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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Blackwell Foundations of Communication Theory Series
- Sprache: Englisch
Discover the fundamentals of human communication with this comprehensive and insightful resource
Written in four sections, The Work and Workings of Human Communication identifies the underlying fundamentals that make our communication distinctively human. These fundamentals are the common ground that tie together the many topics and subject matters covered by the study and discipline of communication. They are also the basis of the unique contribution of the communication discipline to the social sciences.
Professor, researcher and theorist Robert E. Sanders starts by focusing on what is unique about human communication and moves on to an examination of the complexities of scientific inquiry in the social sciences in general and in the communication discipline specifically. At the heart of the matter is the fact that humans are thinking beings who can make choices and therefore are not entirely predictable. This points towards new topics and questions that are likely to arise as the discipline evolves.
Sanders' approach leads to recognition of the fact that communication is at the center of how humans build our ways of life and participate together. By focusing on the underlying fundamentals that give rise to the discipline's topics and subject areas, The Work and Workings of Human Communication encourages students to engage in independent thought about what they want to contribute by:
- Emphasizing the importance of communication in creating, sustaining or changing—and participating in—our ways of life on an interpersonal level and on a societal level
- Recognizing that human communication is inherently collaborative; people affect situations by interacting with others, not acting on others
- Explaining the history, current agendas and possible future of the social science side of the Communication discipline
A perfect resource for new graduate students in introductory communication courses who have an interest in the social science side of the discipline, The Work and Workings of Human Communication is also highly valuable for undergraduate communication and liberal arts students who don't possess a background in the discipline.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Foundations of Communication Theory
Series Editor
Marshall Scott Poole (University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana)
Editorial Board
James Aune (Texas A&M University); Robert T. Craig (University of Colorado at Boulder); Leah Lievrouw (University of California Los Angeles); Alan Rubin (Kent State University, Emeritus); David Seibold (University of California Santa Barbara)
The Foundations of Communication Theory series publishes innovative textbooks that summarize and integrate theory and research for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses. In addition to offering state-of-the-art overviews in a broad array of subfields, authors are encouraged to make original contributions to advance the conversation within the discipline. Written by senior scholars and theorists, these books will provide unique insight and new perspectives on the core sub-disciplinary fields in communication scholarship and teaching today.
Published
Health Communication Theory by Teresa L. Thompson and Peter J. Schulz
Organizational Change: Creating Change Through Strategic Communication, Second Edition by Laurie K. Lewis
Theorizing Crisis Communication, by Timothy L. Sellnow, Matthew W. Seeger
Forthcoming
Theorizing Crisis Communication, Second Edition by Timothy L. Sellnow and Matthew W. Seeger
Robert E. Sanders
Professor Emeritus of CommunicationUniversity at Albany, SUNYAlbany, New York
The Work and Workings of Human Communication
This edition first published 2021
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
The right of Robert E. Sanders to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sanders, Robert E, 1944- author.
Title: The work and workings of human communication / Robert E Sanders.
Description: Hoboken : John Wiley & Sons, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020043062 (print) | LCCN 2020043063 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119706489 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119706526 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119706533 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Communication--Study and teaching (Higher) | Communication in social work--Study and teaching (Higher)
Classification: LCC P91.3 .S26 2021 (print) | LCC P91.3 (ebook) | DDC 302.2072--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043062
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043063
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Acknowledgments
In working out some key parts of this book, I have received very helpful feedback from several colleagues that helped me make things clearer, and, I hope, more palatable. In alphabetical order, they are: Joseph Bonito, François Cooren, Daena Goldsmith, Alan Hansen, Teresa Harrison, Kristine Muñoz, Anita Pomerantz, and Alan Zemel. I’m similarly indebted to anonymous reviewers who drew my attention to issues I had to address to ensure that this book resonates with thinking in the Communication discipline. Finally, I’m indebted to Scott Poole, editor of this series, for his support of this book, and his careful read of the final draft, which caught important details that needed attention.
Table of Contents
Cover
Series page
Title page
Copyright
Preface
Communication Matters
This Book’s Approach
This Book’s Topics and Focus
Benefits to Students
The Main Fundamentals of Human Communication
Communication among Us Humans vs Communication among Other Creatures
Our Subject Matter
Our Discipline on the Social Science Side
Overview of Contents
Section One: Preliminaries
Chapter 1: Communication Among Animate Creatures, Especially Us Humans
1.1 Incentivizing Communication
1.2 Benefits (and Harms) that Communication Brings about
1.3 Incentivizing Re/actors’ Attention to Communication
1.4 The Inherent Uncertainty before the Fact of What Communication Will Bring about
1.5 How We Humans Make Our Communication Work, or Work Better
1.5.1 The Communicator’s Role in Making Communication Work
1.5.2 The Re/actor’s Role in Making Communication Work
1.6 Human Communication as a Subject Matter within the Social Sciences
