Aristotle’s Model of Communication

Aristotle Model is mainly focused on speaker and speech. It can be broadly divided into 5 primary elements: Speaker, Speech, Occasion, Audience and Effect.

The Aristotle’s communication model is revolves around the speaker as the main concept of this theory is that, speaker plays the most important role in communication and it is the only one who holds the responsibility to influence his/her audience through public speaking. It is the speaker’s role to deliver a speech to the audience. The audience is passive, influenced by the speech. This makes the communication process one way, from speaker to receiver.

The speaker must organize and prepare his/her speech beforehand, according to the target audience and situation (occasion).

Even if the model is speaker oriented and focuses on audience interaction in communication, there is no concept of feedbacks.

For instance, a politician (speaker) gives a speech to get votes from the civilians (audience) at the time of election (occasion). The civilians only vote if they are influenced by the things the politician says in his speech so the content must be very impressive to influence the mass and the speaker must design the message very carefully.

The speech must be clear as well as the speaker must have a very good non-verbal communication with the audience like eye contact. This example is a classic case of Aristotle Model of Communication depicting all the elements in the model.

Critical Elements of a Good Communicator

Aristotle has given 3 elements that must be present in a good communicator or public speaker. These elements are related to each other and they reinforce the other elements.

Criticisms of Aristotle’s Model of Communication

There are few criticisms around this model. Some of them are

• There is no concept of feedback, it is one way from speaker to audience.
• There is no concept of communication failure like noise and barriers.
• This model can only be used in public speaking.