This document discusses two main views of communication: the transmission view and the ritual view. The transmission view sees communication as the sending and receiving of messages over distance through various technologies and channels. It focuses on the transmission of information from a sender to a receiver. The ritual view, alternatively, sees communication as central to forming and sustaining communities through shared rituals and meanings. It emphasizes how communication helps create and reinforce social bonds and relationships over time. The document also examines the different assumptions about reality held by the transmission and ritual views of communication. The transmission view sees reality as separate from communication, which aims to accurately describe an objective external world. In contrast, the ritual view is that communication helps produce reality by constructing symbolic

1. Transmission + Ritual =Communication
Dr Mira K Desai
Associate Professor
University Department of Extension Education
SNDT Women’s University
Juhu Campus, Mumbai

2. What is Communication?
Ideology
Technology
Process

3. Communication…?!
SOCIETY- Mass
MASS- Many Groups
Institutional/Organisational
GROUP- With a group of people
INTRA GROUP- Within a group
INTER- Between two people
INTRA- Self as communicator

4. Elements/Process of Communication
SENDER RECEIVER
= Noises
MESSAGE
CHANNEL

5. Types of
Communication
Vocal
Non-vocal
Written
Oral
Intra-personal (self)
Inter-personal (other)
Group (others)
Mass (many groups)
Direct
Mediated
Audio-visual
Audio
Visual
Upward
Downward
Horizontal
Vertical

6. Communication
Transmission View
• Communication links the
ways messages are
transmitted and received via
technology with the
composition of these
messages (or more broadly,
as communicative
relationships), and with the
analysis of the effects of
these communicative acts.
Ritual view
• Communication is a central
daily ritual that helps form
and sustain communities.

8. Ritual View of Communication
MEANING
SENDER RECEIVER

9. ‘Transmission’ Versus ‘Ritual’
Transmission view: Communication is a process by
which messages are sent, transmitted, filtered, and
received.
* At core, the transmission view maps closely on to
information theory of communication.
* Originated in religion, age of exploration and discovery
Ritual view: Communication partakes in central daily
rituals that forge meaningful human relationships and
communities.
* Meaning can be constituted in repeated media events

10. TRANSMISSION View of Communication
• Idea of communication as the transmission of
signals or messages over distance for the
purpose of control; characterized by the desire
to increase the speed and effect of messages as
they travel in space.
• Most common view in industrial culture
• Metaphor of geography or transportation
• Defined by terms such as “imparting,” “sending,”
“transmitting,” “giving information to others” –
eg: traditional classroom

11. Assumptions- Relationship between
communication and reality: Transmission model
• Real world of objects/events/processes that we observe.
• Language or symbols name these events in the real world and
create more or less adequate descriptions of them.
• There is a reality and then, after the facts, our accounts of reality.
• Distinction between reality and fantasy
• Our terms stand in relation to this world as shadow and
substance.
• Language distorts and confuses our perception of external
world; we peel away semantic layers of terms and meanings to
uncover more substantial domain of existence.

12. John Dewey (1859 – 1952)
There is more than a verbal tie between the words
common, community, and communication. Men live
in a community in virtue of the things which they
have in common; and communication is the way in
which they come to possess things in common.
What they must have in common . . . are aims,
beliefs, aspirations, knowledge, a common
understanding– likemindedness as sociologists say.
Such things cannot be passed physically from one to
another like bricks; they cannot be shared as
persons would share a pie by dividing it into physical
pieces .... Consensus demands communication.
(Dewey, 1916: 5-6).

13. James Carey (1934-2006)
• Communication as Culture
• “Communication is a symbolic process whereby
REALITY is produced, maintained, repaired and
transformed”.
• “social life is more than power and trade ... it
also includes the sharing of this that experience,
the religious ideas, personal values and the
sentiments, and intellectual notions -- a ritual
border”
Source: James Carey. A Cultural Approach To Communication.
Routledge, York, N.Y., 1989.

