Introduction to Communication Theory

What is communication?

The root of the word is “mun” COMMUNICATION

What is communication? The root of the word is “mun” COMMUNICATION Related terms include:

What is communication? The root of the word is “mun” COMMUNICATION Related terms include: Mundane, municipality, communion, common, mean, meaning, immunity, mutual, le monde, el mundo

What is communication? The root of the word is “mun” COMMUNICATION “Mun” words refer to our dealings with “the world”

What is communication? COMMUNICATION

What is communication? COMMUNICATION is “With-worlding”

What is communication? Communication is involved in all the ways people make and engage in “worlds” together.

What is communication? We are “thrown” into an already meaningful world/reality, and we use language and other symbols to understand, maintain, repair, and sometimes transform that social reality.

What is Theory?

Root of the word is related to the ancient Greek word for informed seeing.

What is Theory? Root of the word is related to the ancient Greek word for informed seeing. The original “theorists” were people paid by the city to travel to distant places, witness the rituals and customs of other cultures, and report back on their experiences.

What is Theory? We use the word today to refer to scientific or academic worldviews or models (e.g., the theory of evolution, or the wave theory of light).

What is Theory? In our class, we’ll argue that everyday people use implicit theories all the time to help attend to the world and coordinate action.

What is Theory? In our class, we’ll argue that everyday people use implicit theories all the time to help attend to the world. Theories, in this sense, are implicit cultural scripts that enable action (but always contain limits and blind spots).

What is Theory? Theories are like lenses that allow you to focus on this, but not that.

What is Theory? Theories are like lenses that allow you to focus on this, but not that. As with the original meaning, they are ways of seeing.

What is communication? COMMUNICATION is “With-worlding”

What is this thing?

Theory as a Way of Seeing

The meaningfulness of a thing is determined by our way of seeing, which is shaped by our specific project.

Theory as a Way of Seeing Theory helps us direct our attention to what matters in the situation and enables us to act.

Theory as a Way of Seeing Theory helps us direct our attention to what matters in the situation and enables us to act. Our theories, however, always contain blind spots and cover alternatives.

Theory as a Way of Seeing Key question for communicative ethics: Can people together build the theories they need to solve collective problems?

What is Ethics?

The origin of the word is related to the Greek term ethos

What is Ethics? The origin of the word is related to the Greek term ethos meaning (originally) a dwelling place, a way of being, the characteristic “stamp” one puts on what he or she does.

What is Ethics? In most ancient cultures, ethics were determined purely by custom. If a stranger asked why you do things as you do, most one would simply say that this is how our parents and their parents before them did it…

What is Ethics? Philosophy is born when people attempt to answer the stranger’s question in a way that goes beyond mere custom.

What is Ethics? And a specifically communicative ethics emerges with the question of how to “with-world” with those strangers. It asks basic (and advanced) questions about how to make good decisions and build just worlds with others.

Core concepts in Communicative Ethics Encounter: how do I engage ethically with the other in everyday situations Obligation: in what way does the other demand something of me (recognition, care, action)? Indeterminacy: can I proceed despite at times not having fixed stars or an absolute sense of the true and the right? Judgment: what situations call on me to make a decision and what resources can I use to judge? Intersubjectivity: in what what is the self and outcome of interaction and how can we build better, healthier interaction styles?