Text out of context student exercise. It provides the possibility to communicate in spite of noise. It is the degree of predictability or possibility for metaphor, metonym and inference within a transaction of communication. For example the amount of variance which can exist in handwriting while still maintaining legibility and represent meaning. The fact that we are able to recognise traffic lights in a sketch in the absence of photographic detail implies redundancy within the processes of visual communication.
Redundancy is vital to normal day to day human interaction.
Computer programming languages are like this. If a command is misspelt or used in the wrong way, the program will crash or a syntax error will occur. Feedback or the ability for the receiver of communication to interact with the sender is the mechanism which completes this basic model, but rather than depicting feedback as a simple back looping arrow it is more useful when using the model as an analytical tool, to consider the feedback mechanism in the same detail as the primary communication mechanism. Feedback offers the receiver of communication the possibility to effect rate, quantity, quality of what is received in order to enable better decoding within the scope of redundancy characterising the particular system employed. The following current affairs item is an example of the process in action.