There is a vast assortment of schools of thought concerning how it is possible to communicate. Empiricism, romanticism, materialism, psychoanalysis, and cognitive psychology all have been used as rationale for, and to describe the genesis of, the simple and natural activity of communication. How is it possible that we are able to communicate successfully? Much scholarly work has been generated documenting our interpretation of written discourse in an attempt to describe how we successfully convey meaning from within to without. Whether a theorist is an advocate of New Criticism, Reader Response, Phenomenology, Social Constructionism, rhetoric, or plain style, the basic question remains the same: How are we able to convey concepts successfully and accurately from one source to another?

One could propose that the answer is relatively simple: Communication in all its forms is the outward expression of internalized psychological processes. We are structured to receive, process, and send information, just as we are structured to perceive color, sound, taste, and touch. We are unapologetically creatures of communication. There are properties inherent in our cognitive structure that we bring to our communication with one another. We effortlessly construct concepts, describe situations, recognize relationships, and form narratives orally, in print, or on film. In their article "The Construction of Literary Character: A View from Cognitive Psychology," Richard Gerrig and David Allbritton state that the "very act ["] of creating new personages in our head is preeminently unspecial" (380). Conveying literary characters or concepts involves the same cognitive processes required to process the sensory input we encounter as part of interacting with the world. We are active participants in the world, and so it is with communication. We construct literary worlds from our mental representations and our audience is an active participant in this construction. As Gerrig and Allbritton state, "readers venture beyond the text to explain and predict aspects of the story" (380).

But what specifically are these "simple" internalized psychological processes? We all internalize concepts drawn from our sensory experiences in the world and, not surprisingly, these concepts shared "human community" experiences. We are constantly engaged in trying to find the continuity, commonality, and consistencies (and their respective antitheses) to form explanations for and mental constructs of what we encounter in our daily existence. Our communication is an outward reflection of this internal processing. We perceive the world through our interactions, process this information, formulate concepts, and make suppositions based on these community experiences. External representation of these concepts " communicating " is a continuation and outward manifestation of these interactions.

An example of this kind of this cognitive information processing/structuring is narrative construction. When we construct a narrative, we are laying the foundation for a communication interaction (both internally to construct and externally to describe). The narrative may be fictitious or real, but the attributes of the story interact with the attributional predilections of the audience (Gerrig and Allbritton 381). There is cooperation between the author and audience; each assists the other in creating the character and setting. This is similar to what Walker Gibson proposed in his paper, "Authors, Speakers, Readers and Mock Readers." Gibson's approach proposes that the author/speaker communicates with the reader/audience by asking them to assume, through language and for the sake of the literary experience, a set of attitudes and qualities in response to what is read (1). An author imagines the desired relationship with the audience, creates an agreeable/acceptable role for the audience in that relationship, and communicates the message to the audience in reference to that relationship. In this representation, Gibson sees the audience as a "mock reader" who he describes as "an artifact, controlled, simplified, abstracted out of the chaos of day-to-day life" (2). When Gibson advises that we communicate in a way that provides the mock reader with a set of attitudes they can assume so there is no disparity between the real reader and the mock reader (2), what he is really saying is that he is counting on the audience to participate in the dialogue within the structure of human experience. This is very similar to Gerrig and Allbritton's cognitive interpretation the author/audience relationship they describe as the active participation in the construction of literary worlds where readers "venture beyond the text to explain and predict aspects of the unfolding story" (380). It is the interaction of the literary and non-literary process where the reader "solidly predisposed to find the causes of events in the narrative" (Gerrig and Allbritton 383) because of our perceptions and conceptions of our world through observation and interaction.

