Research on communication has led to the creation of many models, with the foundation of the communication paradigm being the view of it as a process of transmission, whose fundamental elements are: sender, message, and receiver. This view was characteristic of the authors of communication models conducting their research at the end of the 1940s, such as H. Lasswell and C. Shannon [4]. These schemes are simple and were decidedly more adequate for mass communication than for interpersonal communication. They describe the process of communication as one-way, in which the sender encodes information and transmits it to the receiver, who is to decode it. Over time, subsequent approaches began to include the category of feedback. Later models became even more complex and thus better reflected the essence of communication. In the case of interpersonal communication, the most appropriate is the model of communication, where the roles of sender and receiver are replaced by “communicators,” who simultaneously send, receive, and assign meaning [5]. In other words, the actual course and effects of communication are realized in the interaction between “communicators,” which are influenced by:

• environment (context) meaning not only the specific physical space, but also the potential of personal experiences and the cultural background that participants bring to the conversation,
• noise (external, e.g., the sound of a lawnmower outside the window; physiological, e.g., impaired hearing; and psychological, created by cognitive factors, e.g., the use of the phrase “young lady”), that is, anything that hinders the transmission and reception of messages,
• channel, i.e., the medium that mediates the exchange of messages (e.g., direct conversation or through messengers, messages delivered in writing)[6].

Communication is a transactional and dynamic process (or, in other words, a social practice) occurring between participants through mutual interactions in which individuals use symbols. The symbolic nature of communication is explained by the theoretical perspective known as symbolic interactionism by George Herbert Mead, although the term was coined by his student Herbert Blumer. This orientation places particular emphasis on people’s ability to create symbols and use them for mutual communication. The condition for its effectiveness is the ability of people to agree on the meaning of verbal and body gestures [7]. According to Mead’s concept: “people communicate and interact through ‘reading’ and ‘interpreting’ the gestures of others, i.e., through the symbols they emit. They gain the ability to mutually read each other, to anticipate each other’s reactions, and to mutually adapt. Mead referred to this basic ability as ‘taking the role of the other’ (…). To this day, interactionists place special emphasis on the process of taking the role of the other as the basic mechanism through which interaction occurs” [8]. The problem is that not everyone understands linguistic symbols in the same way. Hence, communication can sometimes be very difficult.

The paradigm of symbolic interactionism is not the only theory explaining the process of communication. For decades, researchers have attempted to describe it, giving it various theoretical frameworks. Their extensive presentation can be found in E. Griffin’s textbook ”Podstawy komunikacji społecznej”[9], in which, alongside the discussed symbolic interactionism, the author distinguishes a number of other concepts (including the coordinated management of meaning by Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen, social penetration by Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor, uncertainty reduction by Charles Berger).

It is worth noting that what people try to achieve by organizing messages depends on the adopted model of communication. The information transfer model (also known as the linear model or action model) assumes that we communicate with others to reach listeners. In this model, communication is a one-way process: the sender encodes a message and sends it via a chosen channel to the receiver, who decodes it. Potential noise may negatively affect the accuracy of message reception. The meaning negotiation model indicates that communication aims to achieve a shared understanding of people, situations, and events. In this model, communication is a circular process, with the sender and receiver alternately taking on these two roles, thanks to the so-called feedback loop. An important element of this type of communication is the fact that each participant brings their own area of meanings to all communication situations, and part of the personal areas of the sender and receiver represents their common area of meaning. The purpose of communication in the persuasive model is to persuade others to accept our point of view or to act as we expect. Persuasion can serve to create common areas of meaning. The assumption of communication as persuasion is that if people share the same system of beliefs and values, they will be able to work together more efficiently. The communication as community model indicates that communication is meant to facilitate coordination among people living in a specific community. This model is considered superior to the three previously described models and the most useful, because it allows us to verify which elements of information transfer, meaning negotiation, or persuasion enable people to coordinate their actions [10].