See also: Message (homonymy)

The information theory was developed mathematically to determine the rate of information transmitted in the communication of a message by a channel of communication, in particular in the presence of parasites called noises: in Communication, a message is a whole of signs. It thus implies a Codage by the transmitting , and a Décodage by the Récepteur (from where the need for a common code). It was taken again by Roman Jakobson to support the linguistic theory.

The message in the communication and information theory

The first work on the concept of Information of Claude Shannon, Ralph Hartley, Warren Weaver, Harold Lasswell, Werner Meyer-Eppler,…, made it possible to better include/understand the systems of structuring of a message: they involved many research on the means of data processing and thus on a concept directly related to the Informatique. They even joined the paradigmatic sphere of the great theories which were used to explain the universe. The message, i.e. the component of any communication, should not be considered any more for its container (the signal) but for its contents (information). Information is the measurement a priori of the originality of a situation, probable or improbable character of such or such event.

As this information is quantifiable according to probability calculuses, the theory was to converge in a spectacular way towards mathematical formalisms already employed in the fundamental equations of thermodynamics (information being then comparable with a form of organization). Abraham Moles proposed statistical applications of the information theory to the Musique.

The message in the linguistic theory

In the communication, the message can be verbal or paraverbal, i.e. linguistic, as it can be semiological etc A message is known as “verbal” when it is made in a written or oral symbolic system, implying a common concision and standards (a language, or more generally a language) exceeding it. That included the writing, the language of the signs, the voice… Art to conceptualize this message in a language in order to minimize the interferences is called Rhétorique. It known as “nonverbal” when it bases on the implicit comprehension (cultural often) of gestures, color, or odor, not is conceptualized by a language, formalism exceeding it. In all these situations, transmitter and receiver must have the same code, so that the message is comprehensible. For the verbal communication for example, it goes without saying the two parts of a conversation must speak the same language: the language is before a whole conventional code between the members of a community. The communication paraverbale, also called the Kinesthetic one, is expressed starting from signs of expression made by the hands, the face, or the body in general. There too, the communication supposes the existence of a common code between the parts. This code is conventional (just like the verbal language) and remains relative of a culture to another.

The linguistic statements can be distributed in various classifications according to their propensity to deliver information, and according to the levels of articulation of the speech which they erect scaffolding. The linguistic message is used to express ideas (present or absent). This aptitude to connect the sign, the word, the concept and the thing or the idea in arbitrary and abstract meaning representations is in fact purely human and does not exist nowhere elsewhere in the animal world.

See too

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