14. RITUAL View of Communication
• Projection of community ideals and their embodiment in material
form–dance, plays, architecture, news stories, strings of speech–
to create a symbolic order that provides information, but also
confirms, represents underlying order of things, and manifests
ongoing and fragile social processes.
• Generally dismissed in American thought
a. Puritan individualism
b. Devalue ‘process’ in favour of ‘product’
c. Isolate science from culture–science provides culture-free truth
whereas culture provides ethnocentric error.
• Not imparting information but representation of shared beliefs
• Sacred ceremony draws persons together in fellowship and
commonality.
• Downplays role of sermon and highlights role of prayer.

15. Assumptions- Relationship between
communication and reality: Ritual model
• Reality is not given, not humanly existent,
independent of language and toward which
language mirrors.
• Reality is brought into existence, produced by
communication, by the construction,
apprehension, and utilization of symbolic forms.
• Reality is not a mere function of symbolic forms,
but is produces by humans that focus existence in
specific terms.
• Reality is not there to discover in any significant
detail.

16. Approaches to Communication
TRANSMISSION
• ‘imparting,’ ‘sending,’
‘transmitting,’ or ‘getting
information to others”
• ‘not toward the
extension of messages in
space’
• ‘not the act of imparting
information’
RITUAL
• ’sharing’, ‘participation’,
‘association’,
‘fellowship’, and ‘the
possession of a
common faith’
• ‘toward the
maintenance of society
in time’
• ‘the representation of
shared beliefs’

17. Transmission vesus Ritual
TRANSMISSION
• Transportation
• Sender & Receiver
• Sent & Received
• Receiver ‘gets it’
• Accuracy of transmission
• Influence across space
RITUAL
• Ceremony
• Participants
• Created and Recreated
• Shared experience
• Sense of community
• Community across time
Metaphor- Role of participants- Role of meaning-
Success criterion- Basic function

19. Language
• Syntactically organized system of signals, such as
voice sounds, intonations or pitch, gestures or
written symbols which communicate thoughts or
feelings.
• If a language is about communicating with
signals, voice, sounds, gestures, or written
symbols, animals have their own language.
• A language is therefore, so to speak, language
minus speech: it is at the same time a social
institution and a system of values.

20. Semiotics - Science of Signs
• Semantic: Relation between signs and the things
they refer to, their denotata.
• Syntactic: Relation of signs to each other in
formal structures.
• Pragmatics: Relation of signs to their impacts on
those who use them (Also known as general
semantics)
• Social semiotics: Social dimensions of meaning in
any media of communication, its production,
interpretation and circulation, and its implications
in social processes, as cause or effect.

21. Semiotics- Sign Categorisations
SOCIAL
CODES TEXTUAL
CODES
INTERPRETIVE
CODES

22. Social codes: In a broader sense all semiotic
codes are 'social codes'
• verbal language (phonological, syntactical,
lexical, prosodic and paralinguistic sub codes)
• bodily codes (bodily contact, proximity, physical
orientation, appearance, facial expression, gaze,
head nods, gestures and posture)
• commodity codes (fashions, clothing, cars)
• behavioural codes (protocols, rituals, role-playing,
games)

23. Textual codes- Representational codes
• Scientific codes: including mathematics
• Aesthetic codes: within the various expressive
arts (poetry, drama, painting, sculpture, music,
etc.) - including classicism, romanticism, realism
• Genre, rhetorical and stylistic codes: narrative
(plot, character, action, dialogue, setting, etc.),
exposition, argument and so on
• Mass media codes: photographic, televisual,
filmic, radio, newspaper and magazine codes,
both technical and conventional (including
format)

24. Interpretative codes- There is less
agreement about these as semiotic codes
• Perceptual codes: Visual perception (this code
does not assume intentional communication);
• Ideological codes: More broadly, these include
codes for ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’ texts-dominant
(or 'hegemonic'), negotiated or
oppositional. More specifically, we may list the
'isms', such as individualism, liberalism,
feminism, racism, materialism, capitalism,
progressivism, conservatism, socialism,
objectivism, consumerism and populism;
(however, all codes can be seen as ideological).