What is Communication?

• What, if any, communication is occurring?
• Who is communicating with whom?

Define Communication

• Paradox of fuzzy foundations
• The basic concepts are often the most difficult to define
• Issues
  • Intention: selected attention to your receiver, not the surroundings. Therefore, looking at the consequences. Perhaps consequences > intention.
  • Meaning (interpretation) – gestural
  • Between persons
  • An action or a process

Objective: undistorted by emotion or personal bias; based on observable phenomena; “an objective appraisal”; “objective evidence”

Interpretive: attempt to interpret; give suggestions

Quantitative offer stats/ways for scientists to test theories – Experiments and Surveys

Qualitative aids the interpretive scholar’s search for meanings – Textual analysis and ethnography
Objective vs. Interpretive: Three key differences

Epistemology: ways of knowing

• Objective scholars:
  • Truth is singular
  • Reality accessible through senses – see, touch, fee, etc…
  • Good theories reflect nature – good theories are a mirror of what is happening in the world.
• Interpretive scholars:
  • Small –t truth
  • Truth is subjective
  • Knower cannot be separated from the known
  • Multiple meanings – how you view things is not the same as others
  • human nature

Determinism vs. Free Will

• Objective Scholars:
  • “Things happen for a reason.” Interpretative behavior is governed by reason.
  • People influenced by 1) Heredity and 2) Environment.
  • The more we know about you, the more we can predict how you will be.
• Interpretive Scholars:
• The two are always in contention.

Methods

• Quantitative
  • Experiments
    • Used to study cause and effect relationships.
  • Surveys
    • Used to gather a variety of information about how we think and feel.
    • Quantifiable because you can count the average.
• Qualitative
  • Textual Analysis
  • Ethnography
    • Form of participant observation, understanding the webs of meaning within a culture and a subculture. Mostly used by anthropologists. Ethnographical communications typically involves ppl who aren’t so very far away (e.g. people in a store, shop, theatre, etc..)
• They look for meaning within a culture, not a count.

Critical Theorists

• Generally align with Interpretive Scholars
• Free Will
• Subjective epistemology and qualitative methods
• PLUS, theorize from position of oppressed.

Primary Goal for Each Approach

• Objective Scholars –> Accuracy
• Interpretive Scholars –> Understanding
• Critical Theorists –> Emancipation.

Socio-Psychological Tradition

• Casual view of communication
• X –> Y
  • Your personality affects how you communicate
  • Quality of message affects your response

Phenomenological Tradition

• experience of everyday life
• Person’s own interpretations
• Authenticity
• Dialogue