PRAGMATIC IPO MODEL OF MICRO COMMUNICATION

PROCESS

Ning Zhang, Kecheng Liu

Informatics Research Centre, University of Reading, Whiteknight, Reading, U.K.

Keiichi Nakata

Informatics Research Centre, University of Reading, Whiteknight, Reading, U.K.

Keywords: Pragmatic analysis of communication, Communication process model, IPO modelling.

Abstract: Pragmatic analysis of communication focuses on the relationship between the sender’s intention and the

perlocutionary effects of the message in a given context. Although researchers in Organisational Semiotics

have realised the important roles of the information field, pragmatic information and validity claims in the

success of a communication, no model has been developed to illustrate how these factors together contribute

to the perlocutionary effects. Therefore, this paper introduces a pragmatic Input-Process-Output (IPO)

model developed on the basis of pragmatic analysis of the communication and the IPO business process

modelling, as a part of a study of communication in multicultural distributed workplaces from

social-pragmatic perspectives. This model identifies the key elements contributing to the pragmatic effects

via the communication process, namely the information field, pragmatic information, validity claims, and

time. Major steps within the process and the input and output of each step are also illustrated in the model.

A clear picture can be seen from the model how these key elements involved in the process and how the

final pragmatic effects are generated. Therefore, this model provides a guideline for future pragmatic studies

on communication with focus on pragmatic information, validity claims and the information field.

1 INTRODUCTION

Multi-cultural distributed teams refer to those locate

in different sites, have members with various

cultural backgrounds, and work together in a certain

managerial hierarchy towards common goals. The

head and local offices of an organisation locate in

two culturally differed nations, the main office of a

company and its offshore project team in the cultural

distance, are two good examples. Communication

plays a key role in improving collaboration among

multi-cultural distributed teams. However, the

efficiency and effectiveness of the communication in

such working environments are normally low mainly

due to the insufficiency of shared knowledge, weak

relationships between communicators (TE’ENI,

2006), and differences in expectations, norms,

interests, values and information needs (Scerri, et al.,

2007; Yetim, 2007). Communication and its effects

on organisational performance have been studied in

Organisational Semiotics (OS) paradigm

(Reijswoud, 1996; Clarke, 2001; Gazendam, et al.,

2004; Hawizy, 2007), in which communication is

seen as the intentional use of signs, which leads to

actions of communicators in a social context. The

six-level Organisational Semiotics (OS) Framework

was applied to many studies of communication from

the perspective of its various levels, which was first

introduced by Stamper to analyse signs used in

organisations by adding three more levels (Physics,

Empirics and Social World) to the Peirce and

Morris’s semiotic divisions of Syntactics, Semantics

and Pragmatics (Liu, 2000; Sjostrom & Goldhuhl

2004). The levels of Physics, Empirics and

Syntactics form the system platform and the rest of

three upper levels are associated with human

information functions. Connolly and Phillips (2004)

applied the OS framework to analysing international

communication over computer networks in

distributed organisations. They identified

communication problems on both human-computer

communication (HCC) and computer-mediated

149

Nakata K., Zhang N. and Liu K.

PRAGMATIC IPO MODEL OF MICRO COMMUNICATION PROCESS.

DOI: 10.5220/0003270101490156

In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations (ICISO 2010), page

ISBN: 978-989-8425-26-3

communication (CMC) from all six levels. Their

analyses of problems of CMC in the levels of

pragmatics and social world identified differences in

three types of norms, namely institutional, social and

environmental, which provide a valuable angle for

the norm analyses when studying communication

context. However, their study did not treat

communication as the core for collaboration within

the distributed organisation, and thus they did not

address the questions of how people’s intentions,

beliefs, values, interests, positions and commitments

affect the efficiency and effectiveness of

communication in a context of organisational

collaboration in a multicultural and distributed

environment. The communicative acts that are very

important to understanding intentions and the

perlocutionary effects of a message were also not

addressed in their research. Although researchers in

OS have realised the important role of the

information field, pragmatic information, and

validity claims in the success of a communication,

no model has been developed to illustrate how these

factors together contribute to the perlocutionary

effects. Therefore, this paper attempts to give a

clearer picture demonstrating the answers as to what

factors impact the perlocutionary effects of a

communication, and how they do so. We will

accomplish this by carrying out a pragmatic analysis

of a single communication process between sender

and receiver based on the concept of Input-Process-

Output (IPO) model. IPO model is a functional

model within conceptual schema of a system that

identifies a process’s inputs, outputs, and the internal

procedures required to transform inputs to outputs

(Anon., 2009). It has been widely used in business

and organisational analyses especially in relation to

information system development.

