Saussure and Jakobson

Shannon and Weaver’s model is used to describe telecommunications, but it leaves out one very important factor, semantics. Semantics is another word for meaning, what one word may mean to someone, may not mean the same to someone else. Danielle brings up a good point when she refers to the miscommunication that happens between her and her roommates. Because they are from different socio cultures they may not have the same meanings for all English words. One way to describe this is a word that has double meaning. Like the word right, right can mean yes you are right, or right in the form of direction. Another way I think of words that may have multiple meanings is slang. Like the word sick, sick can mean sick as in not well or if something is “sick” it is awesome.

I believe Shannon and Weaver’s model to be too simplified, communication is more complex than their model explains it to be. It leaves out feedback, non-verbal communication, semantics and semiotics.

The two linguists who added to Shannon and Weaver’s model and made it more “humanized,” are Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson. Saussure helped to expand Shannon and Weaver’s model for human communication by making his model, the “sign.” The sign consists of having a signifier and a signified. Jakobson expanded Shannon and Weaver’s model by developing the structure of language, “or meaning developed within a culture.”