Communication Models

Transactional model relates communication with social reality, cultural up-bringing and relational context (relationships). Non-verbal feedback like gestures, body language, is also considered as feedback in this model. Different models that follow transactional model of communication are:
• Barnlund’s Transactional Model
• Helical Model
• Becker’s Mosaic Model

  1. Barnlund’s Transactional Model

Dean Barnlund proposed a transactional model of communication in 1970 for basic interpersonal communication which articulates that sending and receiving of messages happens simultaneously between people which is popularly known as Barlund’s Transactional Model of Communication. Barnlund’s Transactional Model presents a multi-layered feedback system for all parties involved, and recognizes that anyone can be a sender and receiver at the same time. The layers of feedback consist of both verbal and non-verbal cues sent concurrently with the message itself. This further suggests that the feedback could take equal standing as the message itself. The model has been further adapted and reformed by other theorists as General Transactional Model.
Components of Barlund’s model
Cues refers to the signs for doing something. As per Barnlund there are: public cues, private cues and behavioral cues.

• Public cues (Cpu) are physical, environmental or artificial and natural or man-made.
• Private cues (Cpr) are also known as private objects of orientation which include senses of a person. Both these cues can be verbal as well as non-verbal. Another set of cues are behavioral cues.
• Behavioral cues can be verbal (Cbehv) as well as non-verbal (Cbehnv).

Advantages

• The model shows shared field experience of the sender and receiver.
• Transactional model talks about simultaneous message sending, noise and feedback.
• Barnlund’s model is taken by critics as the most systematic model of communication.

Disadvantages

• Barnlund’s model is very complex.
• Both the sender and receiver must understand the codes sent by the other. So they must each possess a similar “code book”. (The concept of code book is not mentioned in the model but understood.

2. Helical Model
In 1967, Frank Dance proposed the communication model called Dance’s Helix Model for a better communication process. The name helical comes from “Helix” which means an object having a three-dimensional shape like that of a wire wound uniformly around a cylinder or cone. He shows communication as a dynamic and non-linear process.
Helical model of communication introduces the concept of time where continuousness of the communication process and relational interactions are very important. Communication is taken as a dynamic process in helical model of communication and it progresses with age as our experience and vocabulary increases. At first, helical spring is small at the bottom and grows bigger as the communication progresses. The same effect can be seen with communication of humans, where you know nothing about a person at first and the knowledge grows steadily as you know the person better. It considers all the activities of the person, from the past and present.
Communication is affected by the curve from which it emerges which denotes past behavior and experiences. Slowly, the helix leaves its lower levels of behavior and grows upward in a new way. It always depends on the lowest level to form the message. Thus, the communicative relationship reaches to the next level in which people share more information.

Advantages

• The model assumes sender and receiver to be interchangeable and makes communication process to be two way.
• The model takes the communication process speculative and intellectual.

Disadvantages

• The model is taken as more simple than it should be.
• Some critics don’t take it to be a model as it has very few variables.
• It is not testable because it is abstract.
• It is not represent in a systematic and orderly way.
• Variables cannot be differentiated in this model.
• Continuity may not always be true for communication. There might be breaks in situations as well as events can be meaningless, forced or unproductive.
• The purpose of communication is not always growth.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Scroll to top
You cannot copy content of this page. The content on this website is NOT for redistribution