The next section introduces the classic

communication process models. The pragmatic IPO

model of the micro communication process

developed is provided in Section III, followed by

conclusions and future work in Section IV.

2 COMMUNICATION PROCESS

MODELLING

Models are systematic representations of a complex

object, phenomenon or process, based upon the

selection of significant features determined by the

designer. Communication process models help

people to understand the components and sub-

processes involved. In the context of organisation,

the communication process can be discussed at the

macro and micro levels. The macro level refers to

the organisational process level, defining how and

what people communicate in business settings. The

models of conversational process for the

coordination of a business task also belong to macro

level modelling. Micro level refers to one cycle of

the interpersonal communication process that is the

interaction between the sender and receiver through

one-time delivery of a message to achieve social

coordination. The micro communication process is a

basic unit of communication to be studied in order to

improve the communication efficiency and thus

enhance the collaboration between communicators.

The focus of this paper is on the micro level

communication process. In this section, the classic

communication models are briefly introduced.

Featuring the process nature of communication,

many models have been developed from a simple S-

R (Stimulus-Response) version at the very early

stage to a more mature and well accepted S-M-C-R

(Source-Message-Channel-Receiver) Model (Health

& Bryant 2000). The classic communication models

include Aristotle’s Model of Communication,

Shannon-Weaver’s Mathematical Model (also called

Shannon’s Information Theory Model), Westley and

Maclean’s Conceptual Model, Schramm’s

Interactive Model of Communication, and Berlo’s S-

M-C-R Model. Berlo’s S-M-C-R Model, developed

in 1960, was a major breakthrough and has been

widely accepted and modified to a cybernetic model

that includes feedback from the receiver to the

sender (Health & Bryant 2000; Thill & Bovee 2005).

In a cybernetic S-M-C-R model, the message was

treated as the focal element and communication was

viewed as the interaction between the

communicators. The communicators’ attitudes,

communication skills, knowledge, social and

cultural backgrounds as well as the language and

channel noises were of concern during the encoding,

transmitting and decoding processes. Foulger (2004)

further modified this model by explicitly

distinguishing language and media from the message

and by adding the communicator’s perspectives and

relationships to the model. Those cybernetic models

gave us a good idea about how the intention of the

sender was communicated with the receiver.

However, none of this model demonstrated the

pragmatic analysis of the communication process or

the importance of the context, communicators’

pragmatic information and their agreement on

validity claims.

There are models that have been developed to

give a pragmatic view of communication, such as

Conversation for Action Approach, the SAMPO

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approach and DEMO, which are based on the

Speech Act, and Transaction Process Model based in

turn on the Communicative Act (Reijswoud, 1996).

However, all of these models had emphasis on the

conversation, a series of transactions of single

communication process for the fulfilment of a

business task, which belong to macro level analysis.

No model was found to represent the components

and the processing steps from a pragmatic

perspective in a micro communication. To fill in the

blanks and also to be a part of our study on

communication in multicultural distributed

workplaces from social-pragmatic perspectives, a

pragmatic IPO model of the micro communication

process was developed and is introduced in the next

section.

3 PRAGMATIC IPO MODEL OF

MICRO COMMUNICATION

PROCESS

In communication, pragmatic effects are mainly

determined by the shared pragmatic information of

both parties and the context where the

communication occurs (Liu, 2000). Pragmatic

information is information personally possessed,

including knowledge, experience, values, and

expectations (Dik, 1989; Liu, 2000). The more

pragmatic information is shared, the shorter the

route to reaching commitment. The degree of

sharing is mainly determined by the cultural

difference between communicators (Liu, 2000). The

Stamper school of OS is one type of a behaviour-

oriented approach. It is based on the concept of an

information field; thus it is considered to be

information field based OS. This school defines an

information field as “a set of shared social norms

that express knowledge about desirable, acceptable

and exemplary behaviour in a community”

(Gazendam, et al., 2004). The information field in

our study will be defined by substantive norms,

communication norms and control norms of the

overall communication system, which will be

covered by another part of our research. Habermas

(1984) introduced validity claims as conditions that

need to be satisfied for the receiver to understand the

speech act, which include the claim to power, claim

to truth, claim to sincerity and claim to justice. The

claim to power is the dominant validity claim in

strategic actions, while claim to truth, claim to

justice and claim to sincerity are the validity claims

in communicative actions (Reijswoud, 1996). The

validity claims raised in a speech act should be

comprehensible, true, truthful and appropriate in

relation to a given normative reality. Otherwise,

communication may break down and require more

efforts to repair, thus its efficiency is reduced. A

speech act succeeds only when the validity claims

are accepted by the receiver. A challenge on the

validity claims will raise discussion or discourses,

which are essential mechanisms for reaching mutual

agreement.

