Listening to my steady drip of primary coverage over NPR, I heard that Newt Gingrich always made sure to inform his wife that he loved her in front of his then mistress. (The things you learn on NPR). Now, if this isn't an example of the favorite bullet point in my miserable interpersonal communications text book, I don't know what would be. I quote, "Meanings are in people." People have been arguing whether there was any sort of inherent meaning in language for since at least 500 BC, but the fine worthies who, loosely speaking, wrote this textbook, have solved all these arguments by decree... no explanation or justification required.
Now, we may understand the truth of "Meanings are in people" in regard to interpersonal communications by employing the "Transactional Model" of human communication. (A term completely undefined in the text, though they do have a very pretty diagram about which they say little to nothing of substance). Gingrich is sending a "message" out to his two listeners by selecting from a collection of arbitrary sounds the sylables "I love you," which in the transaction will be held to have some sort of meaning, (which of course is in people). Gingrich is encoding in the arbitrary sounds coming out of his mouth two distinct messages, one for each listener, which he hopes they will interpret in a manner agreeable to him. For his wife on the phone, his intended message is, "Everything's fine, nothing to worry about, and I certainly won't be screwing anyone else's brains out here in a few minutes." For the woman with him he is encoding the message, "I certainly won't leave my wife for you. That would cause scandal, and all manner of political inconvenience." In this particular transaction all parties receive the messages, interpret them, and go away happy. Particularly Newt, who gets to screw his brains out while avoiding political scandal. Later, his wife will develop an issue with the arbitrary collection of sylables, "I love you," which Newt employed to encode his message. This is because her decoding of the message was flawed... due to an insufficiency of information. But plainly the problem is with her decoding of the message - as the "Transactional Model of Interpersonal Communications" plainly demonstrates.
The book, (which I bought for $82 at the college bookstore as I suffer from brain damage as well as social insufficiency), was unfortunately much less clear on the meaning of the "Transactional Model of Interpersonal Communications," than the example above employing our all round lucky fellow Newt. By way of explanation the esteemed worthies who authored the book offer a diagram which consists of several ovals inside of other ovals with some wavy lines running from top to bottom labeled "Noise." I left those out of my excellent descrption above, you'll have to figure those out for yourself. I was finding this superlative text to be trifle annoying by the end of the first chapter, when I paused to reflect on what I'd just read, and found that I couldn't remember a single thing. I probably should have dropped the course, and taken the book back to the bookstore at that point, but my folly is boundless. Several chapters later, I experienced a sudden insight. I said to myself, "These people just love headings, which they follow with some glop which doesn't really establish anything the heading says... and they are always explaining major terms with a diagram, no actual explanation anywhere... I get it! The whole book is actually just a bunch of PowerPoint (tm) presentations they bundled up and shipped off to the publisher almost unrevised, without actually sitting down and writing anything." This Zen moment inspired in me a new reverence for these worthies and their excellent abilities to extract doubtless considerable financial rewards for almost no work on their part. I must continue to encode messages, and strictly follow the "Transactional Model of Interpersonal Communications" in the hope that, one day, I too will be found worthy.