1.6.1 The Distinct Communication Part that Our Discipline Studies
1.6.2 The Boundary between Communicating and Other Conduct
1.7 A Sampling of Research on the “Communication Part”
1.7.1 Research on Communicative Items Produced in Re/action to Exigent Conditions
1.7.2 Research on Communicative Items and the Actual Results They Bring about
1.7.3 Research on the Doing of Communication
1.7.4 A Focus on the Communication Part across Open-Endedly-Many Topics
Chapter 2: The Overall Effectiveness of Human Communication
2.1 Finding Evidence of the Effectiveness of Human Communication
2.1.1 Impressions of Ineffectiveness
2.1.2 Impressions of Effectiveness
2.1.3 The Impossibility of Getting Direct Evidence of Communicator Effectiveness
2.1.4 The Soundness of Indirect Evidence of Effectiveness
2.2 A Sample of Indirect Evidence of the Overall Effectiveness of Human Communication
2.2.1 The Communicative Achievement of a Mundane Event
2.2.2 The Communicative Infrastructure Underlying a Mundane Event
2.2.3 The Communicative Infrastructure Underlying Everything Else
Reprise of Section One and Overture to Section Two
Section Two: Fundamentals of Human Communication
Chapter 3: Human-Made Environments We Create and Participate in Communicatively
3.1 Dual Human-Made Environments
3.1.1 The Motion-Action Distinction
3.1.2 A Modified Body-Mind Dualism
3.2 The Material Environment and Its Objective Realities
3.3 The Interpreted Environment and Its Subjective Realities
3.3.1 The Reality of Subjective Realities
3.3.2 Communication of, and About, Subjective Realities
3.3.3 From Private Subjective Realities to Shared Intersubjective Realities
3.3.4 The Tie between Objective and Subjective Realities: Searle’s Version
3.3.5 The Tie between Objective and Subjective Realities: Garfinkel’s Version
3.3.6 Our Discipline’s Focus on Communication of and About Subjective Realities
3.3.7 The Focus of Other Social Sciences on Subjective Realities
3.3.8 Subjective Realities in Our Lives and Our Communication
Chapter 4: Our Expressive Means and Communication Media
4.1 Our Expressive Means Are Unrestrictive
4.2 Our Communication Media Are Unrestrictive
4.3 Our Expressive Means Unavoidably Communicate Subjective Realities
4.3.1 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Language, Culture, and Cognition
4.3.2 General Semantics: Language, Reality and Unreality
4.4 Our Communication Media Unavoidably Communicate Subjective Realities
4.4.1 The Medium of Writing: Plato on Its Evils
4.4.2 The Medium of Writing: Walter Ong on Its Cultural and Intellectual Impact
4.4.3 Mass Media vs Internet: Habermas on Dialogue and Democracy
Chapter 5: Making Communication Work in the Human-Made Environment
5.1 Effortless Ways the Probability Is Increased of Bringing about a Targeted Re/action
5.1.1 Structures
5.1.2 Roles
5.1.3 Norms
5.1.4 Conventionalized Practices and Formulas
5.1.5 Shared Knowledge and/or Experience (Education) Re: Tasks and Activities
5.2 Effortful Ways of Increasing the Probability of Bringing about a Targeted Re/action
5.2.1 Components of Audience Research and Analysis and Their Application
5.2.2 Methodological Contingencies in Audience Research
5.2.3 Audience Analysis in a Digital Age
5.2.4 A Case Study of Mishandling Audience Research and Analysis
Reprise of Section Two and Overture to Section Three
Section Three: The Communication Discipline and Its Place in the Social Sciences
Chapter 6: The Communication Discipline’s Foundation and Evolution
6.1 The Discipline’s Roots as Self-Contained and Independent
6.2 The Modern Discipline’s Expanding Scope
6.3 The Tradition of Communicator-Centrism and the Linear Model
6.4 From Monologic to Dialogic: The Collaborative Model
6.4.1 Collaboration in the Doing of Communication
6.4.1.1 Overt vs De Facto Collaboration
6.4.1.2 The Collaborative Model in Ostensibly Monological Situations
6.4.1.3 Communicator-Centrism in Actually Dialogical Situations
6.4.2 Collaboration on the Actual Results of Communication
6.4.2.1 Collaboration on Re/actions among Masses of People
6.4.2.2 The Collaborative Basis of Human-Made Interpreted Environments
6.4.2.3 Collaboration On and Through Linkages Among Multiple Communicative Episodes
Chapter 7: The Communication Discipline’s Subject Areas
7.1 The Present: Studying Communication as It Affects People’s Interests and Undertakings
7.1.1 The US Discipline’s Two Main Professional Associations: NCA and ICA
7.1.2 Fifty-Seven Subject Area Divisions Across the NCA and ICA (Ca. 2017)
7.1.3 Common Ground Across Our Subject Area Divisions
7.1.4 A Rationale for the Discipline’s Current Subject Area Divisions
7.2 The Future: Studying Communication as the Engine of the Human-Made Environment
7.2.1 The Relevance of What We Already Study to the Discipline’s Possible Future
7.2.2 A New Specialization in Research and Theory: Reverse Engineering
7.2.3 A New Subject Area: The Linking of Independent Communicative Episodes
Chapter 8: Positioning the Communication Discipline Among the Social Sciences
8.1 The Minority Position: Communication is an Interdisciplinary Subject Matter
8.1.1 The Case against Studying Communication in Any One Discipline
8.1.2 Four Reasons Why an Interdisciplinary Approach Is Inadequate
8.1.2.1 Reason One: Communication-Specific Proficiencies and Skills are Variable
8.1.2.2 Reason Two: Discordant Extra-Communicative Influences Have to Be Reconciled
8.1.2.3 Reason Three: Extra-Communicative Influences Cannot Be Fully Determinate
8.1.2.4 Reason Four: Communication Produces What Other Social Sciences Study
8.2 The Majority Position: The Communication Discipline Is an Independent Social Science
8.2.1 Past Efforts to Formulate Our Discipline’s Identity and Mission
8.2.1.1 Formulations Sponsored by the Association of Communication Administrators
8.2.1.2 A Formulation Published by the National Communication Association
8.2.2 The Elusiveness of the Communication Part
8.3 Our Discipline’s Identity and Mission Presently vs in a Possible Future
8.3.1 Our Discipline’s Identity and Mission Presently
8.3.2 Our Discipline’s Identity and Mission in a Possible Future
Reprise of Section Three and Overture to Section Four
Section Four:Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences and in Communication
Chapter 9: The Practice of Scientific Inquiry in General
9.1 The Human Face of Scientific Inquiry
9.1.1 Personal Expertise
9.1.2 The Discovery Process
9.1.3 Scientific Communities
9.1.4 Normal Science and Paradigm Shifts in Scientific Communities
9.1.5 The Practical Need for Scientific Communities