When studying the communication process and

the factors involved in it, it is natural to give

attention to the input, the output and the

transformation steps from the input to the output.

Therefore, the concept of IPO model (Anon., 2009)

was adopted to develop the pragmatic IPO model of

the micro communication process. This pragmatic

IPO model, as shown in Figure 1, illustrates from the

pragmatic perspective, how the intention of the

sender is transformed into either collaboration or the

need for further communication by a basic

communication process unit in a given context,

identifying the processing steps (sub-processes), the

input from sender, receiver, and context

respectively, and the output of each sub-process. The

description of the model is arranged by its sub-

processes.

3.1 Sub-process: Encoding

Communication is triggered by an event, idea, or

situation. When the sender decides to start a

communication with the receiver, his/her intention

must be encoded to form a message (Message_s).

Besides the intention of the sender, essential inputs

also include the pragmatic information and validity

claims from the sender, and language, medium and

the information field from the context. The output is

Message_s, which performs the illocutionary act(s)

that reflect the sender’s intention. Message_s is also

the input for the sending process. In terms of the

pragmatic study on communication, focus will be on

intention, pragmatic information, validity claims,

and information field.

We can use a simplified case to demonstrate this

step: a local marketing team of a multi-national

enterprise locates in a country that has very different

cultures from its head office. The team identified a

potential strategic partner for the enterprise through

their research. According to the defined information

field of the communication system between the local

and head offices, the local team needed to introduce

this potential partner through an email to the head

office and sought their concurrence before they

made further moves. This situation triggered

PRAGMATIC IPO MODEL OF MICRO COMMUNICATION PROCESS

151

Figure 1: Pragmatic IPO Model of Micro Communication Process.

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communication between the two offices. The

simplified examples for each input and output are

provided as follows:

 Inputs

¾ Intention of the local team: the local team

intended to share their knowledge and

judgement about this potential partner and to

seek the approval of their proposal from the

head office;

¾ Some related pragmatic information of the

local team: the knowledge about enterprise

marketing strategy (especially that relating to

the local market) and the related business

process; the knowledge of the status and plan

of the enterprise's new market development;

the knowledge of the criteria for strategic

partners required by the enterprise; the

knowledge of the local market and the target

organisation; the experience of identifying an

appropriate potential strategic partner; the

values required in such partnerships; the way

to express all related information and the way

to persuade, etc. ;

¾ Some related information fields: norms that

regulate why, when, what, how, who to

communicate, and the process of addressing

communication results, in such situation. For

example, the information field for such

communication can be defined as: for the

head office to make a correct decision, the

local office should send an email to the head

office, providing comprehensive evidence to

support the proposal of a potential partnership

with the identified organisation before further

development. The head office should make

the decision within two weeks under normal

circumstances;

¾ Validity claims: corresponding to the

information field and all related information

possessed by the local team, the claims to

power, to truth, to justice, and to sincerity

were comprehensible, true, truthful and

appropriate;

¾ Language: English;

¾ Media: email.

 Output

¾ Message_s: an email containing the

introduction of the potential partner, the

analysis and judgement made by the local

team, and their inquiry requesting instructions

about follow-ups.

3.2 Sub-process: Sending

The step of sending requires the inputs of Message_s

from the sender and the channel and time elements

from the context. Its output is Message_m.

Message_m could differ from Message_s due to

physical or human distractions during the

transmission. Time and timing issues might also

cause Message_m to mean a different thing or to

have a different degree of impact on the receiver

(Bothwell, 2006). However, in this paper we assume

that Message_m is identical with Message_s, as this

aspect is not the main focus of pragmatic analysis.

With the assumption that Message_m is identical

with Message_s, the simplified concept Message is

used in this paper in the following discussions.

