Communication and the Human Condition

Communication and the Human Condition PDF Author: W. Barnett Pearce
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809314126
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Starting with the premise that we live in communication (rather than standing outside communication and using it for secondary purposes), Pearce claims that people who live in various cultures and historical epochs not only communicate differently but experience different ways of being human because they communicate differently. This century, he notes, ushered in the "communication revolution," the discovery that communication is far more important and central to the human condition than ever before realized. Essential to the communication revolution is the recognition that multiple forms of discourse exist in contemporary human society. Further, these forms of discourse are not benign; they comprise alternative ways of being human. Thus communication theory must encompass all that it "means to live a life, the shape of social institutions and cultural traditions, the pragmatics of social action, and the poetics of social order."

Communication and the Human Condition

Communication and the Human Condition PDF Author: W. Barnett Pearce
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809314126
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book Here

Book Description
Starting with the premise that we live in communication (rather than standing outside communication and using it for secondary purposes), Pearce claims that people who live in various cultures and historical epochs not only communicate differently but experience different ways of being human because they communicate differently. This century, he notes, ushered in the "communication revolution," the discovery that communication is far more important and central to the human condition than ever before realized. Essential to the communication revolution is the recognition that multiple forms of discourse exist in contemporary human society. Further, these forms of discourse are not benign; they comprise alternative ways of being human. Thus communication theory must encompass all that it "means to live a life, the shape of social institutions and cultural traditions, the pragmatics of social action, and the poetics of social order."

The Illness Narratives

The Illness Narratives PDF Author: Arthur Kleinman
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 154167460X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
From one of America's most celebrated psychiatrists, the book that has taught generations of healers why healing the sick is about more than just diagnosing their illness. Modern medicine treats sick patients like broken machines -- figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their way. But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones. It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring. Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.

Media Ecology

Media Ecology PDF Author: Lance Strate
Publisher: Understanding Media Ecology
ISBN: 9781433131226
Category : Mass media
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition provides a long-awaited and much anticipated introduction to media ecology, a field of inquiry defined as the study of media as environments. Lance Strate presents a clear and concise explanation of an intellectual tradition concerned with much more than understanding media, but rather with understanding the conditions that shape us as human beings, drive human history, and determine the prospects for our survival as a species. Much more than a summary, this book represents a new synthesis that moves the field forward in a manner that is both unique and unprecedented, and simultaneously grounded in an unparalleled grasp of media ecology's intellectual foundations and its relation to other disciplines. Taking as its subject matter "life, the universe, and everything," Strate describes the field as interdisciplinary and communication-centered, provides a detailed explication of McLuhan's famous aphorism, "the medium is the message," and explains that the human condition can only be understood in the context of our biophysical, technological, and symbolic environments. Strate provides an in-depth examination of media ecology's four key terms: medium, which is defined in much broader terms than in other fields; bias, which refers to tendencies inherent in materials and methods; effects, which are best understood via the Aristotelian notion of formal causality and contemporary systems theory; and environment, which includes the distinctions between the oral, chirographic, typographic, and electronic media environments. A chapter on tools serves as a guide to further media ecological research and scholarship. This book is well suited for graduate and undergraduate courses on communication theory and philosophy.

Origins of Human Communication

Origins of Human Communication PDF Author: Michael Tomasello
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262515202
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
A leading expert on evolution and communication presents an empirically based theory of the evolutionary origins of human communication that challenges the dominant Chomskian view. Human communication is grounded in fundamentally cooperative, even shared, intentions. In this original and provocative account of the evolutionary origins of human communication, Michael Tomasello connects the fundamentally cooperative structure of human communication (initially discovered by Paul Grice) to the especially cooperative structure of human (as opposed to other primate) social interaction. Tomasello argues that human cooperative communication rests on a psychological infrastructure of shared intentionality (joint attention, common ground), evolved originally for collaboration and culture more generally. The basic motives of the infrastructure are helping and sharing: humans communicate to request help, inform others of things helpfully, and share attitudes as a way of bonding within the cultural group. These cooperative motives each created different functional pressures for conventionalizing grammatical constructions. Requesting help in the immediate you-and-me and here-and-now, for example, required very little grammar, but informing and sharing required increasingly complex grammatical devices. Drawing on empirical research into gestural and vocal communication by great apes and human infants (much of it conducted by his own research team), Tomasello argues further that humans' cooperative communication emerged first in the natural gestures of pointing and pantomiming. Conventional communication, first gestural and then vocal, evolved only after humans already possessed these natural gestures and their shared intentionality infrastructure along with skills of cultural learning for creating and passing along jointly understood communicative conventions. Challenging the Chomskian view that linguistic knowledge is innate, Tomasello proposes instead that the most fundamental aspects of uniquely human communication are biological adaptations for cooperative social interaction in general and that the purely linguistic dimensions of human communication are cultural conventions and constructions created by and passed along within particular cultural groups.

