Transactional Model of Communication

 

According to Adler and Rodman (2000):  

Despite its simplicity, the linear model doesn’t do a very good job of representing the way most communication operates. The transactional communication model below presents a more accurate picture in several respects.

v  Simultaneous Sending and Receiving

 The transactional model reflects the fact that we usually send and receive messages simultaneously. The roles of sender and receiver that seemed separate in the linear model are now superimposed and redefined as “communicators.” This new term reflects the fact that at a given moment we are capable of receiving, decoding, and responding to another person’s behavior, while at the same time that other person is receiving and responding to ours. 

Consider, for instance, the significance of a friend’s yawn as you describe your romantic problems. Nonverbal behaviour like this shows that most face-to-face communication is a two-way affair. The discernible (visible) response of a receiver to a sender’s message is called feedback. Not all feedback is non-verbal, of course. Communication is therefore a two-way affair.

Another weakness of the linear model is the questionable assumption that all communication involves encoding. We certainly do choose symbols to convey most verbal messages. But what about the many nonverbal cues that occur whether or not people speak: facial expressions, gestures, postures, vocal tones, and so on? Cues like these clearly do offer information about others, although they are often unconscious and thus don’t involve encoding.

For this reason, the transactional model replaces the term encoding with the broader label behavior, because it describes both deliberate and unintentional and unintentional actions that can be observed. 

Communication Is Fluid, Not Static: Adler and Rodman (2000) emphasized that the transactional model reflects the fact that it’s difficult to isolate a single discrete “act” of communication from events that precede or follow it.

The way a friend or family member reacts to a sarcastic remark you make will probably depend on the way you have related to one another in the past. Likewise, the way you’ll act toward each other in the future depends on the outcome of this conversation. 

Communication is Relational, Not Individual: The transactional model shows that communication isn’t something we do to others; it is an activity to do with partners. Like dancing, communication depends on the involvement of a partner and like good dancing communication isn’t something that depends just on the skill of one person.

A great dancer who doesn’t consider and adapt to the skill level of his or her partner can make both people look bad. In communication and dancing, even two partners do not guarantee success. Finally, relational communication—like dancing—is a unique creation that arises out of the way in which the partners interact.  The way you dance probably varies from one partner to another because of its cooperative, transactional nature. Likewise, the way you communicate, according to Adler and Rodman, varies with different partners.