3.3 Sub-process: Decoding

Key inputs in this step include Message, the

pragmatic information of the receiver, the receiver’s

judgements to the validity claims attached to the

Message and his/her understandings of the

information field. Time and timing are also the

factors that influence the decoding result. Under the

assumption of right time and right timing during

pragmatic analysis, it is easily seen that the output of

the decoding, Message_r, can be different from

Message, due to various pragmatic information

possessed by both parties, their different

understandings of the information field, and/or

disagreement on validity claim(s). Message_r

performs a perlocutionary act, which together with

an illocutionary act performed by Message

determines the pragmatic effects of the

communication.

We continue to use the example introduced in

the Encoding sub-process and demonstrate the

simplified input and output items for this sub-

process:

 Inputs

¾ Message: an email containing the introduction

of the potential partner, the analysis and

judgement made by the local team, and their

inquiry for the instruction about follow-up;

¾ Some related pragmatic information of the

head office: the knowledge about enterprise

marketing strategy (especially that relating to

the local market) and the related business

process; the knowledge of the status and plan

of enterprise new market development; the

knowledge of the criteria for strategic partners

required by the enterprise; the knowledge of

the local market and the target organisation;

PRAGMATIC IPO MODEL OF MICRO COMMUNICATION PROCESS

153

the experience of identifying an appropriate

potential strategic partner; the values required

in such partnerships; the way to express all

related information and the way to be

persuaded, etc. ;

¾ Some related information fields: the same

norms as described in Encoding section;

¾ Validity claims: corresponding to the

information field and all related information

possessed by the head office, the head office

evaluated whether the claims to power, to

truth, to justice, and to sincerity were

comprehensible, true, truthful and

appropriate.

 Output

¾ Message_r: an email containing the

introduction of the potential partner, the

analysis and judgement made by the local

team, and their inquiry for instructions about

follow-ups.

Comparing the two sets of inputs of

encoding and decoding, it can be seen that:

i) If the information field is well-defined, if

the pragmatic information of both parties

has been well-shared and considered, and

if the four validity claims are agreed to be

comprehensible, true, truthful and

appropriate, Message_r will be almost

identical with Message, which provides

appropriate information and expresses

clear and true intention of the sender. In

our case, the head office received the

email from the local team. They

recognized that the email contained

appropriate and sufficient evidences,

professional judgement of the local team,

and the inquiry of approval;

ii) If any of the three key inputs (the

information field, pragmatic information,

and validity claims) have issues,

Message_r will be seen differently from

Message. In our case, for instance, the

supporting materials for the partnership

evaluation were not clearly defined in the

information field. The local office sent the

email, believing that the information

contained is appropriate, clear and

sufficient to allow the head office making

decision. However, the head office

perceived the email differently since they

had a different set of requirements

regarding to the supporting materials.

3.4 Sub-processes: Illocutionary Act

and Perlocutionary Act

Message, which carries the sender’s intention,

pragmatic information and validity claims as well as

his/her knowledge of the information field, performs

illocutionary act. Illocutionary act reflects the

intention of the sender. It makes the sender expect

certain perlocutionary effects of Message on the

receiver. It also changes the sender’s propositional

attitudes so that they can be ready for the effects.

Message_r carries the sender’s intention that has

been modified more or less by the receiver’s

pragmatic information, judgements to validity

claims and knowledge of the information field. It

performs perlocutionary act, which changes the

propositional attitudes of the receiver and generates

the actual perlocutionary effects performed by the

receiver. The differences between Message and

Message_r affect the degree of overlap between the

actual and expected perlocutionary effects.

However, from an outside view, it seems that

Message performs both illocutionary act and

perlocutionary act. If both sender and receiver share

the complete sets of related pragmatic information,

have sufficient knowledge of the clearly and

appropriately defined information field in the

business setting, and agree that the validity claims

contained in the message were true, truthful,

comprehensive and appropriate in relation to the

time and the information field, they will consider the

message provides appropriate information and

intention to achieve collaboration. Moreover, the

receiver is aware of the real intention of the sender

and will act as expected by the sender. Therefore,

the actual and expected perlocutionary effects

should be almost identical. In our case, it means that

the head office, as expected by the local team, was

able to make the approval upon the email in two

weeks. If there was mismatching element(s)

regarding to the pragmatic information, the

information field and/or validity claims, the actual

perlocutionary effects would differ from the

expected ones. In the scenario as described in

section 3.5 (ii), the head office was not able to make

any decision based on the email, to say nothing of

approval.