Gibson reasons that if there is a disparity between the author's conceived relationship and the mock reader, the writing is unsuccessful. But if the author can find some common cognitive ground with the reader, in essence, "throw his arm around the mock reader," the writing is a success (Gibson 2). This technique asks writers to create a dialogue with the reader and calls on the writer to define, decide, and predict who the mock reader is imagining himself to be on any given day (Gibson 3). Gibson states that the sooner this relationship is established, the better the writing and that authors must be quick to get the mock reader to share attitudes and assumed experiences with the speaker (4). "Again, this description is very similar to Gerrig and Allbritton's cognitive view of the author/audience relationship. They see the author as controlling the way an audience focuses their attention on a particular set of circumstances and bringing the readers" causal analyses into line with their own through the choices of narrator and point of view (Gerrig and Allbritton 384). Where Gibson cautions us to avoid bad writing by eliminating discord between the mock reader and the person we ask them to become (5), Gerrig and Allbritton also advise us that "authors must take care that a reader's appreciation of carefully crafted interrelationships among characters and circumstances is not undermined by the most ordinary of cognitive processes" (384).

The preceding discussion illustrates that communication (at least in the form of literary narrative and character development) and cognition are very intimately related and are associated with a "mental model" of experiences, expectations, predictions, memory, and interactions. Gerrig and Allbritton illustrate many fundamental constructs of cognitive psychology in their exploration of literary characters. They note that even with a brief character description readers "initiate a process that is surely one of the most central activities of reading a novel: they can begin to use the accumulating information to generate expectations about what is to come" and that we generate detailed expectations with scanty provocation (Gerrig and Allbritton 384). Their reference to the memory structure called a "script," which encodes information about a typical scenario (in their example, they use the progress of events that take place during a restaurant meal), as well as the readers" active participation in the narrative once the script is invoked, is remarkably similar to the description of the "schema" described in "Understanding Readers," by Janice Redish. The schema is another example of (or perhaps just another name for) a mental model we use to connect prior experiences, expectations, and context to interpret and participate in communication. It is a network of information connected by chronology, functions, and topics that are multidimensional, linking one piece of information to many others, each with its own set of connections (Redish 11). Scripts and schemata are based on real world experiences and allow us to rapidly organize information about the world and our shared experiences in a coherent, usable and predictive form.

This cognitive activity of organizing and structuring our communications in terms of internalized common experiences (or mental models) is frequently repeated, referenced, and renamed throughout the scholarly research and analysis. In his essay "Emplotting the Reader: Motivation and Technical Documentation," David Goodwin states that technical documents implicitly require readers to play out textually constructed roles in order to create meaning (99). Here we see another example of an experiential prototypic structure, only this time it is referred to as a fabula. Goodwin defines a fabula as "the basic unit in narratology" and states that "readership roles"always function within a storyline" with "events (actions), actors (those who are acted upon), and outcomes (results of the acts)" (Goodwin 103). A fabula "traces the sequence of events in which someone (or something) attempts to produce some result or achieve some goal" (Goodwin 103). It is this ability to recognize patterns and relationships that allows us to communicate effectively.

This is not to say that all communication is effective. It is true that we may not (and frequently do not) read a technical manual from cover to cover or we may lose interest in a novel and never finish it. In the case the technical manual, the failure to successfully communicate may be more an issue of need " a case of reading to do a specific activity versus reading to learn specific information. It employs our ability (or immediate need) to filter out what we consider to be unnecessary information, just as we filter out unnecessary sensory input (the chair we are sitting in when reading, the background noises, the colors of the room around us, etc.). It is also an example of our ability to selectively skirt or omit parts of the schema/script narrative " we jump around at will within the text or document to seek out specific elements and details. In the case of "lost interest" in a novel or literary work, we may reject the narrative because after analyzing its attributes/elements, is fails to match any of our mental models or because, as Gerrig and Allbritton suggest, we have failed to locate the causes of events in the behavior of the characters within a literary plot (382-383). In any event, our schemas and scripts enable us to rapidly respond to various forms of communicated information, whether it is in text or activities observed dynamically in everyday life. We are in a constant state of receiving, interpreting, and responding to information and a mental model (fabula, schema, or script) is a key ingredient in our ability to communicate.

