Assumptions about Communication/Cool Hand Luke

[Gerald van Koeverden]

Salinas17 at aol.com wrote:

> Good example.  Actually Old Luke understood what the Boss Man was saying,
> alright.  Those who know the movie know Luke's problem was not understanding.
>  He just didn't care.  He had other intentions.

Luke knew what the Boss Man meant, but he refused to attach the same caring to
those ideas that the Boss Man did.  In effect Luke refused the Boss Man's urging
to share the coupling of a particular idea with the same feelings.  We only feel
we are really communicating with someone when it becomes apparent that we are
both associating the same type of positive or negative feelings or reinforcement
with the same particular subject or idea.

In effect we can say that the Boss Man was successful in the transmision of his
message, and Luke was successful in receiving it.  But overal communication-which
also includes intention-failed because Luke refused to accept its validity.

It's the same in commercials.  The advertiser tries to associate some postive
feelings or reinforcement with the product he is selling.  When this results in a
purchaser buying the product, we say that that communication was successful.
However, if the viewer rejects that association of those particular feelings with
that product, we say that the communication has failed.

gvk