9.1.6 The Epistemological Necessity of Scientific Communities
9.2 The Presumption of Orderliness on Which All Scientific Inquiry Rests
9.3 Fact and Theory
Chapter 10: Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences
10.1 Social Science vs Physical Science
10.2. The Problematics of Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences
10.3 Qualitative vs Quantitative Research and Analysis
10.3.1 The Detachment –Neutrality Problem in Social Science Inquiry
10.3.2 Methodological Issues that Divide the Qualitative and Quantitative Sides
10.3.2.1 Concerns about Quantitative Research and Analysis from the Qualitative Side
10.3.2.2 Concerns about Qualitative Research and Analysis from the Quantitative Side
10.3.3 The Scientific Community’s Role in Ensuring Sound Research and Theory
10.3.4 Orderliness Found via Qualitative Research and Analysis
10.3.4.1 Orderliness in an Action Sequence
10.3.4.2 Orderliness in the Cultural Valuation of Speaking
10.3.5 Orderliness Found via Quantitative Research and Analysis
10.3.5.1 Orderliness in the Geographical Variation of an Interpersonal Action
10.3.5.2 Orderliness in the Covariation of Communication Practices and Marital Stability
10.3.6 Orderliness Found via Quantitative Plus Qualitative Research and Analysis
10.4 The Critical Side vs the Scientific Side of the Social Sciences
Chapter 11: Social Scientific Inquiry in the Communication Discipline
11.1 The Problematics of Social Scientific Inquiry in the Communication Discipline
11.2 Two Reasons Why the Discipline’s Proliferation of Subject Matters May Be “Natural”
11.2.1 The Discipline’s Subject Matter Spans Open-Endedly-Many Phenomena
11.2.2 The Discipline’s Culture Favors a Proliferation of Subject Matters
11.3 Groundwork Already Laid for the Coalescence of Our Research and Theory
11.3.1 Theories Related to Exigences that Incentivize the Doing of Communication
11.3.2 Theories about the Results that Communication Brings about
11.3.3 Theories Related to the Doing of Communication
11.4 The Coalescence of Our Research and Theory in a Possible Future
Reprise of Section Four and This Book
Bibliography
Index
Guide
Cover
Series page
Title page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Preface
Begin Reading
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1 Research on Communicative Items Produced in Re/action to Exigent Condi...
Table 1.2 Research on Communicative Items and the Actual Results They Bring about.
Table 1.3 Research on the Doing of Communication.
Chapter 7
Table 7.1 Subject Area Divisions in Which Exigences that Incentivize Communicati...
Table 7.2 Subject Area Divisions in Which Actual Results of Communication Are St...
Tables 7.3a–7.3c Subject Area Divisions in Which the Doing of Communicatio...
Table 7.3a Expressive Means and Communication Media.
Table 7.3b Instruction/Pedagogy/Practice.
Table 7.3c Norms and Regulation.
Table 7.4 Caucuses and Interest Groups.
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Preface
Communication Matters
This Book’s Approach
This Book’s Topics and Focus
Benefits to Students
The Main Fundamentals of Human Communication
Communication among Us Humans vs Communicationamong Other Creatures
Our Subject Matter
Our Discipline on the Social Science Side
Overview of Contents
Communication Matters
In simpler times, children reacted defiantly to others’ mean words by chanting “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Defiant though that may be, it is patently wrong. Otherwise why react at all, let alone defiantly? Words matter, communication matters, in so many ways that we are still discovering what they are. Few would dispute this, and yet there is a mystery to it. How does that work? Communication after all is mainly done by producing benign sensory phenomena – among us humans, mainly auditory (e.g. speech) and visual (e.g. gestures, images, print). So why should any such thing matter? The basic reason it does is clear, the details of how this works are not (yet).
The basic reason such benign sensory phenomena matter rests on the attention we invariably give to others’ actions, whether directly present or mediated, which we detect through the senses and mentally process. Others’ actions affect the state of the situation we are in – they define it, affirm it, or change it. On that basis, it matters when someone produces interpretable sounds and sights, benign sensory phenomena though those are, because they add up to an action that affects the state of the situation. And we are usually incentivized to do something about it when someone affects the state of the situation we are in, no matter how momentous or mundane the situation is. Moreover, what action was done depends on what specific sounds and sights were produced or encountered just then. This applies not only to interpersonal situations, but to the cultural, organizational, political, and societal situations in which people find themselves – across the spectrum from momentous (a news report of a public health crisis) to mundane (a friend’s criticism of a movie you liked). It is with the knowledge that this is so that people go to the trouble of producing those specific sounds and sights, and attending to them.
That faces us with the question of how this works, for animate creatures in general, and us humans in particular – that specific vocalizations, gestures, etc. in a specific medium and context can affect the state of a situation about which others would then do some specific thing. How it works is a particularly difficult question to answer when it comes to human communication, as this book details. It is a question that calls for scientific inquiry, and it is for the social science side of the Communication discipline to answer it.
This Book’s Approach
The usual way of introducing students to the social science side of the Communication discipline is to survey the topics, concepts, theories, and findings in our major subject areas. And there is value in that. Good surveys are informative about the variety and richness of the work we do. But there is a downside. Surveys conceal that there are underlying fundamentals of human communication that cut across those many subject areas, and what they are. These fundamentals are what make our incentives to communicate, our doing of communication, and theresults our communication brings about, distinctively human. They give direction to the questions we ask and topics we address. And they are the glue that binds our many subject areas and research topics together within a single discipline.
