Basic Terms

C. Shannon gave a new interpretation to such notions as information and message.

In the above scheme the information source is the source where the message to be sent is selected from an array of possible messages. The transmitter encodes the message into a signal. The signal is sent through a communication channel. The message is received and decoded by a receiver. There is a destination analogous to the source which makes use of the signal. Undesirable but inevitable variations in the signal due to various external causes affecting transmission are called noise.

In Shannon’s definition information refers not to the meaningful content of a particular message but to the degree of freedom of choice with which the information source may choose the elements to compose a given message. This information is non-semantic but probabilistic.

On a later occasion Shannon described information as what remains invariant in all reversible operations of coding or translation. This idea seemed so attractive to many linguists that they adopted it for a definition of meaning. In my opinion, however, the very general concept of information and the linguistic meaning should not be confused. It is much more important to regard information as the reflection of one object of reality upon another leaving some trace on the second. The scope of this notion is very great.

In Decoding Stylistics we are concerned with that trace as the influence of literature on the mind and personality of the reader and on his/her further active position in life. The process of communication does not stop with the first decoding point but goes on.

Among so many different choices the writer has to make in the stage of selection, note the selection of genre suitable for this or that subject-matter and idea. He has to decide when he encodes it, whether he does it as a novelist, a poet, a dramatist with further subdivisions of lyrical, satirical or comical approach and further still: an elegy, a ballad, a sonnet, etc. These organize and connect the message and may be regarded as very general code systems, imposing some choice of elements, and some further restrictions.

The next step is the choice of images. As we read the elements of the text and their connections are gradually perceived, feedback plays the most important role because our response continuously changes, adapting to succeeding events going on as a process of retrospective patterning combined with some expectation from what is coming. The conclusion of a text is the point when the total pattern is revealed. As we read the poem our expectations of the probable further development depend on the interaction of what we read in the text and our thesaurus that is the contents of our memory, and these expectations are constantly readjusted in feedback.

We shall now try to see what these terms mean for us and how this general scheme works in the field of communication by the channel of literature. The process of communication starts when a writer or a poet, who receives a vast stream of information from the surrounding reality, selects in this mass of information something that he wants to impart to others. This stage is a complicated creative process studied in the history of literature. It results in compressing and encoding the message, i.e. choosing the necessary items from a system of codes. The codes involved are studied by linguistics, poetics, semiotics, etc.

A code is a set of signs and rules in which they are arranged used for transmitting messages through some specific channel (i.e. suitable for some specific channel).

The term sign can be used to mean a discrete physical element that carries information, i.e. something material that can be distinguished by the senses and stands for something else. Thus, in each letter of the alphabet we recognize a distinct shape different from that of any other letter, and standing for some sound. As elements of a code simple signs combine into more complicated codograms, and these, in their turn, form codograms of a higher level. Finally, a complete message is a result. In language all units (sounds, morphemes, words, sentences, etc.) are defined by placing them into larger units of higher levels. The theory of signs is studied by semiotics.

The term signal should be distinguished from the term sign. A text is an arrangement of static material signs situated on a page, framed by a margin and arranged typographically in a certain way. A signal is a dynamic nerve impulse transmitting the message of the reader’s mind. The transmission is simultaneously an interpretation directed by the signs of the text serving as directions.

A message is a sum total of the properties of the source reflected and transmitted to the addressee or, in other words, it is the state of one system rendered by the elements of another system. By encoding or coding we mean the operation of identification of symbols and groups of symbols of one kind with symbols and groups of symbols of a different kind. Decoding by the receiver is the reverse operation – reconstruction of the message by knowing code combinations. A communication channel serves as a medium of contact.

The transmitter encodes the message and transmits it in signals suitable for the channel serving as the medium of contact. In our case we regard literature as an analogy of the channel. At the stage of transmission the signal is mixed with inevitable noise, i.e. with various disturbances in the communication system that interfere with the reception of information.

The source of noise may be different. There may be for example changes that occur in one of the codes used during the time that passes between the moments of encoding and decoding. Changes may affect language or manners. Manners that were considered quite polite in the 17^th century may seem revolting in the 20^th. I.A. Richards thinks the codes that rule wit are peculiarly variable. Jokes are apt to become tasteless or lose their point with the passage of time.

Comparing our scheme with the original one as used in engineering it seems more appropriate to take the addresser, the transmitter and receiver as human, i.e. writer and reader respectively, and consider the end items, source and addressee, to be the social reality surrounding them.