An explanation of how we develop our mental model if provided by Stanley Fish in his paper entitled "Change." Though not specifically identifying it as a cognitive model, Fish stated that we derive our "point of view or way of organizing experience" through membership in an "interpretive community" and that this is how we come by our shared and assumed "distinctions, categories of understanding, relevance and irrelevance" (141). With this concept of an interpretive community he also was able to account for how our mental models are able to change, evolve, and adapt over time. He sees the interpretive community as an "engine of change" (Fish 150) with corporately held agreements, learned concepts and beliefs, and that these beliefs are nested but subject to "challenge and revision under certain circumstances" (Fish 146). The interpretative community and the individuals who comprised it are not static or rigid, but "an assemblage of related beliefs" that are free to interact and transform to alter the entire system (Fish 146). The stimulus for the change may come from outside the community, but the interrelated information within the community allows the change and reinterpretation to take place. The mechanisms at work are not static or stable and do not shut out the world but help organize it in a continuous, ongoing process of checks and balances (Fish 150-152). Fish describes it as "an entirely flexible instrument for organizing contingent experience in a way that does not preclude but renders inevitable its own modification" (151).

We constantly compare and contrast our present experiences to previous experiences to establish continuity and consistency within our own (and our community's) cognitive framework. It is how we derive meaning and make sense of our world. One method we use to make these cognitive connections is by the use of metaphor, a figure of speech in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by the name of another, suggesting some common quality shared by the two. The use of metaphor to create new combinations of ideas is a major feature of poetry, but much of our everyday language is also made up of metaphorical words and phrases. In their essay "Figurative Language and Cognitive Psychology," Howard Pollio, Michael Smith, and Marilyn Pollio show that metaphors are a common occurrence in oral and written language. They cite the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson that indicates that not only our language but our conceptual systems are largely metaphoric in nature and that it is "difficult to conceptualize any domain without using some figurative prototype which serves both to structure and constrain what is thought about in that domain" (Pollio et al. 144). They cite Lakoff's observation that figurative prototypes "are not just another way of expressing a concept " they are the concept as it is lived" (Pollio et al. 144).

Pollio et al. also address the assumption that figurative or symbolic language is deceitful or, at best, an ornament, stating that this is that has a "long history in both philosophy and literary criticism" (144). They cite philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who likens metaphors to "senseless and ambiguous words;" psychoanalyst Sharpe who considers them "a mask for unacceptable urges;" and rhetorical text authors Osborn and Ehninger, who encourage the use of language that "evokes an expected response in the listener" rather than figurative language (qtd. in Pollio et al. 144-145). Others writers that address the subject of clarity and figurative expression are George Orwell in his essay, "Politics and the English Language"; Richard Lanham in his presentation, "Revising Business Prose"; and Carolyn Miller in her article, "A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing." Orwell pleads for greater clarity and complete honesty in our language and maintains that there should be absolutely no intention (deliberate or accidental, through tradition or imitation) to deceive the reader. Orwell claims that political writing has at its base the intent to deliberately mislead and specifically targets the use of stale imagery and dying metaphors as part of the decline of language (2) and he recommends the diligent pursuit of precision, efficiency, clarity, and imagination." In a similar manner, Lanham stresses that writing should address the audience in a clear, direct, and uncluttered manner without euphemism or hiding of responsibility. He encourages the removal of embellishment and excess verbiage from correspondence by using a shorter, first person sentence structure to make communication clearer and more direct. Miller states that the "windowpane theory of language" (a commonly held notion about technical and scientific writing) is that language should "provide a view out into the real world ["] If language is clear, then we see reality accurately; if language is highly decorative or opaque ["] we see with difficulty" (611-612).

