Fundamental Elements of Communication

This inquiry starts by identifying the Levels in the Primary Hierarchy of Communication (PH5). These are found within the 5th level in the Root Hierarchy (RHL5).

The Role of Communication

Communication is Level-5 in the Root Hierarchy of Endeavour.

Communication is the psychosocial activity that naturally flows from developing a Purpose-RL6 together with a Willingness-RL7 to pursue that purpose. Without communicating, nothing would happen. Our endeavour would just hang in the air as a potential.

Turning any potential into an actuality occurs within a particular social situation and is wholly dependent upon reflecting and discussing i.e. communicative interaction with:

  • ourselves;
  • insiders: our family, friends or colleagues; &/or
  • outsiders: those whose advice, cooperation, money, products or services we judge are needed.

ClosedTHEE Note

Communication-RL5 is therefore the highest Level available for our direct control of any particular endeavour. It also follows that the most important reason for communication (from an evolutionary perspective) must be enabling purpose and value (RL6).

As shown in the THEE Path, there is nothing intrinsic to communication within the elemental Root Level that is not also within the Primary Hierarchy (and vice versa).

What if the Root Hierarchy is wrong? For this inquiry, we will ignore the Root Hierarchy and take its naming and ordering of Levels/entities for granted. However, even if that hierarchy is poorly modeled, it seems unlikely to affect our inquiries.  The opposite is far more likely: a detailed understanding of Communication-PH5 will enable us to amend or become more confident about its encompassing Framework.

The Starting Point

7 entities in levels of the Primary Hierarchy of Communication (PH5)

In this first section, it is vital to get clarity about the basic elements present in any communicative event. There are many more sections which explore Frameworks that clarify the richness intrinsic to communication and its place in our social life.

But to provide a basis for engaging with that complexity, it is essential to establish for the basic elements:

  • their functions;
  • their properties; &
  • their interrelations.

These elements are expected to form the component levels of Communication-PH5 as shown in the diagram (with nameless elements). We will start with the simple certainty that the most fundamental element on which everything else must be built is a stimulus (for a sender) and a perception of a stimulus (for a recipient). The stimulus is the means of communication and its effect is to «make contact».

Closed So we will start here ►

Guidance in the Inquiry

Communication seems to be an area that is more prone to confusion than most. However, it is not always obvious in advance what specifically is causing this confusion. Some immediate confusion can be unravelled by recognizing that our focus is «a deliberate communicative event».

There will certainly be repeated revisions of parts, or even all, of this initial framework as new insights emerge from working on frameworks derived from it. This is part of the structural corroboration and validation process.

A THEE inquiry calls on us to be observant, reflective, open to possibilities, and diligent in investigating the issues and in mapping the Taxonomy.

My experiences of communicating (and failing to communicate) throughout my life are the primary source of my curiosity. This TOP project has been an education in itself.

Because we all have these experiences, we possess a wealth of implicit knowledge. We must now select, make explicit and order the relevant psychosocial phenomena and systems as best we can.

General guides now exist in the form of established principles that determine the nature of any THEE framework in abstract terms. These are based on more than 30 years of painstaking inquiries and reasonably successful discoveries.

So I can broadly predict general properties that will help in discovering the specific properties and in determining precise details. If you wish, you can see a full list of the requirements, predictions and challenges now. However abstract and technical, when it is all unpacked and posted it will be fairly simple and directly applicable.

If past experience is a guide, I would expect the findings to come to be a mix of the blatantly obvious and the illuminating.

Originally posted: 21-Feb-2011; Last updated 22-Jul-2011.