Lesson 1

The root of the word “communication” in Latin is communicare, which means to share, or to
make common. Communication is defined as the process of understanding and sharing
meaning.

Elements of Communication
a. Source
b. Message
c. channel
d. receiver
e. feedback
f. noise

Types of Communication
a. Written
b. oral
c. non verbal
d. computer mediated

Levels of Communication
a. intrapersonal
b. interpersonal
c. social or group
d. mass / public

Models of Communication
a. Linear
b. Interactive
c. Transactional

Theory is an umbrella term for all careful systematic, and self-conscious discussion and
analysis of communication phenomena.

theory is nothing more than a “set of systematic, informed hunches about the way things
work."

- Judee Burgoon

A. Set of Hunches

- element of speculation, or conjecture.

- not just one inspired thought or an isolated idea.

- give some indication of scope. Theory construction involves multiple hunches

B. Informed hunches

- Before developing a theory, there are articles to read, people to talk, actions to observe, or
experiments to run, all of which can cast light on the subject.

C. Hunches are systematic

- theory not only lays multiple ideas, but also specifies the relationships among them.

- connects the dots.

- are clearly drawn so that a pattern emerges.

- tie all of these ideas together into a unified whole.

Images of Theory

1. Theories as Nets

- Karl Popper, Philosopher of Science, said that “theories are nets

cast to catch what we call “the world’.

- the tools of the trade.

- The idea that theories could be woven so tightly that they’d snag everything humans
think, say, or do. The possibility also raises questions about our freedom to choose some
actions and reject others.

2. Theories are Lenses

- The lens imagery highlights the idea that theories shape our perception by focusing
attention on some features of communication while ignoring other features, or at least
pushing them into the background.

- regard what is seen through the lens as so dependent on the theoretical stances of the
viewer that we abandon any attempt to discern what is real or true.

3. Theories as Maps

- The truth they depict may have to do with objective behaviors “out there” or subjective
meanings inside our heads.
- We need to have theory to guide us through unfamiliar territory.

Communication Process

Communication is the relational process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a
response.

1. Messages

- core of the communication study.

- involves “talking and listening, writing and reading, performing, and witnessing, or,
more generally doing anything that involves messages in any medium or situation.

- “text” as a synonym for a message that can be studied regardless of the medium.

Text is a record of a message that can be analyzed by others like book, film, photograph,
or any transcript of recording of a speech or broadcast.

2. Creation of Messages

- the content and form of a text are usually constructed, invented, planned, crafted,
constituted, selected, or adopted by the communicator.

- making a conscious choice of message form and substance.

3. Interpretation of Messages

-Messages do not interpret themselves.

- meaning of the message doesn’t reside in the words that are spoken, written, or acted out.

- Words don’t mean things, people mean things.

- words and other symbols are polysemic – they are open to multiple interpretations.

4. A Relational Process

- “one cannot step into the same river twice.” - Heraclitus

- relational process not only because it takes places between two or more persons, but also it
affects the nature of the connections among those people.
5. Messages that Elicit a Response

- deals with the effect of the messages upon people who receive it.

- If a message fails to stimulate any cognitive, emotional, or behavioral reaction, it seems

pointless.

- the whole situation surrounding the text and context of the message fits the working
definition of communication.

Approaches of Communication Theory

a. Objective Approach

- truth is singular and is accessible through unbiased sensory observation and committed
to uncovering cause-and-effect relationships.

- Even though a theory might sound plausible, we can’t be sure it’s valid until it’s been tested.

*In science, theory and research walk hand in hand.*

b. Interpretive Approach

- linguistic work of assigning meaning or value to communicative texts and assumes that
multiple meanings or truths are possible.

- focus on the complexities of meaning as enacted in symbols, language, and social

Interactions.

Ways of Knowing: Discovering the Truth

"How do we know what we know, if we know it at all?"

This is the central question addressed by a branch of philosophy known as epistemology.

Scientists assume that Truth is singular. They see a single, timeless reality “out there”
that’s not dependent on local conditions.

Scientists consider good theories to be those that are faithful representations of the way the
world really is.

theory of resonance
that meaning is highly interpretive.

Lesson 2: The Seven Traditions of Communication Theory

The Seven Traditions:

1. THE SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL TRADITION

Communication as Interpersonal Interaction and Influence

- tradition epitomizes the scientific or objective perspective describe in the previous module.

- Scholars in this tradition believe there are communication truths that can be discovered by
careful, systematic observation.

- look for cause-effect relationships that will predict the results when people
communicate.

How can I get others to change?

2. THE CYBERNETIC TRADITION

Communication as a System of Information Processing

- MIT scientist Norbert Wiener coined the word cybernetics to describe the field of artificial
intelligence.