And so this book takes a different approach. Rather than a survey, it focuses attention on those fundamentals of human communication; it identifies the main ones, and their upshot for research and theory. Attention to underlying fundamentals clarifies our discipline’s identity and mission, and the common ground among the many subject areas the discipline comprises. It also clarifies our discipline’s position and distinct contribution among the other social sciences. In addition, based on attention to these fundamentals, this book includes a projection of new topics and questions that await us, ones that open new doors for research and theory, and enhance our discipline’s contribution among the other social sciences.
It should be kept in mind that scientific inquiry about the work and workings of human communication is a prominent side of the Communication discipline, but not the whole; there is a humanistic, particularly a critical, side. The common thread on all sides of the discipline is the axiom that communication matters. There is also a common interest in what the empirical realities are. But on the social science side, the main concern is how our communication does matter, how it does work, and is made to work, to bring about the results it does, for good or ill. The focus is on what incentivizes it, what its actual results are, and what specifics of expressive means and communication media make certain results more probable.
On the other side(s) of the discipline, especially the critical side, the concern is how our communication should and should not matter, and should and should not work. One focus is on how people can go about doing communication to bring about positive results – to enable and engage in dialogue, to be reasoned, ethical, etc. Sometimes this is based on a contrast with how people do go about this. Another focus is on the role of communication in the lives of people, groups, and communities, studied through a critical lens on what the empirical realities are. Much attention is given to issues of social justice that are created or remediated through communication – especially the inequities and disenfranchisements of individuals, groups, and communities, but also their empowerment – and what specifics of expressive means and communication media bolster the positives or exacerbate the harms of communication.
The focus of this book on the social science side of the Communication discipline does not dispute the soundness of the interests and concerns of colleagues on the other side(s) of the discipline. But it does not address them either, except where they intersect the social science side. They do intersect when it comes to developing our knowledge of what the empirical realities are of human-made environments, and of the role of communication in creating, sustaining, or changing them. Even so, the social science side is an intellectual enterprise that stands on its own. This book brings the intellectual underpinnings of that enterprise and its subject matter to the surface, and from there, what distinct contribution we make among the other social sciences.
This Book’s Topics and Focus
This book interweaves two main topics. One topic is the work and workings of human communication that make it a fit subject for scientific inquiry within an independent discipline, the Communication discipline. The other topic is the history, current agendas, and possible future interests of the social science side of our discipline. The book concludes with attention to how social science inquiry goes about being scientific, and then how our discipline does. This requires special attention because in studying the actions of people, we are studying the actions of self-driving, self-regulating beings – intelligent beings with agency – whose orderliness lies below the empirical surface, and whose predictability is therefore contingent, at best a matter of probabilities. It further complicates matters that we social scientists (and academics in general) are ourselves beings of the kind we study, making the achievement of scientific detachment a particularly thorny matter. This book assumes that such detachment is possible; probably not by individuals at a time, but at least by scientific communities over time.
The main objective in writing this book was to create a resource for socializing and professionalizing graduate students who are headed for a career on the social science side of the Communication discipline – whether a career as a researcher or theorist, or (along with students on other side(s) of the discipline) scholar, teacher, trainer, or professional communicator. The book can be used as a main text, optionally supplemented by primary readings on selected topics; or it can be used in conjunction with more traditional textbooks. In addition, the book’s treatment of the work and workings of human communication, and how the Communication discipline has undertaken to examine those, can support the interests of advanced undergraduate students who have elected to concentrate their studies on communication.
Besides the students for whom this book was written, it may have value to academics and professionals in other social sciences in its formulation of the distinct contribution the Communication discipline makes to their own discipline and the other social sciences. And it may also be of interest to those of our colleagues around the world who do not share the US perspective on the discipline’s history and scope that is adopted in this book. They may find that the book affords them ways to better link their own interests and perspective on the work and workings of human communication to those of colleagues in the US.
Benefits to Students
Focusing on the fundamentals of human communication benefits students in several ways, and through them our discipline. First and foremost, unlike books which present a survey of research and theory in the discipline, this book is not a compendium of summaries and reports of current thinking. Much of this book is based on what those underlying fundamentals are, as inferred from what we have found out so far about the work and workings of human communication. And much is based on extrapolations from those underlying fundamentals to claims and questions about human communication that invite more attention in our research and theory than they have gotten so far. Accordingly, this book invites discussion and debate about what those fundamentals are and their upshot for research and theory, and with that, new issues and topics for research and theory, as befits advanced students and their professors.
A second, related, benefit is that those fundamentals of human communication provide students with a lens through which to independently, critically, study and assimilate specific empirical and theoretical work they encounter within their chosen subject areas. And to find useful links to work of interest being done in other subject areas and other disciplines. Cultivating such independence of thought is essential for every aspiring professional in our discipline, whether headed to a career as a researcher, theorist, scholar, teacher, trainer, and/or practitioner.
Third, focusing on underlying fundamentals provides a context and rationale for the questions we ask, the work we do, and our findings, that can be applied to specifics in each of our discipline’s subject areas. A word of caution here: this book does not directly or uniformly adopt the concepts and terminology, or provide a survey, of work being done in specific subject areas. It is up to students and professors who work within specific areas to make the connection between these fundamentals and the specifics of their work and interests. However, there are hints about such connections in Chapter 1, in the groupings there of recently published research in two leading journals; and in Chapter 7, in the groupings there of the subject area divisions within our two most prominent professional associations in the US.
