Gravitas

Chapter 2Rethinking the Model of Communication

When it comes to learning a better way to communicate, my experience and subsequent research led me straight back to the ancients. What did the ancient Romans and Greeks know that we don't? What skills did they demonstrate? And what can we bring back to our modern communication today?

Aristotle's Model of Communication

A speaker can no more be eloquent without a large audience than a flute player can perform without a flute.¹

— Cicero

The ancient Romans and Greeks had a perspective on the audience that may appear unusual today — the audience played an active role in communications.

Cicero's quote gives us our first insight into the ancients’ thinking about the role of the audience in communication. In fact, the ancients understood that the audience was as important a part of good communication as the speaker. Whether large or small in size, the audience played a vital role in the effective exchange of ideas.

Aristotle initiated the earliest communication model, which today we call, rather uncreatively, Aristotle's Model of Communication.² Like Cicero, Aristotle advocated, firstly, for the speaker to take the responsibility for managing the communication. But secondly (and importantly), he posited that the audience played a critical role in the communication process.

Aristotle's Model of Communication has five primary elements:

1. speaker
2. speech
3. occasion
4. audience
5. effect.

In essence, Aristotle's model advises speakers to build ...