The code model of communication: a powerful - SIL International

2. Model as Metaphor 13
metaphor” (Burke 1954:95). Has the code model of communication been such a “fertile
metaphor” for the discipline of linguistics? Has the discipline demonstrated a “patient
repetition” of this particular metaphor?
At a cursory level, even a simple review of the linguistic literature should serve to
answer these questions. If the code model has served the discipline in such a way, then
the literature should demonstrate that fact. Accordingly, as a means of exploring and
discussing that literature, this section documents by way of quotations the development
and use of the code model through nearly fifty years of linguistic literature. The quotations
are presented here in chronological order by date of publication, serving to
highlight the development and continued use of the model up through the present decade.
It is important to note that the quotations do not simply reflect a single school of thought
or tradition. Indeed, most contemporary linguists have used the code model, regardless of
the theories they may employ in accounting for lower level issues. It seems to have
mattered little whether they were formalists or functionalists, grammarians or
sociolinguists.
It should also be noted that the quotations cited here record that the code model has
been the property of mainstream linguistics. Most of the quotations represent the work of
prominent theoreticians. In an effort to maintain continuity, discussion of particular
theories and theoreticians is kept to a minimum in this chapter. Chapter 4 will address
particular theories in more detail.
Because the use of the code model is not the peculiar habit of any particular school of
linguistics, the quotations are not grouped by school or subdiscipline. Readers may note
that the linguists quoted have not all used the model in the same manner. As will be
discussed, it is evident that the code model formalizes a body of shared presuppositions,
but theoreticians differ regarding how these presuppositions should be ordered and
applied. Similarly, they differ regarding how the components of the code model should
be handled. Nevertheless, most have begun with a basic set of presuppositions,
demonstrated in the literature via the metatheoretical conceptual axioms they employ (to
be discussed in section 3.4). (The discussion now turns to the quotations themselves.)
• Charles Hockett (1953, 1955)
As has been briefly addressed in the introduction to this study, and will be further
discussed in chapter 3, the code model is best understood as a contemporary integration
of three models: (1) the conduit metaphor, (2) Saussure’s speech circuit, and (3) modern
information theory. Since information theory was the third and final model to be incorporated,
the point of its introduction to linguistics is an important date in the overall
history of the code model within linguistics. Charles Hockett was one of the first linguists
to take note of Claude Shannon’s information theory, writing an influential review of
Shannon and Weaver (1949) for Language (Hockett 1953). In 1955 Hockett published A
Manual of Phonology, in which he attempted to incorporate information theory into
linguistics (Hockett 1955:7). Hockett’s appeal to information theory is worked
throughout the book in development of his “mathematico-mechanical” model of language