Audience Language

The next phase of the project, (hopefully there is a method to this madness) directs me toward exploring language. What is language? What is Communication? How do we communicate? One definition of language I found appealing is “a system of communication with its own set of conventions or special words,” system of communication being the key element. Communication I found is simply an exchange of information, knowledge, gathered facts, or data. How we communicate this information is, I feel, most important. Context of use plays a big role. The final outcome of this project is going to be a static informative visual representation that communicates to an audience, and how that audience or user perceives this information is where the communication lies. This is where most of my frustration lies, because essentially I feel as if I only get one chance to communicate the game of soccer to an audience. So how do I know what language my audience speaks? And when is it my place to make assumptions or educated guesses about my audience? WHO IS MY AUDIENCE? I think it’s fair to make an educated guess here and assume my audience is English speaking people who are interested in learning how to play soccer in the most simplified and informative way possible.

I have discovered through research that my problem lies within Ambiguity. Ambiguity is a situation in which something can be understood in more than one way and it is not clear which meaning is intended. This is directly related to my Audience, when referring to soccer, will they understand Goalie, Goal keeper, or simply Defender? This is where the educated guess comes into play. A brief overview of Ambiguity and its relation to this project:

• Classification systems are built upon the foundation of language, and language is ambiguous: words are capable of being understood in more than one way.
  
• This ambiguity results in a shaky foundation for our classification system. (Soccer)
  
• When we use words as labels for our categories, we run the risk that users will miss our meaning. (Rosenfeld & Morville pg.52)