A fourth benefit is that focusing on underlying fundamentals counters the potential for a silo effect in advanced study, research and theory. A silo effect is a natural result of becoming expert in a specialization, where we let the narrow focus of the work and interests within our own subject area blind us to what ties our own and other subject areas together within a single discipline. The silo effect breeds disinterest in the relevance and value of other work, and thus is something that should be countered. This would be countered by a recognition that other work in the discipline, along with one’s own, all arise from the same underlying fundamentals of human communication.
A fifth benefit is that focusing on those underlying fundamentals engenders a scientifically detached perspective on our subject matter and our own engagement in studying it. It brings to the forefront the basic question of how communication among us humans works, and from there, we can turn to the questions we have mainly been asking – about what work our communication does to affect (for good or ill) the undertakings and interests of specific (types) of people in specific contexts.
We are thus led to take a step back from whatever personal and professional interests we each have in the workings of communication, and recognize that the questions we have been asking are really about one or another of the open-endedly-many ways our highly versatile, adaptable, and powerful communication affects the practical, cognitive, and social conditions and needs of our very complicated species (basic research). And from there to recognize that shedding light on such matters enriches our study of how to make our communication work, or work better, which is important to us as members of that species (applied research).
The Main Fundamentals of Human Communication
Our research and theory emanate from THE HUMAN-MADE ENVIRONMENTS FUNDAMENTAL of human communication:
Unlike other creatures whose communication aids their survival and propagation in the natural environment they occupy, our communication has the power/value/importance it does primarily in human-made environments; it creates and sustains them, and enables our participation in them.
Human-made environments are malleable and evolving. They consist of the ways of life we have created that link us together and make us interdependent (from families to communities to workplaces to services to government); and consist also of the technologies and infrastructures we have invented that support our ways of life (from transportation to the electrical grid to food supply to communications).
In such environments, it is not fixed or finite, but rather open-ended and variable in any instance, ■ what will incentivize people to communicate, ■ what will be communicated or communicated about, ■ with what result in specific contexts under specific conditions among specific people. We thus have to consider what that requires of our expressive means and our communication media. The primary requirement is that they be unrestrictive of what we communicate, and communicate about, how, to whom, when, where – and they are.
Unlike those of other creatures, our primary expressive means, language, is unrestrictive of what exigences we can react to and what communicative reaction(s) we can make to them. That unrestrictiveness is enhanced by additional expressive means: some are natural ones, such as vocal and bodily expression; and others we have invented, such as personal adornments, music, photography and video. Also unlike other creatures, we have alternatives of communication media – many of which we have invented – that collectively are unrestrictive of how transient or enduring, how private or public, how narrowly or broadly directed, our communication is. THE UNRESTRICTIVE FUNDAMENTAL of human communication, then, is that:
We have expressive means and communication media that do not limit what we can communicate, or communicate about, how, to whom, when and where. This unrestrictiveness of our expressive means and communication media is suited to communication in the human-made environment, and makes human communication distinctively human.
The unrestrictiveness of our expressive means and communication media has benefits, but adds complexities. The benefit of this unrestrictiveness is that there are no limits on what we communicate, and communicate about, as is necessary for communication in our malleable and evolving human-made environments.
But this unrestrictiveness gives rise to a complexity that is also distinctive of human communication, THE ALTERNATIVES FUNDAMENTAL:
The unrestrictiveness of our expressive means and communication media makes it possible for us humans to produce alternative configurations of substance, expressive means, and communication media in reaction to the same exigence, and/or when the same result is targeted.
The complication this creates is that in each instance, these alternatives may not be equally well suited to the context and the other people involved. They thus may not equally well address the incentivizing exigence, and may bring about different results than the targeted one. Add to this that people are intelligent beings with agency – self-driving and self-regulating – and thus can always opt to communicate in a way and react in a way (with substance, expressive means, and/or communication medium) that may or may not be the expected way.
This gives rise to THE INHERENT UNCERTAINTY FUNDAMENTAL of human communication:
It is inherently uncertain among us humans, in each instance probable at best, (a) which exigent condition will be communicatively reacted to; (b) with what specifics of substance, expressive means, and communication medium; (c) that will bring about what result.
This inherent uncertainty would make our communication a much more chaotic phenomenon than it is, were it not for the fact that people are intelligent beings, and as such can, and have, found ways to make it orderly. As elaborated in Chapter 5, we have two main ways of overcoming that inherent uncertainty. One is by having evolved standardized ways of communicatively bringing about a specific result – general ones, and ones specific to families, groups, cultures, professions, workplaces, tasks and activities, etc. The other, when those standardized ways do not apply, is by making a special effort in the doing of communication to fit it to the specific circumstance, and in that way to overcome that uncertainty. This brings us to THE “STUDY AND REFLECT” FUNDAMENTAL of human communication:
People have the intellectual ability to – and moreover it is a practical necessity to – study and reflect on how our communication works, and find both personal and shared ways of making it work, or work better. Our discipline owes its existence to this.
It is therefore a matter of scientific interest (basic research) and practical interest (applied research) that people can/do go about the doing of communication when exigent conditions incentivize them to do so, in such a way as increases the probability of mitigating or resolving that exigence by bringing about their targeted result. This creates scientific interest in micro-level configurations of substance, expressive means and communication medium in relation to an incentivizing exigence that people utilize to bring about a targeted result. Generally, the incentivizing exigences and the targeted results in question are ones that serve people’s interests and undertakings, from important ones (e.g. a jury’s deliberations that target reaching agreement on a verdict) to mundane ones (e.g. texting between friends that targets selecting a restaurant they will dine in together). Also, given that inherent uncertainty, it is of scientific interest what regularities there are in the actual results of communication – not so much its results in specific instances, but more macro-level results in particular domains of social life, many brought about through mass media (e.g. cultural identity, civic engagement, attitudes and beliefs, power and authority, etc.). These interests overlap, but often are addressed separately.
