Colin Cherry: Doing

“SPAN ID=All_that_we> All that we have to do is to pick them out of the dictionary and string them in the right order…. </SPAN”

Colin Cherry

Source: On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics, p.68

“The suggestion that words are symbols for things, actions, qualities, relationships, et cetera, is naive, a gross simplification. Words are slippery customers. The full meaning of a word does not appear until it is placed in its context, and the context may serve an extremely subtle function -- as with puns, or double entendre. And even then the "meaning" will depend upon the listener, upon the speaker, upon their entire experience of language, upon their knowledge of one another, and upon the whole situation. Words do not "mean things" in a one-to-one relation like a code. Words, too, are empirical signs, not copies or models of anything; truly, onomatopoeia and gestures frequently seem to possess resemblance, but this resemblance does not bear too close examination. A cockerel may seem to say cook-a-doodle-do to an Englishman, but a German thinks it says kikeriki, and a Japanese kokke-kekko. Each can paint only with the phonetic sound of his own language.”

Colin Cherry

Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 10-11

Knowledge , Thinking , Appearance , Painting

“ Language performs an essentially social function; it helps us to get along together, to communicate and achieve a great measure of concerted action. Words are signs which have significance by convention, and those people who do not adopt the conventions simply fail to communicate. They do not "get along" and a social force arises which encourages them to achieve the correct associations. ”

Colin Cherry

Source: On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics, p.69

People , Communication , Help

“The dictionary definition of communication […] includes the communication of goods and supplies. […] But transport of goods is not communication in the sense we are adopting here, and does not raise the same subtle and difficult questions. What "goods" do we exchange when we send messages to one another?”

Colin Cherry

"… symbols do not carry meaning as trucks carry coal. Their function is to select from alternatives within a given context." (paraphrased by Ernst Gombrich in his Inaugural Lecture at University College London in February 1957, and quoted in memory of Colin Cherry. http://www.gombrich.co.uk/showdoc.php?id=27
Reddy, Michael J. (1979). "The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language," in: Andrew Ortony ed., Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge University Press. (See: Metalanguage)
The 'transmission' view of communication, as criticized in favor of the 'ritual' view by James Carey (1985) in: Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Boston: Unwin-Hyman).
Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 9

Communication , Question , Sense