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3COMMUNICATIONS
RELEVANCE: There is now a daunting amount of communication about communication. aliterature which relates
inter alia
to cybernetics, neurology, linguistics, psychology, socialanthropology, physics, group dynamics, semantics, and the sociology of culture. We must alsoadd library studies and documentations. The librarian is indirectly concerned withcommunication because his collections of material need to be organized for use, and until theyare so organized an important agency in the communication process break down. Theinformation role of the librarian involves him in the world of communications, and that is whystudents should study methods and types of communication. What follow is an outline of somecommunication problems, but I have been particularly concerted to make clear that the sphere of information is a limited one, where as communication is basic to our culture in a different andmore fundamental sense.ANIMAL CONTACTSThe ability to communicate is a key element in culture, and most living things have developedrudimentary methods of communication which include cries, gesture and thumps which expresssimple responses to stimuli such as the mating call, or he alarm signal, or the warning display.The porpoise has apparently gone beyond this stage of development and uses language whichlinguists are trying to decipher. Claims are even made for the domestic fowl, which, according toone authority, possesses an international ‘language’ made up thirty basic sentences. The socialinsects such as thee ants have communications systems, and the bees do their ‘dance ‘to indicatethe location of a new source of nectar.But non-human creatures have not evolved a language in the true sense, and it is this whichin this context distinguishes them for humanity. In the beginning was the word. Apes possessseveral characteristics which are necessary for culture, such as the ability to walk and to usethumbs and vocal cords. In addition, their children mature slowly and they share with man thedubious blessing of a continuous sex urge. Indeed, sexual activity may well be the most basics of all forms of communication. The vast literature of sex probably owes it origins to the fact thatsex relations represent an attempt at total communication, and an escape from isolation. Further more, sexual union exhibits one important characteristic of true communication insofar as it is, or should be, a two way process: to use the current jargon, feed-back occurs.Hence the only valid objection to solitary masturbation as a practice is presumably that itexcludes communication with others. McLuhan’s other wise dubious dictum that the medium isthe message is perhaps most applicable in this sphere. But to return to the animals, they cannot be said to possess true culture because they cannot symbolize, and the essence of human cultureis accumulation-the retention and passing on of cultural manifestations from one generation toanother. The extraordinary cries of birds, for example, can be recorded and even preserved inlibraries, but this, of course, is for our benefit, not theirs.LANGUANGEIt is established, then, that when
homo sapiens
uttered his first words human culture really began, just as the child enters the cultural heritage when it begins to speak. But the original cause of 
 
spoken language is not known. Conflicting theories have been advanced and they are commonlyand seriously known by fanciful names. The ‘bow-wow ‘theory claims that men learnt speech byimitating animal cries. The ‘pooh-pooh ‘ adherents believe that language developed as results of involuntary noises provoked by violent stimuli, in contrast to the ‘ ding-dong ‘ people who propose that men must have imitated all kinds of noises in an onomatopoeic fashion. The ‘yo-ho-ho ‘explanation is that men acquired speech to assist in co-operative labor, just as songs are usedin the same manner today. Finally, other linguists have suggested that the first words were usedto accompany gestures which must have long preceded speech.Whatever the origins, we know that the languages of the world can be classified into familieswhich were produced by the wandering of tribes and peoples. The resultant babble of tongues isone of the most obvious barriers to communication. When our earliest forefathers built the cityand the tower of Babel, the people had one language and were therefore building a truecommunity wherein ‘nothing will be restrained from hem which they have imagined to do‘. Butin developing their isolated city culture they were neglecting their global responsibilities as laiddown, which required that they should be scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth.Accordingly, the Lord said ‘“ Go to, let us go down and there confound their language that theymay not understand one another speech “. So the Lord scattered them aboard…’That was long ago, yet we are still confounded and are likely to remain so. The proposals for an international language (such as Esperanto) ignore cultural realities, particularly the fact thatlanguages are not artificial creations but reflections of a way of life in time and place. Theforeign language barrier is, of course, a great obstacle to all forms of internationalcommunication, and is felt so particularly in the field of scientific research where speed of communication is important. There is in consequence a bibliographical problem with which weare not concerned here. What is more relevant to our theme is the fact that obvious foreignlanguage barriers may be less dangerous than the other divisive elements in culture mentionedelsewhere. In most countries people officially speak or write the same language as each other, but the
