Page 108 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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the signal is language the same diagram represents human communication.
Schramm felt that such a system is also only as strong as the weakest link.
For example, there may occur a situation in which the source does not
have adequate or clear information or the message is not encoded fully,
accurately and effectively in transmittable signs. Those messages are not
transmitted fast and accurately enough despite interference and competition
to the desired receiver. Those are not in a pattern that corresponds to the
encoding and finally, if the destination is unable to handle the decoded
message so as to produce the desired response, then obviously the system
is working at less than top efficiency. When we realize that all these steps
must be accomplished with relatively high efficiency, if any communication
is to be successful, the everyday act of explaining something to strangers or
writing a letter seems a minor miracle.
Schramm also felt that the most important thing about such a system
is one we have been talking about all too glibly—the fact that receiver and
sender must be in tune. This is clear enough in the case of a radio transmitter
and receiver but somewhat more complicated when it means that a human
receiver must be able to understand a human sender.
His modified the diagram therefore and it looked as in Figure 5.12.

Source Encoder Signal Decoder Destination

Figure 5.12
Schramm’s Model (1954) (b)
Source: The Process and Effects of Mass Communication, Wilbur Schramm (Ed.), 1965.

According to Schramm the circles are to be perceived as the ‘accumu-
lated experience of the two individuals trying to communicate’. The source can
encode and the destination can decode only in terms of the experience each has
had. If the circles are huge and are in common then communication is easy. If
the circles do not meet—if there has been no common experience—then com-
munication is impossible. If these circles have only a small area in common i.e.,
if the experience of the source and destination have been strikingly unlike—
then it is going to be very difficult to get an intended meaning across from one
to the other. This is the difficulty we face when we try to communicate to one
with a culture much different from our own (Schramm 1954).

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