Communications Helpful Quotations November 14, 2005

Friere Emphasized the importance of commnicative dialogue with people as subjects rather than the dehumanizing act of extension (act of depositing information to objects). He also focussed on the problematic approach – of students and teachers involved in the sharing and exchange of ideas in relation to the world. Key words: Communication, Dialogue, Learning

Vygotsky The very mechanism underlying Higher Mental Functions is a copy of Social Interaction; All HMFs are internalised social relationships (1988) Action (specifically social interaction) leads to thought Speech is the medium of social interaction, hence thought

Vygotsky To achieve effective communication we must take into account the individuals socio-cultural experience Mediation is a way of social learning that can be used as a communication tool to develop the individuals mental functions from lower to higher Communication that enhances learning will occur in the zone of proximal development Key words: Mediation, interaction, zone of PD

Habermas Explains the purpose of communication as ‘reaching understanding’ The notion of the public sphere replaces appeals to quthority, tradition, force etc. with an appeal to reason-resolve through argument and discussion Public Sphere Lifeworld Keywords: understanding, validity, argumentation, consensus.

Searle If we adopt illocutionary point as the basic notion on which to classify uses of language, then there are a rather limited number of things we do with language; ; we tell people how things are, we try to get them to do things, we commit ourselves to doing things, we express our feelings and attitudes, we bring about changes though our utterances. Often w do more than one of these at once in the same utterance. Key words: Different meaning, Illocutionary point, Utterances

Social representations Social representations are the symbolic cognitive environment that helps people communicate with one another through oriented classifications and denotations that make the unfamiliar familiar. They emerge through certain historical and cultural environments, they are stored in language and they are deeply connected to ideology Key words: Unfamiliar Familiar, Symbolic, Denotations and Ideology

Social representations A socio-cognitive practice is something we do in order to understand the world in which we live in and in doing so, we convert these social representations into a particular social reality for others and ourselves. The multiplicity and tension within any representation presents possibilities for communication, negotiation, resistance, innovation and transformation.

Shannon and Weaver Model: Source→ Encoder →Channel →Decoder →Destination Possibility of the interruption of noise (technical/semantic) at the level of the channel. Problem: does not give enough importance to audience/decoder. Problem: not enough attention paid to importance of overlap (common area) btw encoder + decoder. Keywords: Noice, de/code, appropriate channels.

Impression management Learning to control unintended signals is central to giving a performance which will maintain or improve the image others have of you or the organization you represent. Asymmetry of communication evidenced in the difference between expressions intentionally given versus expressions unintentionally given off. Performance, role, dramaturgical, impression.

Rhetoric Effective public speaking, including, logic, persuasion, loaded language. 3 chief genres: deliberative (political arena), forensic (judicial), epideictic (celebrative). 5 resources/faculties of orator: invention (logos, ethos, pathos), arrangement (beginning, middle, end), style (e.g. metaphor & metonymy), memory, delivery. Keywords: persuasion, deception, oration, convincing.

Speech act theory How to do things with words. Aim to do justice to the fact that even though words (phrases, sentences) encode information, people do more things with words than convey information and that when people do convey information, they often convey more than these words encode. 3 distinct levels: locutionary act of saying it, illocutionary act in saying it, perlocutionary act by saying it.

Discourse theory Attempt to grasp transindividual blocks of meaning and knowledge that we draw on in order to communicate with one another. Rather than meaning, like ‘truth’, existing in a transhistorical or universal way, and rather than a realist sense of how language works (a neutral medium of communication that simply represents the world), the emphasis is on how the world is actively constructed through discourse to serve certain political ends. Words, signifiers, shift their meaning over time.

Conversation analysis CA focuses on talk-in-interaction. The fundamental assumption of CA is that “what an utterance means practically, the action it actually performs, depends on its sequential position”. Attention to the micro-politics of the face-to-face interaction, the details of interpellation, role-induction, meaning co-construction, steering of emotions, all facets of dialogic interaction, including strategies of language and rhetoric.