Communication among Us Humans vs Communication among Other Creatures
It is a recurring theme in this book that human communication is distinctively human, different in kind from the communication of other creatures. This is not one more attempt to justify a claim that humankind has a special place above all the other creatures who inhabit our planet. The goal here is an empirical and a methodological one – to capture what is distinctively human about human communication and merits scientific attention, that we might overlook because we are each so immersed in it in our everyday lives. This is done by examining our communication as it compares to that of other creatures. This does not require much close attention to the communication of other creatures, nor is that what this book is about; just enough to provide touchstones that make clear the ways human communication is distinctively human – regarding what incentivizes it, what results it brings about, its expressive means, and its communication media.
At the same time, we should recognize that there are some overt commonalities between human communication and communication among other creatures. Perhaps the most basic one is that like all creatures, we only engage in communicating when it is incentivized, when there is a need or use for it. For all creatures, what incentivizes communicating, and what results it brings about, serve the practical needs of individuals, groups and communities, and the species. Among more highly evolved creatures, especially us humans, it also serves our cognitive and social needs. And because the emotional needs of us humans, and perhaps other highly evolved creatures, are generally coupled with practical, cognitive, or social needs, communication indirectly serves those needs as well.
Among other creatures, those incentives to communicate and those results are tied to the constants of their biology and the natural environment they occupy; accordingly, they are fixed and finite, and uniform across individuals (or subgroups of individuals, such as males and females). But among us humans, the one transcendent constant of our human-made environments is that they are malleable and evolving. Consequently, what incentivizes our communication and results from it are also malleable and evolving (over time, across people and situations). Moreover, they vary among individuals and communities; and across individuals and communities there are open-endedly-many incentives to communicate and open-endedly-many results it brings about. And yet people must and often do find ways to effectively communicate across such variations and socio-cultural boundaries. This is what makes the work and workings of human communication a matter of particular scientific interest.
Our Subject Matter
Although the word “communication” is in constant use everywhere, it is neither self-evident nor simple how to formulate what it refers to, and what it is that we study, when we say our subject matter is communication, let alone human communication. Nor is it self-evident and simple how to distinguish our subject matter from the subject matters of the other social sciences in which human communication has a vital role (psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, etc.). This book overall provides an extended answer. In this Preface, the answer is abbreviated.
First, however, it should be recognized that besides the substantive difficulty involved in formulating what our subject matter is, there is a semantic one. In everyday language and for all practical purposes, “express something” and “communicate something” are conflated (e.g. “They expressed their interest” and “They communicated their interest” are often understood as equivalents). But those are not necessarily equivalent. It is one thing to consider what is expressed and how it is expressed. It is another thing to consider what difference it makes, to whom, that that was expressed at all, in that way, in that communication medium, in that context, just then. The former is about interpretation, the latter about our subject matter, “communication.” Expressing something may or may not have a communicative value, depending on whether expressing that affects the situation and thus it matters – whether it creates or addresses an exigent condition or targets a particular result.
Hence, fields of study that examine the basis for the interpretation of what is expressed (e.g. semantics, language pragmatics, semiotics) shed no light on whether it has communicative value, and if so, what its communicative value is, and the basis for it. However, the distinction is not usually apparent or needed in the phenomena we study. It is rare for people to express something that does not have communicative value (is irrelevant, or beside the point, e.g. a non sequitur). This is because in general people only express something that is incentivized by and addresses an exigent condition, and/or targets a result, and therefore it matters. How that works is our subject matter; it is what the Communication discipline is dedicated to finding out.
Keeping in mind the semantic hurdle that lies in the way of formulating what our subject matter is, consider now the substantive one: for purposes of scientific inquiry, “communication” does not refer to a singular phenomenon. There are three phenomena we study that are all within the purview of our discipline – they are two sides of a coin, and the coin itself.
On one side of the coin, communication is a type of conduct that has a dedicated communicative functionality. It is conduct that involves producing a communicative item in which details of substance, expressive means, and communication medium are combined in particular ways. Through the specific ways such details are combined, we draw others’ attention to events, conditions, opportunities or dangers about which it is in their interest to do something. In that way, we non-invasively act on or interact with others by communicatively defining, affirming or changing the situation. It is of scientific interest what uniformities there are in how people go about this. But while there are considerable uniformities, it has to be recognized that people vary in their experience and proficiency in engaging in communicative conduct, across situations and across persons. It is of interest what variations this creates in how people go about communicating, relative to the people involved and the situation, and what difference they make.
On the other side of the coin, communication is a presence or factor in our lives that forms, sustains and changes situations, and more broadly, the human-made environments we occupy, our coordination of effort in them, our relations with others, etc. It is of interest what can come about, or has come about, in relationships, groups, communities, organizations, and societal institutions (e.g. education, health care, business, politics) through the distribution of communicative items narrowly or broadly, at a time in a place, or across time and place.
These two phenomena – the conduct we engage in, and what that conduct brings about – are two sides of the coin we study. This brings our attention to the coin itself. For that, the metaphor of communication as a complex “tool” is helpful. The communication “tool” is the kind of tool that has an array of different components that can be affixed to it alternately that change what work the tool can do, or what effect the tool can have. As a simple example, a power drill can use different bits of different sizes to make holes in different materials that have different uses. In the case of the communication “tool,” it guides and constrains the configuration of its main components – the specifics of substance, expressive means, communication medium – as will address an incentivizing exigence or bring about a targeted result. Mistakes are made when the wrong components or a wrong combination are adopted to bring about some result.