use
of language may vary so much that communication fails. Groups in on country oftenhave more in common with groups in another country than with their compatriots, in spite of thelanguage complications. PICTURESAfter the invention of language the next step was the development of their ability to produce pictures to correspond with a thing described in words. Those symbols which literallyrepresented things pictorially are called pictograms, whereas what is called ideogrammaticwriting used symbols which indicate by association. The ancient Egyptian hieroglyphiccontained both forms, and the Chinese language to this day is based on the dual principle. Suchmethods of writing have the advantage that they are ‘international ‘, in the sense that algebra or chemical formulae or musical scores are, but the corresponding disadvantage is that there is nolink with words. It is an entirely visual medium and those who used it had to learn two‘language ‘ which were not all related. Modern scholars can decipher early pictorial languages, but they do not know what they sounded like when ‘read ‘aloud. If visual communication hadremained pictorial, written languages would have remained separate from spoken languages andthe latter would have succumbed to a proliferation of dialect and jargon. That is what happenedin China.THE ALPHABET
 
The Egyptians’ hieroglyphics included some sign which represented sound, but they did notdevelop a phonetic linear alphabet. This was the achievement of the Phoenicians, who produceda practical alphabet, the main limitation of which was that it contained no vowels. Modernsemitic languages such as Hebrew also have this characteristic. The final development that of  providing vowels was carried out by the Greeks, ad the alphabet had by that time becomesubstantially what it is now. Usage in the western world was fixed by the Romans, who wrotehorizontally from left to right in descending lines and used the letters which we still use.PRINTINGThe fourth stage in the evolution of media was the invention in the fifteenth century of printingfrom moveable type. It has remained the main medium of visual communication for the last 500years. Its significance is to well known to warrant description. It is because of printing that therepository role of the library became so important, librarian is to make communication possible.In our time the mass media of communication are to some extent modifying the role of print, andthis is discussed in the next chapter.MYTHS, SYMBOLS AND IMAGESSo far we have discussing what is mainly
rational 
communication involving the conscious levelsof the mind. There remain those regions where people communicate by means which involveother faculties and other types of perception. Some of these are still a matter for conjecture anddispute, so that I shall omit telepathic communication or psychic phenomena such as messagesfrom beyond the grave or from supernatural beings. In any event, these are not normallyconsidered to be part of a librarian’s responsibility. It is however impossible to ignore the factthat, even though language or print may be used, messages are sometimes conveyed by indirectmeans, often in order to try to express the inexpressible. Thus the literary artist will use word toreflect a multiplicity of human experiences which has many meanings. This incorporates both heaesthetics sphere and the technique of suggestion used by the advertiser and the propagandist.ORAL SOCIETIESPre-literate communications were oral, and when human memory is the cultural connecting link we invariably find it impossible to distinguish between history and legend. Indeed historywithout written records is myth (unless it can be substantiated by precise archaelogical research);who knows whether King Arthur ever did ride to Camelot? Having noted this is should be addedthat many myths have been explained in other ways without reference to history; they have beenvariously described as parables, allegories and early scientific theories. Freud, basing his theoryon the remarkable similarity of content in the myth and folk tales of the worlds, and on hisanalysis of individuals, claimed that myth are thinly disguised representations fantasies commonto all mankind. Jung carried his theory further with his concept of the collective or racial of unconscious, which lies below the personal unconscious, and beyond this yet again the deepestlevels common to all humanity. For him the collective unconscious is the deposit of ancestralexperience for millions years, and he calls certain themes which recur in dreams and inmythology ‘ archetypes ‘. The postulation of a collective unconscious seems to suggest thatcertain ‘ ideas ‘ may be inherited, and it is not one which scientist will normally accept, butJung’s work has been influential and much of his terminology has passed into our culture.The Preacher, then, apparently overstated his case when he asserted that ‘ There is noremembrance of the former generations, neither shall there be any remembrance of the latter 
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