- regards communication as the link connecting the separate parts of any system, such as
a computer system, a family system, a media system, or a system of social support.

How does the system work? What could change it? and How can we get the bugs out?

3. THE RHETORICAL TRADITION

Communication as Artful Public Address

- Rhetoric is the art of using all available means of persuasion, focusing on lines of
argument, organization of ideas, language use and delivery in public speaking.

Features that characterize this influential tradition of rhetorical communication:

a. A conviction

- power to lead humanity out of its brutish existence and establish communities with rights of
citizenship.

b. A confidence
- delivered in a democratic forum is a more effective way to solve political problems than rule
by decree or resorting to force.

- the phrase mere rhetoric is a contradiction in terms.

c. A setting

- single speaker attempts to influence multiple listeners through persuasive discourse.

- Effective communication requires audience adaptation.

d. oratorical training

- cornerstone of a leader’s education.

- Speakers learn to deliver strong arguments in powerful voices that carry to the edge of a
crowd.

e. an emphasis

- the power and beauty of language to move people emotionally and stir them to action.

- Rhetoric is more art than science.

f. oral public persuasion

- provinces of males, a key feature of the women’s movement has been the struggle for the
right to speak in public.

4. THE SEMIOTIC TRADITION

Communication as the Process of Sharing Meaning Through Signs

- Semiotics is the study of signs.

- A sign is anything that can stand for something else. Words are also signs, but of a special
kind.

- Symbols are arbitrary words and non-verbal signs that bear no natural connection with the
things they describe.

5. THE SOCIO-CULTURAL TRADITION

Communication as the Creation and Enactment of Social Reality
- that as people talk, they produce and reproduce culture.

- that the process often works the other way around. Our view of reality is strongly shaped by
the language we’ve used since we were infants.

- the structure of a culture’s language shapes what people think and do. The real world is to a
large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. Their theory of
linguistic of relativity counters the assumption that words merely act as neutral vehicles
to carry meaning. - Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity

- Language actually structures our perception of reality.

- is through the process of communication that reality is produced maintained, repaired, and
transformed.

6. THE CRITICAL TRADITION

Communication as a Reflective Challenge to Unjust Discourse

- Culture Industries are entertainment businesses that reproduce the dominant ideology
of a culture and distract people from recognizing unjust distribution of power within society
like films, television, music and advertising.

Three features of contemporary society:

a. the control of language to perpetuate power imbalances.

- Critical theorists condemn any use of words that inhibits emancipation.

b. the role of mass media in dulling sensitivity to repression.

Critical theorists see the culture industries of television, film. Music, and print media as
reproducing the dominant ideology of a culture and distracting people from recognizing
the unjust distribution of power within society.

c. blind reliance on the scientific method and uncritical acceptance of empirical findings.

Critical theorists are suspicious of empirical work that scientists say is ideologically free,
because science is not the value-free pursuit of knowledge that it claims to be.

7. THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL TRADITION

Communication as the Experience of Self and Others through Dialogue

Phenomenology refers to the intentional analysis of everyday life from the standpoint of
the person who is living it.
- tradition places great emphasis on people’s perception and their interpretation of their
own experience.

The problem of course, is that no two people have the same life story. Since we cannot
experience another person’s experience, we tend to talk past each other and then lament,
“Nobody understands what it’s like to be me.”

Why is it so hard to establish and sustain authentic human relationships? And how can this
problem be overcome?

THE ETHICAL TRADITION

Communication as People of Character Interacting in Just and Beneficial Ways

Major streams of thought within ethical tradition:

1. We advocate truthfulness, accuracy, honesty and reason as essential to the integrity of

communication.

- centers on the rightness or wrongness of a communication act regardless of whether it

benefits the people involved.

- Question of obligation: Is it always our duty to be honest?

2. We accept responsibility for the short-and-long-term consequences of our own

communication and expect the same of others.

- concerned with the harm and benefit that results from our words.

- raises the question of outcomes. Will a lie promote well-being or prevent injury?

3. We strive to understand and respect other communicators before evaluating and

responding to their messages.

- focuses on the character of the communicator rather than the act of communication.

- to look at our motives and attitudes.

- Do I seek to be a person of integrity and virtue?

Lesson 1: METAPHORS TO ILLUSTRATE INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

Communication as Bowling
This model sees the bowlers as the sender, who delivers the ball, which is the message. As it
rolls down the lane, (the channel), clutter on the boards (noise) may pins (target audience)
with a predictable effect.

Communication as Ping-Pong

- One party put the conversational ball in play, and the other gets into position to receive.

