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Hockett on the problem of communication:
Charles F. Hockett, A Manual of Phonology, 1955, p. 210:
“The best analogy I have been able to think of for this is a very homely one. Imagine a row of Easter eggs carried along a moving belt; the eggs are of various sizes, and variously colored, but not boiled. At a certain point, the belt carries the row of eggs between the two rollers of a wringer, which quite effectively smash them and rub them more or less into each other. The flow of eggs before the wringer represents the series of impulses from the phoneme source; the mess that emerges from the wringer represents the output of the speech transmitter. At a subsequent point, we have an inspector whose task it is to examine the passing mess and decide, on the basis of the broken and unbroken yolks, the variously spread-out albumen, and the variously colored bits of shell, the nature of the flow of eggs which previously arrived at the wringer. Note that he does not have to try to put the eggs together again—a manifest physical impossibility—but only to identify. The inspector represents the hearer.”
Jakobson on the functions of linguistic communication:
Roman Jakobson, Linguistics and Poetics, 1960, pp. 3-4:
"Language must be investigated in all the variety of its functions. Before discussing the poetic function we must define its place among the other functions of language. An outline of these functions demands a concise survey of the constitutive factors in any speech event, in any act of verbal communication. [....] Each of these six factors determines a different function of language. Although we distinguish six basic aspects of language, we could, however, hardly find verbal messages that would fulfill only one function. The diversity lies not in a monopoly of some one of these several functions but in a different hierarchical order of functions. The verbal structure of a message depends primarily on the predominant function."
*The "model" at the top of this page is purely a whimsical invention of my own. The acoustic string phone was invented by British physicist and polymath Robert Hooke by 1667. The graphic above is but a phatic gesture designed to inflict a metalingual joke upon certain addressees. Any intellectual limitations of the model are entirely my own and should not detract from the significance of contributions to the field by Hooke, Jakobson, or Hockett.