Traditions of Communication Theory - Personal Competence - Lecture Slides, Slides of Sociology

Download Traditions of Communication Theory - Personal Competence - Lecture Slides and more Slides Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Traditions of Communication Theory • Multiple theories and perspectives will always characterize the field of communication studies. • Lacking a unifying theory, the field can be divided into seven traditions • We will omit one of them , the cybernetic Docsity.com The Semiotic Tradition • …focuses on signs and symbols. Communication is the application of signs to bridge the worlds of individuals • The basic concept unifying this tradition is the sign, sometimes referred to as symbol, defined as a stimulus for designating something other than itself. • Semiotics, exploring the importance of signs and symbols as they are used, is the focus of many communication theories. Docsity.com Stanley Deetz • Knowledge is conscious. • How one relates to a thing determines its meaning for that person. • Language is the vehicle for meaning Docsity.com The process of interpretation is central to most phenomenological thought. • Unlike the semiotic tradition, where interpretation is separate from reality, in the phenomenological tradition interpretation forms what is real for the person. • Interpretation emerges from a hermeneutic circle in which interpreters constantly go back and forth between experience and assigning meaning. Docsity.com Three general schools of thought make up the phenomenological tradition • Classical phenomenology, associated with Edward Husserl the founder of modern phenomenology, is highly objective and claims the world can be experienced, through bracketing, the putting aside of bias without the knower bringing his or her own categories to bear. Docsity.com The Cybernetic Tradition • is a very common approach in the study of communication, the behavioral sciences, and all social sciences at large. It focuses on the individual in social interaction with others as the definition of the communicator. • This tradition emphasizes psychological variables, individual effects, personalities, perception, and cognition. Docsity.com Most of the current work in this tradition • dominated by persuasion and attitude change in communication, accentuating message processing, strategies, reception and effects. • Most theories in this tradition are cognitive in orientation, providing insights into the way human beings process information. Docsity.com The sociopsychological tradition can be divided into three large branches. • Behavioral, associated with a stimulus-response approach, concentrates on how people actually behave in communication situations. • Cognitive, the mental operations used in managing information that leads to behavioral outputs, is much more in vogue today because many see the behavioral as too simplistic. • Communibiology is the study of communication from a biological perspective. Docsity.com Closely related to sociolinguistics • is the work of Luddwig Wittgenstein and his philosophy of language which suggests the meaning of language depends on its actual use. • Language as used in ordinary life is a language game because people follow rules to do things with language. • John Austin refers to the practical use of language as speech acts, the idea that when we speak we are actually performing an act. Docsity.com Ethnography, • the observation of how actual social groups come to build meaning through their linguistic and non-linguistic behaviors, is another perspective within the sociocultural tradition. Docsity.com The Critical Tradition • examines how power, privilege and oppression are the products of certain forms of communication. • While there are several varieties of critical social science, they are all normative and share three essential features… Docsity.com Poststructuralism, another postmodernist impulse, is centered on the study of signs and symbols. • Unlike structuralism, poststructuralism seeks to deconstruct the study of signs rather than generate a unified theory. • It favors a plurality of methodologies and focuses on the instability of meaning in texts. Docsity.com Postcolonial theory refers to the study of all cultures affected by the imperial process. • Feminist studies is another influential area within the critical tradition. It examines, critiques, and challenges the assumptions about and experiences of gender that pervade all aspects of life. Docsity.com