2. Model as Metaphor 23
Communication is the process by which information is transmitted from a source usually a person to a receptor usually another person, or group of people. It requires, therefore, that
the source and the receptor share some knowledge about the code being used to transmit the information, whether that code is verbal, visual, or otherwise. Questionnaire response; March
28, 1998.
These two responses are in many respects typical of the code-model based responses provided.
After the survey and initial research for the study had been completed, those portions were presented as a paper at an academic conference
Blackburn 1998 . Specifically, the
presentation covered the history of the code model and its permeation through linguistics. Following the session, a fellow presenter commented, “I taught this [model] to my
students just last week, but you know, before today, I’d never given any thought to the model or where it came from.”
A third and perhaps even more illuminating type of response has often arisen in the context of personal conversation concerning the study. When colleagues have been
asked, “How do you think communication works?” a majority have responded with a code model-based answer. But if, instead of eliciting their description of communication,
they were given a synopsis of the study, many responded with debate. The standard response went something like, “Oh, that’s how we talk about communication, but I don’t
think it really has much bearing on how we do linguistics.”
These responses are interesting, but they should not be surprising. The code model of communication serves to embody presuppositions, and those presuppositions can indeed
guide the analyses of the linguists holding them. Considering the significance of the role thus served, one might expect that the model would be well documented and thoroughly
“digested” in discussion. It’s structure has been observed and addressed by a few theoreticians
Berge 1994 ;
Harris 1981 :10–13;
Harris 1987 :205–208;
Harris 1990 ;
Schiffrin 1994 :391–393;
Sperber and Wilson 1986 :2–6ff., but more frequently it is
employed in a naïve manner, rarely being explicitly identified or discussed. Instead, it is assumed a priori, being adopted and incorporated as tacit knowledge. Indeed, some
linguists report that they cannot conceive of communication operating in any other way than that spelled out in the model.
2.5. Reified metaphor
Consider the following admonition from Eugene Nida’s Presidential Address to the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in December 1968, wherein he
warns against the tendency to employ models without a keen awareness of the metaphors upon which they depend:
Perhaps part of the difficulty in linguistics, as in all branches of science, is not having fully recognized certain inadequacies in our models.
Turbayne 1962 has clearly pointed out
the metaphorical nature of so-called scientific models. They are essential aids to compre- hension, but they must not be permitted to dictate the nature of what they are supposed to
explicate. It is particularly dangerous to employ mechanical models as ways of describing the
24 2. Model as Metaphor
nature of language and the presumed manner in which the human brain functions in encoding or decoding messages. Elaborate networks with and-or nodes are fascinating devices for
suggesting certain logical relationships, but they should certainly not be regarded as having any direct bearing on the way in which the brain actually functions in encoding or decoding.
Nida 1969 :488
It is no insignificant matter that even in the midst of this warning against the subliminal influence of metaphor in models, Nida has employed the code model itself.
One would be hard pressed to find a more cogent example of the pervasiveness of the code model and the unconscious manner in which it has sometimes been employed. The
irony of having in a single statement both use of the code model and a warning concerning the influence of such models certainly highlights the influence the code
model has had as a conceptual metaphor.
As mentioned, a primary objective of any modeling effort is to capture certain generalizations. In theory at least, it is understood that models can never account for all
details and that exceptions exist. In other words, “All models leak.” Most theoreticians would readily support this well-established axiom. Nevertheless, in practice it is common
for models to take on a life of their own. Models can only capture generalizations. As such, only those concerns which the analyst considers salient are given prominence and
generalized. But models also guide analysis. In time the guiding function of a model, coupled with the favored generalizations which gave it birth, may serve to create an
interdependency such that the model conceptually supplants the very phenomena it was used to describe. When this occurs, it reflects a type of reification—the abstraction is
being treated as if it were a concrete object. David Sternberg illuminates the general phenomenon of reification:
People have, apparently, a universal tendency toward reification—assigning too much power to abstractions …. Reification is characterized by amnesia about who created social
products. Forgetting that we frail imperfect humans forged them in the first place leads to a … misconception that such products are timeless, immutable, and demanding in perfection ….
Sternberg 1981 :169
18
Warren Shibles offers similar comments:
Each philosophy, school of science, etc. is based upon a number of basic metaphors which are then expanded into various universes of discourse. By seemingly incongruous
juxtapositions new knowledge is attained and revealing hypotheses suggested. A knowledge of metaphor allows us to see what it is possible to say and how to say it. It also helps us avoid
being captivated by our metaphors which we unconsciously thought were literal truths. Perhaps the joke played most often on the thinkers of the past is that of their having taken their
theories and ideas as literal truths. This is as true of scientists as of others.
Shibles 1971 :3
18
While Sternberg’s specific concern is with the psychological stress induced by reification of socially created abstractions the ominous doctoral dissertation in particular, rather than with the reification of models, his comments
shed light on the general phenomenon as a psychological process.
25
3. The Code Model Decoded