While Orwell is primarily addressing the meaning (or the lack or blurring thereof) in written and oral communication, he is not opposed to using original metaphors and discarding stale ones. Orwell dwells on the political and social ramifications and motivations, and the manipulation that is possible when our cognitive processes are deliberately abused. He is essentially encouraging an audience to exercise their mental models, to critically compare and contrast and analyze the communicated message for inconsistencies and to use good metaphor (to the point of providing our own if necessary when an author/speaker does not) to make the cognitive connections that enable understanding. He is an advocate for critical, careful, and conscious interpretation of language. Lanham, on the other hand, concedes that while the bureaucratic style can be deceptive and confusing, it is not necessarily sinister and does not inevitably lead to disastrous results. But he too is condemning the abuse of our mental models when he asks us to take the "lard" out of our language (Lanham 13:49). He is asking us to analyze the content with respect to our fabula in order to discern the events, actors, and outcomes to find and fit the meaning into our mental model(s). Miller also wants to dispel the notion that rhetorical (figurative or persuasive) language is un-communicative or un-scientific or somehow interferes with our perception/conception cognitive models. She reasons that science "is not concerned directly with material things, but with human constructions, with symbols and arguments" (Miller 616). If, as Miller states, "[s]cience is, above all, a communal enterprise" (616), then it requires an audience, which implies observation and the cognitive comparison to and agreement with our mental models.

Pollio et al. cite many sources to illustrate that metaphor and figurative language are imaginative cognitive tools that enable clearer meanings and associations to occur. Rather than adhering to a plain, windowpane style where only exact and precise language allows clear understanding of meaning and they quote Schon's view that the processes involved in figurative language were essential to the development of the new scientific theories of Einstein and Darwin (qtd. in Pollio et al. 146) and Ryle's concession that "when new, the metaphor has heuristic significance" and that "metaphoric expression is unavoidable in philosophical and psychological work" (qtd. in Pollio et al.146-147)." They even agreed with Orwell in their observation that "metaphoric statements should be used with the greatest of care and discarded when of no further value" (Pollio et al. 147). They recognize the heuristic value and cognitive connection of metaphor in its use in creative problem solving. Figurative language is a structured way to make connections and comparisons of the world around us and the world within us through associations and shared concepts. They state, "metaphoric comprehension depends on a higher-order cognitive act based on an initial (logical) evaluation of elements in the figure" of speech (Pollio et al. 155) and that figurative expression involves the transfer between known/familiar and unknown/unfamiliar items (Pollio et al. 161). They view the figurative use of language in communication as an "engaged speaker/thinker attempting to deal with the complexities of his or her experiences in and of the world" (Pollio et al. 162).

The preceding discussion seems to indicate that the application of cognitive processing principles to communication should not result in disagreement regarding the variety of methods available to transmit information that stimulates the author/audience schemata or script relationship. But some scholars believe that there is discord between proponents of cognitive models and those who advocate individuality or creativity in communication. Donald Stewart illustrates that disagreement in his essay "Cognitive Psychologists, Social Constructionists, and Three Nineteenth-Century Advocates of Authentic Voice." Stewart argues that the application of cognitive psychology to composition teaching "devalues the individual and celebrates impersonal institutionalized prose" (280) by encouraging a move from a writer-based (narrative or descriptive) style to a reader-based (expository, argumentative, or persuasive) style. He argues that the writer-based style "can be just as efficient ["] at presenting abstract, difficult concepts" (Stewart 281). He also vehemently disagrees with the notion that the writer-based style is less cognitively sophisticated and maintains that reader based prose is encouraged because it is easier to teach since it merely follows a "blueprint developed decades ago and approved" by the academic community (Stewart 281). He considers writer-based essays to be "more difficult to construct than the usual expository or argumentative papers that college students are constantly assigned" (Stewart 282). He also disagrees with social constructionist scholars (such as Fish) who, he feels devalue the individual at the expense of the discourse community and "lose their identities in collaborative uses of language" (Stewart 283).

