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Evolution and Theories of Communication | 69

constructions of another, and which of the two has more radically influenced
him or her.
The world of communication is divided into two kinds. One faction
concerns itself with communication about the environment, while the other
with communication among the humans. The former is impersonal in its
pure form, but human communication is always enmeshed in a personal
matrix. Just as signs represent the referent in terms of a shared code, when
a communicator chooses a certain form of address, the tone of voice or posi-
tion vis-à-vis his audience, he does not represent their mutual relationship.
On the other hand, he presents it. Communication scholars and sociologists
have developed a few major theories concerning them.
Primarily communication is based on signs, symbols and shared mean-
ings, whether verbal or non-verbal, vocal or non-vocal. But there are also
some scholars who view communication as a function of behaviour and
research on all these aspects as a part of communication research is an ongo-
ing process. In the following pages are discussed the major communication
theories which have further led to a conceptualization to be represented in
the form of communication models.
The entire subject of communication can be studied through two schools
of thought, the Semiotics School and the Process School.

The semioTiCs sChool

Charles Morris laid down the foundations for the study of semiotics fifty
years ago. Morris divided semiotics into three areas of general study: syn-
tactic, semantics, and pragmatics. By syntactic he meant the area in which
to include a study of how symbols relate to each other—a sort of symbol-
to-symbol relationship. In semantics Morris discussed a study of how
symbols relate to their referents, that is the things that symbols represent—a
symbol-to-referent relationship. Pragmatics refer to the study of how symbols
relate to people, i.e., the symbol users—users that is a sort of symbol-to-user
relationship. These three divisions of semiotics remain as a reasonable and
popular analysis of language and communication study to this day. The
semiotics school approaches communication as the generation of meaning,
a mixture of signs, symbols and messages, which the sender wants to convey
and expects a specific reaction from the receiver of the messages—the sign
itself.
Signs are of different varieties. There are differences in the ways they
carry meanings, and the ways they relate to the people who use them. Signs
are human constructs and can only be understood in terms of the uses people
put them to. The codes are systems in which the signs are organized.

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