When we study the conduct involved in the doing of communication, we are studying the operation of this “tool.” When we study what communication brings about, we are studying the effects, applications or functions of this “tool.” When we study the configurable components of the communication people engage in and their interdependence – what people must know to engage in such conduct competently and effectively – we are studying how the “tool” works.
As is true of any such complex tool, operation of the communication “tool” requires knowledge, experience, and proficiency about what alternative components there are and what difference it makes which component is used, or which mix of components is needed for the task at hand. There are alternative substantive matters, and alternative details, to draw from; there are alternatives of expressive means that vary in their coherence, clarity, bias, emotionality; and there are alternative media (speech and gesture, either in monologue or dialogue, in person or an online meeting; writing, on paper or in email; visual aids). Moreover, these three (substance, expressive means, medium) are mutually constraining. Different language specifics are called for in speech than in writing; different media and different expressive means are called for depending on the details of substance, etc.
Hence, we can miscalculate when we are operating the communication “tool” regarding the specifics of the components we assemble, and end up with a misfire or failure. But our “tool” enables us to revise the specifics of the components we assemble, and retry – within the limits of opportunity, ability, and motivation. It is small wonder that much of this has been standardized in such groupings of people as families, communities, and organizations; but sometimes it has to be figured out in situ.
It is therefore not surprising that we humans are the only creatures who reflect on and study the workings of communication (the “tool”), and search for ways of making it work, or work better, both generally and in specific instances. It is a practical necessity. And it starts in infancy. Infants begin trying to operate the communication “tool” even before they become linguistic, and it seems that it is their struggles with the communication “tool” that energizes their acquisition of language. By the time they are five years old, some children (most?) are capable of artfulness in operating the “tool,” but it seems such artfulness begins to emerge well before that.
Our Discipline on the Social Science Side
One of this book’s main objectives is to delineate what distinct contribution to knowledge the social science side of our discipline stands to make among the other social sciences. This too is neither simple nor self-evident. There are overlaps in what we study and what other social sciences study. And yet, a separate Communication discipline exists, with its own intellectual history, its own professional associations, often in separate academic units. There is a reason for this.
We have a distinct subject matter. We study the specifics of the communication that people produce and process as they engage each other in activities and tasks, and what incentivizes those and what results from them. This constitutes the communication part of what takes place between people, as distinct from the extra-communicative parts of what takes place that are studied in other social sciences (the psychological, sociological, cultural, economic, political/civic and other such parts).
The communication part is the difference that specifics of substance, expressive means, and communication medium make to what communication brings about, to its mattering.
Many writers from outside the US (and some within) regard the emergence of a social science focused on the study of the communication part of what takes place between people, especially its effects, as dating from the advent of mass media. This is because communication through these media is societally consequential in an unprecedented way, on a different scale, than it can be through other media. And it is true that the social science side of the discipline did emerge at about that time, around World War II. However, it was not just because of the advent of mass media. The doing of communication had already been of intellectual, and in a sense scientific, interest for centuries. It started in ancient Greece as far as we know, then in Europe and the US precisely because of its societal consequentiality. In the US, the social science side of our discipline that focuses on the doing of communication evolved as much or more from that traditional interest than from the advent of mass media, preserving its emphasis on the interests and undertakings of communicators that are served by the doing of communication.
Regardless of which origin story one favors, in the US the social science side of our discipline was fully emergent by the late 1960s. And it was the social science side of the discipline that led us to greatly broaden the scope of our discipline’s studies beyond the traditional concerns we inherited – producing influential communication in the public sphere. We (academics) now take into account many exigences that incentivize communication which we once disregarded, and many more results of communication than originally concerned us – interpersonal, communal, commercial, workplace/organizational, societal/political/civic ones, etc.
We should therefore not be surprised at the current diversity and breadth of our discipline’s topics and subject areas. But across that diversity and breadth, our discipline’s subject areas and topics can be grouped around three main research agendas. These agendas are often referred to in many of our discipline’s texts as the study of “message production” (the doing); the study of “message effects” (the results); and the study of “message variables” (the configurable elements of substance, expressive means and communication media – the communication “tool”).
However, while the term “message” comes readily to hand across the discipline and in everyday speech, it is avoided in this book for being technically imprecise and empirically biased. It is technically imprecise in that it is sometimes used to refer to the main “thought” or “want” or information being communicated, and sometimes to the full text (or other such communicative artifact) that communicates it. Second, the term “message” is empirically biased towards a language-centered, information-centered conceptualization of communication, whereas there is much communication that this does not capture. It does not capture the communication work done by other expressive means besides language, for example the emotional nuances communicated by the musical accompaniment and visual design of a televised advertisement or a film. And it does not capture that when people communicate, they often do something more, or different, than communicate a “message.” It is often the action we do by communicating that matters, and only secondarily the information (the “message”) we make known in doing so.
For example, an invitation to lunch does more than just communicate the “message” (=thought/want/information) that the communicator wants to have lunch with the recipient. The invitation is also an action – a behavior that is done for the sake of what it may bring about. And it is as an action (not just a “message”) that the invitation changes the situation. It makes it incumbent on the recipient to do something about it – to react – usually through such reciprocal actions as accepting or declining the invitation or proposing an alternative.
Accordingly, the term “message” has been replaced in this book by the term“communicative item” – a neutral term that refers to any artifact a communicator produces that is detectable through the senses and has a dedicated communication function. This artifact is a display or emission that is detectable by and meaningful to others of the species (vocalizations, bodily movements and displays, touches, smells and other emissions). A communicative item is a “package” made up of its substance, its expressive means, and its communication medium. Communicative items may be simple (a single vocalization or movement) or compound (of many parts) and complex (structured); e.g. a bird’s mating dance; a televised advertisement.
