Introduction to Communication

1
Introduction to Communication

• Summer 2006
• www.atkinson.yorku.ca/sosc2410/
• Course Director Pierre Ouellet

2
Course Outline and General Description

• Course structure
• Objectives - Theory and Practice
• Assignments and tutorials
• Administrative remarks
• First Lecture

3
What is Communication Theory?
4
Communicatus, p.p. Communicare

• old meaning
• to impart - to share -
• to make common
• initial sense of participation
• idea of transmission
• the effect of forces.

• new meaning
• the act of transmitting
• giving/exchanging information, signals of
  messages by talk,
• gesture or writing
• a system for sending
• and receiving messages.

5
Modes of Communication

• Non-verbal forms of communication
• language
• gestures, signs and signals
• images and representations/symbolic structures
• unconscious dimension/ideology
• possibility of miscommunication/
• denotative fallacy.

6
Disciplinary Approaches

• linguistics
• sociology
• psychology
• philosophy
• anthropology
• education
• everyone.

7
Types of Communication

• interpersonal communication
• mediated communication
• mass communication

8
Interpersonal Mass Communication
Technology
Telegraph Newspaper/
Print Telephone Broadcast
TV/Cable Radio Films Internet
Criteria number of participants control
over communication i.e., what is said? To
whom? Why? When? Where
9
Two Approaches to Communication Research

• Procedural/Material Approach
• The Transmissive Model
• Phenomenological/Subjective Approach
• The Ritual/Cultural Model

10
The Transmissive Model

• Concerns
• Applications

11
The Transmissive Model

• Belief that messages can be analyzed
• understands communication as a process
• interested in how messages affect behaviour or
  state of mind of the receiver
• relationship between sender-message- receiver -
  with emphasis on receiver
• accuracy/efficiency of communication

12
Transmissive Model
Received Signal
Signal
Source
Transmitter
Receiver
Destination
Noise Source
Shannon and Weavers model
13
Transmissive Model
R /R1
S
M
Sender
Message
Receiver/Effect
14
The Ritual/Cultural Model

• Concerns
• Applications

15
Ritual/Cultural Model

• Interest in interaction between people as well as
  people and texts
• concern with cultural role of texts
• meaning is the effect of the encounter with the
  text
• process of negotiation between Sender and
  Receiver is dynamic
• failure of communication is significant i.e.,
  meaningful.

16
Message Text
Meaning
Producer Reader
Referent
17
Fourfold Classification of Communication Studies

• Critical
• Arts Humanities Social Sciences Sciences
• Administrative
• Pluralist

18
Fourfold Classification of Communication Studies

• Horizontal Axis
• Art and Science
• - Epistemology and Ontology
• Social Science
• - Methodological Individualism
• Science
• Vertical Axis
• Administrative Research
• Critical Research
• - Critical Cultural Studies
• - Political Economy

19
Assumptions Regarding Communication Research

• Interdisciplinary approach
• structural dimension
• transmission
• relationships
• social interaction.

20
Options
Home
First Slide