Stewart gives the example of the skill F. Scott Fitzgerald used to craft the novel The Great Gatsby in much the same way as Gibson did in his article and as Walter Ong used Ernest Hemingway in his essay "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction." By using these authors as benchmarks, these scholars are stressing the value of creating the narrative voice of the author as storyteller to an audience (fictional or otherwise). This is evident when Stewart states, "the fundamental quality of good writing was the presence of the individual writer" (283). The communicative value comes from audience's cognitive recollections and their identification with the shared cognitive experiences " the continuity, consistency, and comparisons made as part of communicating. In fact, when Ong proposes that we join the lineage of successful writers who have imitated earlier authors who mimicked previous authors who were successful at identifying their audience by mimicking earlier authors and successfully cast their audience in a fictionalized role (11), what he is advocating do is appeal to the cognitive structures that allow us to compare sensory inputs from our environment. Ong's call for imitation of previous narrative styles is method to quickly invoke mental models (the fabulas, schemata, and scripts) to make the associations that enable successful communication.

If we define all forms of communication (language, text, verbal, non-verbal, images, etc.) as sensory input, the association is made even stronger. All of these sensory inputs are the means by which we operate within and interpret our environment. We establish our communication connections with our environment almost immediately. We orient towards visual and auditory stimulus, we perceive (and prefer) human faces and expressions, we associate sounds (words) with objects, we associate symbols with sensations (the stripes on a bee with the pain of a sting). With respect to communication, we are in constant contact with our environment and innately establish relationships, make comparisons, form associations, commit to memory, and make predictions. We understand and make things understandable within and because of our cognitive capabilities " "our internal cognitive processes underlie and explain our mental activity and intelligent behavior" (Haugeland qtd. in Evans, 1991).

Perception is ongoing and is on a continuum between general and specific, and the characteristics of objects are perceived along this continuum. This is how we are able to differentiate between and associate a specific item (a beige office chair with armrests, for example) and the concept of an item (the item we mentally picture when we hear the word "chair"). We absorb an incredible amount of information, cataloguing and cross-referencing it in the formation of our scripts, schemata, and narratives. The constant process of forming associations is part of observation, learning, and existing. We accumulate sensory perceptions and continually process them, forming and reforming associations and building on previous experiences. There may not be any division between perception and conception. We process our observations, we recognize patterns, (cause and effect), we remember events, we recognize when events repeat, and we understand why they don"t repeat.

Our innate predisposition is to receive, interpret, and interact " to communicate " with our world. Our cognitive function allows us to relate to the world and knits together our experience and perceptions. When we define communication as the interaction between the world and ourselves and not merely as language (oral and written), embellishing the cognitive model with philosophical and literary constructs seems unnecessary. But do the arguments put forth in this paper prove that communication is solely cognitive? This still seems unlikely, because even though communication has a very strong cognitive model element that explains the internal processing, I do not believe it adequately explains the imitative social aspect of the structure that enables us to continuously adapt and maintain cognitive relationships that are recognizable to others.

So where does this leave us in explaining how is it possible that we are able to communicate successfully? A possible answer may be found if we look at Ong's suggestion to imitate successful styles and Gibson's recognition that the audience participates within the structure of human experience. These observations suggest that the similarities in communication are associative, imitative, and cognitive. Our communication cognitive mechanism may be the same, but the differences in methods or execution are learned, imitated, or adapted. What we need to recognize is that the communication techniques presented in this paper, such as classical rhetoric or plain style, writer-based or reader-based prose, and the various methodologies developed to explain and improve communication (as it is taught and it is interpreted) all have a distinct North American/European ethnocentric viewpoint. The cognitive approach as outlined in this paper presupposes that we all have the same mental model. Research that illustrates the similarities and differences in how we construct and interpret narratives from a global perspective is needed to study the differences in narrative style across cultures to see if there are patterns or trends or a universal script/schema/fibula that we innately recognize. A cross-cultural examination of the mental models employed in literary and technical discourse, noting the similarities and differences, the history and evolution of the literary styles used in storytelling, and of rhetorical techniques and ornamentation employed in fiction, non-fiction, and technical communication would be a great help in demonstrating and discerning the cognitive elements and learned/imitative aspects of communication. This type of research would have significant influence in determining the most efficient, effective, and recognizable methods to use in the presentation and interpretation of all forms of information in our global interactions.

Works Cited

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