Communicative items either call others’ attention to an exigence in the environment (are informative), or call attention to the items themselves as an exigence (are actions), to which others are likely to react in such a way as will mitigate or resolve it. It is therefore a matter for researchers to find out what work a communicative item is doing, rather than to prejudge it by referring to it (and tacitly classifying it) as a “message.” Similarly, it is a matter for communicators, and those with whom they communicate, to understand what work a communicative item is doing in that context just then.
Using the term “communicative item,” then, our three main agendas are to find out:
what exigent conditions incentivize producing communicative items, comprising what specifics of substance, expressive means, and communication medium;
what results communicative items, comprising what specifics of substance, expressive means, and communication medium, actually bring about – what cognitions or affects, actions, further communication, and/or interpretations;
what configurations of the elements of communicative items – substance, expressive means and communication medium – are suited to, or regularly adopted to, mitigate or resolve an exigent condition and/or bring about a targeted result.
These agendas certainly overlap, in that attention to the specifics of communicative items is involved in all of them – the communication part of what takes place between people – but they differ in focus and emphasis. Respectively, they undertake to find and account for orderliness in what incentivizes the doing of communication, in the results communication brings about, and in the ways the specifics of communicative items are configurable in principle, and are configured in practice.
Overview of Contents
Despite the richness and variety of current thinking and research, this book does not cite much current work, for three reasons. One is that this book is not a survey – it was written to shed light on the fundamentals of human communication that underlie current work – and so specific publications that are cited are mainly work that is foundational or illustrative. Second, it is better left to students and professors to supplement this book with selected current publications suited to their program’s curriculum and their professional goals. And third, as long as human communication works the way it currently does, this book is not in danger of becoming dated.
In addition to this Preface, the book consists of eleven chapters in four sections. The first two sections focus on the work and workings of human communication. The third and fourth sections focus on the social science side of the Communication discipline, and how it goes about studying the various phenomena tied to the work and workings of communication.
The first section (Chapters 1–2) sets the stage by calling attention to observable aspects of our communication that set it apart from the communication of other creatures. Chapter 1 focuses on what is distinctively human about human communication, creating a detached starting point for basic research on how our communication works, and the work it does for us as individuals and as a species. This also sheds light on the role of applied research that serves our practical interests, as members of that species, in how to make our communication work, or work better. Chapter 2 provides evidence of the overall effectiveness of our communication despite the complexities of engaging in it and making it work, which is also evidence that we have ways of overcoming the inherent uncertainty of what our communication will bring about in each instance.
The second section (Chapters 3–5) then provides an exposition of the underlying fundamentals of human communication. Chapter 3 provides an overview of our human-made environments, and the conditions in them that incentivize our communication and result from it. Chapter 4 provides an overview of the ways in which our expressive means and communication media are suited to the doing of communication in our human-made environments. And Chapter 5 identifies the main ways in which the complexity and power of our expressive means and communication media are harnessed so as to prevent the effort of operating the communication “tool” and engaging in communication from being so labor-intensive that it overwhelms us.
The third section (Chapters 6–8) addresses the topics and questions of our discipline that arise from those fundamentals, and then our discipline’s place among the other social sciences. Chapter 6 traces the broadening of the communicative phenomena we study, from the narrowness of phenomena that were originally studied in ancient Greece, to the far broader range of phenomena the discipline currently studies. But the main focus of the chapter is the evolution of our thinking in recent times from a Linear Model to a Collaborative Model of how our communication works and is made to work. Chapter 7 provides a synopsis of the discipline’s current range of subareas and topics as captured by the subject area divisions of the two most prominent professional associations in the US. The chapter ends with the proposal of a substantive path forward. Chapter 8 addresses the relationship between the Communication discipline and other social sciences, focusing on the distinct contribution the Communication discipline makes, contrary to a minority position that our work is derivative from and subservient to the interests of other disciplines.
The fourth section (Chapters 9–11) addresses the fundamentals of scientific inquiry in general, in the social sciences, and in our discipline. Chapter 9 focuses on what makes an inquiry scientific in a broad enough way that applies to both the physical sciences and social sciences. This includes a consideration of the human side of scientific inquiry, the importance of attention to the actualities of what occurs and what exists around us, and most of all, the central goal of all scientific inquiry: to find out and explain the orderliness of what occurs and what exists in the world around us, both the natural one (physical science) and the human-made one (social science). Chapter 10 focuses on what differentiates the social sciences from the physical sciences. The core difference is that the social sciences focus on the actions of an intelligent (self-driving, self-regulating) being with agency, as opposed to the focus of the physical sciences on the behavior of inanimate matter. Accordingly, how scientific the social sciences can be depends on if, and how, we can find and account for orderliness in the actions of an intelligent being. The two sides of the qualitative-quantitative divide in the social sciences offer alternative solutions to that problem. Chapter 11 focuses on scientific inquiry in the Communication discipline. This returns to substantive concerns about our subject matter, and where orderliness may be found in the communication part of what takes place between people. Starting with concerns that have been voiced about the dispersion of our research and theory away from a center, there is consideration of whether this is an unavoidable outgrowth of the open-endedness of the phenomena we study and the discipline’s intellectual culture. The chapter goes on to consider that instead, the groundwork for the coalescence of our research and theory around a center has already been laid. And that it may coalesce further around new issues that arise from examining communication as enabling and cohering the human-made environments we occupy together.
Section One Preliminaries
1. Communication Among Animate Creatures, Especially Us Humans