3.5 Sub-process: Evaluation of

Perlocutionary Effects

This step evaluates the degree of overlap between

the actual and the expected perlocutionary act. A

judgement is made via evaluation about whether the

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actual perlocutionary effects match the expected

ones. If the degree is close to 100%, we can say that

the intention of the sender is fulfilled by the reaction

of the receiver, and thus the communication is

successful and collaboration is achieved; otherwise,

further communication needs to be carried out

following the same steps after first identifying and

addressing the issues that caused the discrepancy. In

our case, if the local office received the approval

from the head office in two weeks, it means that the

expected and actual perlocutionary acts matched.

The local office could move on to the next stage of

developing partnership with this local organisation,

thus, the collaboration was achieved. On the

contrary, as given example above, the head office

couldn’t approve the partnership potential due to the

supporting material issue. The local and head offices

had to first work out mutual agreements on the

requirements of these materials. Therefore, a new

communication process was triggered.

3.6 Utilisation of the Model

This pragmatic IPO model of communication

process has a two-fold application: to design a

pragmatically successful communication system of a

newly established multicultural virtual team and to

analyse a particular communication problem from

the pragmatic perspective.

3.6.1 To Design a Pragmatically Successful

Communication System of a Newly

Established Multicultural Virtual

Team

The information field uses norms (substantive,

communication, and control) to define the

communication system, which aims to enhance

collaboration between distributed teams that are

diverse in cultures but share common business goals.

As illustrated by the model, the efficiency of a

communication for collaboration relies on the degree

of agreement of the actual perlocutionary effects

with the expected ones, which are pragmatically

affected by the sharing of pragmatic information of

both parties, the acceptance of validity claims and

the development and education of the appropriate

information field. Therefore, when designing the

communication system, the first step is to analyse

related pragmatic information of the communicative

parties, identifying their differences and developing

solutions into the information field. The acceptance

of validity claims depends on the mutual

understanding of the relation of power, recognition

of each other’s thinking and communicative patterns

as well as the level of trust between the parties.

Therefore, it is important to realise and share the

pragmatic information of both parties that relates to

the thinking and communicative patterns, to clearly

define and communicate the appropriate relation of

power, and to develop a close relationship between

the communicators which in turn builds team trust

and coherence. These three types of activities need

to be built into the communication system. In

addition, it is critical for both parties to agree on the

common goals that provide mutual benefits, and to

communicate them to all the team members. These

factors also need to be explicitly claimed in the

information field.

3.6.2 To Analyse a Particular

Communication Problem from the

Pragmatic Perspective

When a particular communication has a problem

reaching its intended effects, the message

communicated need to be carefully studied in terms

of both its illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.

According to the model, such a study should focus

on the pragmatically related inputs for both acts. The

inputs for the illocutionary act include the sender’s

intention and pragmatic information, the information

field for the given context, and the validity claims

the sender believes and expresses via the message,

while those for the perlocutionary act contain the

receiver’s pragmatic information, his/her judgement

on the validity claims, and the information field for

the given context.

The first step is to evaluate whether the sender’s

true intention and validity claims were appropriate

according to the information field and time, and

whether they were clearly and correctly expressed

by the message. The next step evaluates whether the

receiver understands and accepts the intention and

validity claims. If not, further study should be

carried out to check whether the causes are based on

differences of the pragmatic information. The last

step is to analyse the information field, examining

whether it is defined and shared correctly,

thoroughly, and efficiently.

The focus of this paper is on the development of

the model. The practical application of the model,

which is beyond the scope of this paper, is the

subject of ongoing research.

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155

4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

This paper introduced a pragmatic IPO model of the

micro communication process, developed as a part

of a social-pragmatic study on communication in the

multicultural distributed workplace and designed to

fill in the gap in pragmatic models of the micro

communication process. The basis of this model

included pragmatic analysis of communication and

the IPO business process modelling. This model

identified the key elements contributing to the

pragmatic effects via the communication process,

namely the information field, pragmatic information,

validity claims, and time. Major steps within the

process and the input and output of each step were

also illustrated in the model. Via this model a clearer

picture can be seen as to how these key elements

were involved in the process, and how the final

pragmatic effects were generated. Therefore, this

model provides a guideline for future pragmatic

studies on communication with a focus on pragmatic

information, validity claims and the information

field.

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