- Like a verbal or nonverbal message, the ball may appear straightforward yet have a deceptive
spin.

- The other problem is that table tennis is a competitive game – there’s a winner and a loser. In
successful dialogue, both people win.

Communication as Charades

- Like charades, interpersonal communication is a mutual, ongoing process of sending,

receiving, and adapting verbal and nonverbal messages with another person to crate and
alter the images in both our minds.

LESSON 2: SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

- theory of George Herbert Mead.

- thoughts, self-concept, and the wider community we live in are created through
communication – symbolic interaction.

- Without symbolic interaction, humanity as we know it wouldn’t exist.

- term refers to the language and gestures a person uses in anticipation of the way other
will respond.

Meaning: The Construction of Social Reality

Blumer, the chief disciple of Mead, started the premise that humans act toward people or
things on the basis of the meaning they assign to those people or things.

- Facts don’t speak for themselves; it’s our interpretation that counts. And once people
define a situation as real, it’s very real in its consequences.

- For Mead, meaning-making isn’t an individual undertaking. Interpretations are a joint

venture. Interactionists are united in their disdain for deterministic thinking. The closest they
come to the idea of causality is to argue that humans act on their definition of
the situation.
Language: The Source of Meaning

- meaning arises out of the social interaction that people have with others. In other words,
meaning is not inherent in objects; its not pre-existent in a state of nature.

- Meaning is negotiated through the use of language- hence the term symbolic
interactionism.

- Mead believed that symbolic naming is the basis for human society. Interactionists claim
that the extent of knowing is dependent on the extent of naming.

Although language can be prison that confines us, we have the potential to push back the walls
and bars as we master more words.

- Symbolic interaction is not just a means for intelligent expression; it’s also the way we
learn to interpret the world. A symbol is “a stimulus that has a learned meaning and value
for people.”

A symbol conveys messages of how we are to feel about and respond to the object, event,
or person to which it refers.

Thinking: The Process of Taking the Role of the Other

- that an individual’s interpretation of symbols is modified by his or

her own thought processes.

- thinking as an inner conversation. Mead called this inner dialogue minding.

- Minding is the pause that’s reflective. It’s the two-second delay while we mentally rehearse
our next move, test alternatives, anticipate others reactions.

The Self: Reflections in a Looking Glass

According to Mead, the self is an ongoing process combining the “I” and the “me”.

The “I” is the spontaneous, driving force that fosters all that is novel, unpredictable, and
unorganized self.

The “me” is viewed as an object-the image of self-seen in the looking glass of other
people’s reactions.

Lesson 3: Coordinated Management of Meaning (W.Barnett Pearce & Vernon Cronen)

- The first claim of CMM is that our communication creates our social world.

- theory firmly believe that communication is not just a tool for exchanging ideas and
information, it makes ourselves, relationships, organizations, communities, cultures etc.

- For CMM theorists, our social worlds are not something we find or discover. Instead we create
them.

- that communication is a two sided process of stories told and stories lived.

- The second claim is that communication is a two sided process of stories told and stories
lived.

- Stories told are tales we tell to make sense of the world, and the tame the terrors that
go bump in the night.

- making and managing meaning.

- Stories lived are the ongoing patterns of interaction we enact as we seek to mesh our
lives with others around us.

- Third, since CMM claims we create our social worlds through our patterns of
communication, it follows that we get what we make.

- Pearce explains that if your patterns of interaction contain destructive accusations and
reactive anger, you will most likely make a defensive relationship; if your patters contain
genuine questions and curiosity, you will have a better chance of making a more open
relationship.

- Lastly, CMM tells us to get the pattern right, create better outcomes.

- in order to create conversational patterns that will change the social world for the better, we
need to be mindful.

Mindfulness is a presence or awareness of what participants are making in the midst of a

difficult conversation.

- paying less attention to what they are talking about and focusing on what they are doing.

Mindful participants
- They are participant observers willing to step back and look for places in the
conversational flow where they can say or do something that will make the situation better for
everyone involved.

Lesson 4: Expectancy Violations Theory (Judee Burgoon)

Personal Space Expectations

- “invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines that

individual’s preferred distance from others."

- She (Judee) claimed that the size and shape of our personal space depend on our
cultural norms and individual preferences, but our space always reflects a compromise
between the conflicting approach-avoidance needs that we as humans have for affiliation
and privacy.

Core Concepts of EVT

1. Expectancy - what people predict will happen, rather than what they desire.

2. Violation Valence - positive and negative value we place on specific unexpected

behaviors regardless of who does it.

3. Communicator Reward Valence - sum of the positive and negative attributes the person
brings to the encounter plus the potential he or she has to reward or punish in the future.