Concept
field of experience
The area where two participants’ accumulated experiences overlap: communication is easy only there. In textbooks, the name for Schramm’s two circles.
Schramm’s 1954 drawing consists of two circles. The circles stand for the accumulated experience of two people; the source can encode only as much as its own experience allows and the destination can decode only as much as its own experience allows. If the circles overlap in a large area, communication is easy; if the overlap is small, it is hard; if there is no overlap, it is impossible. Schramm’s examples: someone who has never learned Russian cannot communicate in that language; someone who has never seen an aeroplane may take it for a large bird.
The name “field of experience” is common in textbooks (also in Turkish Wikipedia), but in his 1954 text Schramm speaks of “accumulated experience” and in his 1971 text of a “frame of reference”, that is, a “fund of usable experience”. The importance of the concept is that it shows meaning to be built in the participants and not in the signs: the same message means different things to two people with different experience.
The way to enlarge the overlap is to choose signs close to the other person’s experience and to use examples and analogies.
Example
A banker telling a ten-year-old nephew “the transfer will reach the account tomorrow” by saying “money will come into your pocket tomorrow”. (Hypothetical example.)