The Composition of Communication Acts
The Composition of Communication Acts

Summary/Abstract: An act of communication, A, may be represented as a system of classes (or sets) with the structure A = (T, X, D), where T, X, and Dare parts of a population P, so that T is not void, X cannot be equal to P, T and X are disjoint classes, and if T is an empty class then D is also empty. T is understood as the class of all addressees of the message, M,sent by E through the act A, X contains those members of the population P which should not receive the message M, while D represents the members of P which has access to the channel used by E during the communication act A and are able to decipher the code or the language used by the sender. The message can be received by any member of D no matter if he is an addressee or not. Any receiver has the possibility to send the message further, becoming a sender of a new act of communication; in this way, two acts of communication are composed. This paper is focused on the properties of the composition of communication acts and on the fashion the composition affects the intention of the sender. For instance,even if the sender wishes to keep the message hide for certain members of P, he has no means to accomplish such a goal since, through successive composites communication acts, the message might reach every element of the population P.

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