Summary
The object/toy is of course defined as “something to play with” and therefore more or less expresses communicative action - as it comes to expression in play with the toy.
The way in which the object/toy expresses itself, the different possibilities in the communicative and play situations are called the sign system.
The SENDER is one or more persons with intentions, cognition, motives (attitudes) which play a significant part in the communicative relationship.
If the toy isn’t good to play with, the blame can only be put on the sender.
The RECIPIENT is also one or several persons (the persons-at-play or the consumers) who all to some degree want to receive, investigate, explore and possibly redefine the sender’s intentions for the toy.
If communicative situations (in play) are to occur, then it is important that the receiver has curiosity, interest and experience at his disposal.
- The sender’s and recipient’s STATEMENTS are their many dialogues and theories about the toy and the play (stated theories).
THE CASE/OBJECT/STORY is reality or the world picture of the people involved.
- Comprehension and theories about the case where these are included in the case are called CASE RELATIONS. The case relationsare therefore placed in a picture of the reality of play with toys, located in time and space and equipped with relationships and qualities.
- The arrows between sender/recipientare called CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION.
- The arrows between object/case/interpretationare called COMMUNICATION FACTORS.
INTERPRETATION can be more or less explicit, depending on the participant’s linguistic capabilities.
General Comment on the model and its pentagonal form
A model cannot completely illustrate the reality it is intended to represent.
In this case, I have been inspired by Dines Johansen, partly also by Jakobson, Sutton-Smith and Tokeby (1993):
Jakobson (1967:41-52) uses six concepts in his explanation of communication:
Sender, recipient, case relations, channel system, sign system and poetic function.
Using these concepts, the various clarifying elements can be brought into a explanatory and communicative relationship to one another.
Apparently, Tokeby was experimenting with the possibility of using the pentagon at the same time (early 1990s) as me.
The use of the pentagon as a model both informs and misinforms because reality - as a model containing many different instances all subject to arbitrariness - can never be as symmetrical and as perfectly star-shaped as the dialogues in the mathematically equilateral pentagon.
Depending on conditions and situations etc., reality’s model is both distorting and distorted and forms the strangest shapes which the many different conditions can produce.
The model as a “symmetrical” pentagon therefore serves only to represent the multiplicity of factors and instances.