Communication and the Human Condition

by W. Barnett Pearce

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."

Genres: Sociology

248 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1989

Reviews

[Hai Yen]

This is so useful book for me. I would like to read the full version of it for soon

[Arda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes from midterm:

Communication, one would assume, is the basic sharing of information: People have thoughts and feelings, and they decipher and express them through words. They would find the words to express what is happening within themselves, and basically, think or write them out loud, hence conveying their thoughts and feelings through language.

This is what communication had been assumed to be: the-thinking-out-loud process that is expressed in language, particularly so in the English language. The way the English language is formulated, in and of itself, gives the insinuation that words are a portrayal of our thoughts and feelings that are transmitted out of ourselves through the use of language. The idea is based on the premise that one person expresses thoughts and feelings through the use of words, and once out, the other person then draws out from the words those thoughts and feelings.

The words that the speaker expresses go through an individual process before they are out. When the listener or reader is presented with the words, they would not grasp the same exact words as they are, for that is not possible seeing that it had been an individual process. The listener (or reader) have their own process, and they too construct their own meanings for the words. Therefore, the meanings are not, and cannot, be identical to the communicator’s, let alone that they might be picking out messages the speaker had not even intended to deliver. It would be inaccurate to assume that the meanings of words are received in the same way that they had been intended to be sent out. Moreover, there is a lot that is not said in what is said; words are not set in a vacuum, and the conduit model does not give these matters the attention they deserve.

Pearce asserts the significance of the creative process entailed in communication. Talk, after all, is not just talk, he emphasizes, and clarifies that the way we tell our stories and make meaning out of them shapes up who and how we are, and that reality is really the product of how we give meaning to the stories we create. Pearce observes the ways in which we immerse ourselves in the realities we create, for, once articulated, the realities are creations. Life as we live it and life as we explain it, after all, is always going to be different, and the ways in which we choose to make sense of our surroundings, define our identities, see ourselves in the world, and establish our role in it, are all creative processes that we make get immersed and “enmeshed” in. This enmeshment does not necessarily happen on an individual basis only, but in fact there is often an institutionalized immersion that we find ourselves drawn in. We take symbols around us, symbols that are harnessed, inherited, imagined, established, and they get grouped and developed them in such a way that they formulate and start to characterize our realities. What we make of our reality, then, necessitates a certain agreement to enter the stories that we have created for ourselves: a “willing suspension of disbelief” – and that perhaps takes a certain collective escapist tendency that would have us enter worlds that are sensible. And the stories are made up and entered to are not necessarily singular, but there are multiple ways in which to read the stories – words have various meanings, and our narratives have multiple standings. The way we process communication and build our stories is a significant indicator, Pearce determines, of our creating of the world we live in. And the stories we choose to get “enmeshed in” are neither ever true, nor truly false, for language will not be able to capture things as they entirely are, and every story, at the end of it, “must leave something beyond itself.”

[Rebecca Zanrè · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was interesting but also a bit slow.
nice point of views. I like it when someone tells you that making up your own mind about something despite your cultural background its as usefull ad it is difficoult. I feel better about lots of things I didn't understand or couldn' t cope with. And it's a bittersweet read at the same time. But mostly I'm glad I finished it. Got an exam next week on this stuff #gulp