important
also. It gives a basic structuring of information imposed by concepts embedded
in the language.
Deeper yet come basic culture related
images.
Even
deeper come images of a human body and a society. They even affect ways of
development of the language; hence, they should affect understanding of a
particular message.
With this rich context, an informative
message already could be quite short, because it could deploy references to
context. However, human communication is even more efficient.
Each message is a riddle, which mind solves
based on the context. The solving of the riddle includes proper structuring of
the message in establishment unambiguous relationships between this structured
message and elements of context.
The structure of a language, which is
described as a language grammar, provides a fuzzy hierarchical structure of a
message. On the lower level there are words and word combinations, they are
combined into first layer modules, which in turn are combined into second layer
modules and so on. Modules do not overlap and this hierarchical structure is
well coordinated with a stream of information that recognition of it goes in
parallel with receiving the message. The hierarchical structure is fuzzy,
because there are many possible variants of such structure of the message. A
mind has to select a proper one.
The other task is connecting of the message
to existing context. This connecting is done in a modular and layered way.
First variants of connections are selected for modules of lower layer. When
modules of a next layer are defined, some variants of these connections are
eliminated, and so on until a stable unambiguous set of connections is
selected. The procedure is coordinated with the stream of information: some
elimination of variants could start before the last module of a lower layer is
received.
The process of deciphering of the structure
of the message and its connections to the context is random. Different variants
of such deciphering compete between themselves (and this could be annoying or
funny depending on situation) and it could take a long time.
Such deep engagement of the context in all
its layers causes frequent misunderstanding. Even seemingly unrelated to the
message difference in the context of sides of conversation could cause
miscommunication.
Individuals
belonging to open cultures have a broad context and communicate efficiently.
However, when at least one side belongs to a different closed culture,
understanding could be difficult.
These
differences could be on the surface, as differences between Western and Eastern
cultures or between Western and communist cultures; or they could be hidden
deep in basic systems of images, as differences between subcultures of the same
society. These differences lead to basic misunderstanding of each other and ensuing
mistrust.