Essentials of Human Communication

Essentials of Human Communication PDF Author: Joseph A. DeVito
Publisher: Pearson Higher Ed
ISBN: 0205930808
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
A brief text with a strong focus on skill development Essentials of Human Communication shows how human communication skills apply to the real-world and the workplace. The text presents the fundamental skills of interpersonal, small group, and public communication while emphasizing human communication skills, cultural awareness, listening, critical thinking, ethics, and social media communication. MyCommunicationLab is an integral part of the DeVito program. Key learning applications include MediaShare, an eText, and a study plan. A better teaching and learning experience This program will provide a better teaching and learning experience–for you and your students. Here’s how: Personalize Learning— MyCommunicationLab is online learning. MyCommunicationLab engages students through personalized learning and helps instructors from course preparation to delivery and assessment. Improve Critical Thinking— Critical thinking principles are integrated into the text and in the marginal questions, self-tests, and boxes. Engage Students—Real-world examples appear throughout the text. Apply Ethics—Real-life ethical issues are discussed. Support Instructors— A full set of supplements, including MyCommunicationLab, provides instructors with all the resources and support they need. Note: MyCommunicationLab does not come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase MyCommunicationLab, please visit: www.mycommunicationlab.com or you can purchase a ValuePack of the text + MyCommunicationLab (at no additional cost): ValuePack ISBN-10: 0205940889 / ValuePack ISBN-13: 9780205940882.

Human Communication Theory and Research

Human Communication Theory and Research PDF Author: Robert L. Heath
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135677050
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Human Communication Theory and Research introduces students to the growing body of theory and research in communication, demonstrating the integration between the communication efforts of interpersonal, organizational, and mediated settings. This second edition builds from the foundation of the original volume to demonstrate the rich array of theories, theoretical connections, and research findings that drive the communication discipline. Robert L. Heath and Jennings Bryant have added a chapter on new communication technologies and have increased depth throughout the volume, particularly in the areas of social meaning, critical theory and cultural studies, and organizational communication. The chapters herein are arranged to provide insight into the breadth of studies unique to communication, acknowledging along the way the contributions of researchers from psychology, political science, and sociology. Heath and Bryant chart developments and linkages within and between ways of looking at communication. The volume establishes an orientation for the social scientific study of communication, discussing principles of research, and outlining the requirements for the development and evaluation of theories. Appropriate for use in communication theory courses at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level, this text offers students insights to understanding the issues and possible answers to the question of what communication is in all forms and contexts.

Transformative Communication Studies

Transformative Communication Studies PDF Author: Omar Swartz
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1906221901
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary collection of essays charts intersections between communication/cultural studies and a variety of emergent emancipatory and liberatory discourses. Every essay attempts, in one way or another, to speak to the following questions: What would a theory of liberation look like that is premised on a communication view of the world? How would such a view expand and even redefine our understanding of liberation? Finally, how would such a view enlarge our understanding of what is collectively, communally, and organizationally possible? In other words, the chapters articulate what can be loosely considered a humanist theory of communication and praxis. The goal is to move beyond discourses of liberation that are grounded in essentionalist assumptions and to move the conversation toward an engaged criticism on cultural and social levels that facilitates and encourages progressive action.This edited collection, thus, has as its goal a theory of human liberation grounded in communication as a resource for social and spiritual transformation. The chapters comprise a mix of conceptual and applied studies that interrogate the communicative practices that naturalize our hierarchical world, reifying and stultifying our moral and political imaginations. As an antidote to this problem, the contributors consider the importance of uncertainly and contingency in the development of human potential.Rather than fearing uncertainty and contingency and allowing that fear to control us, contributors argue that we should find within these conditions the source of our humanity and the strength to question and resist unjust social reifications. When we do this, we will rediscover the power of communication and regain an agency and control over our lives. We then can start the difficult but humanizing process of constructing the world anew. Case study exemplars of this construction, thus, are showcased.

Communication Theory

Communication Theory PDF Author: James Arthur Anderson
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 9781572300835
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This book provides a thorough analysis of the scientific, critical, and cultural questions at the foundation of theory-building in communication and other social sciences. Any claim to knowledge, the author explains, can be analyzed in terms of a series of characteristics: the object of its explanation, the explanatory form and evidentiary method employed, its characteristic explanations, the scope of its performance, and its consequences of value. From identifying basic epistemological questions to exploring the impact of the "knowledge industry" on society, the volume offers readers the analytical tools to understand, compare, and evaluate theories and their use both inside and outside the classroom. The book also includes a systematic analysis of communication's most influential theories and traces their genealogies across different content fields and disciplines.

Introducing Communication

Introducing Communication PDF Author: Amardo Rodriguez
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 148752482X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Introducing Communication introduces students to different communication perspectives and concepts from around the world, encouraging them to reflect on the consequences and implications that come with each of these perspectives

Beyond the Human Condition

Beyond the Human Condition PDF Author: Jeremy Griffith
Publisher: WTM Publishing and Communications
ISBN: 9780646039947
Category : Christian ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Griffith's second book that gives a detailed account of the biology underpinning his explanation of the human condition. Charles Darwin connected humans with nature but there biology has been stalled, unable to explain the dilemma of the human condition. Griffith's answer defends and dignifies humans, it lifts the burden of guilt, making possible our species' psychological rehabilitation; the real repair or ourselves and our planet.