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Well-known authors present not only their own theories of human communication, but also describe, from personal vantage points, the process by which they constructed their theories. The authors' narratives of their experiences in posing, formulating, and empirically investigating their questions provide invaluable instructional models for current students. The vitality of this book derives from the communal focus on the theory and practice of language and other means of communicative conduct. Each chapter is concerned with the pragmatics of human communication and describes an original and systematic study of the phenomena with recourse to data. Together, these chapters represent a range of important contemporary directions in communication studies.
Speaking Culturally presents case studies of two cultures, focusing on how speaking is thematized and enacted in each. The Teamsterville culture is drawn from the authors studies of the spoken life of an urban, working-class neighborhood in Chicago, while the Nacirema culture draws upon studies of communication among middle-class Americans, primarily on the West Coast. Using fieldwork conducted over a period of twenty years, Philipsen shows how listening to a peoples spoken life can reveal expressions of underlying codesor social rhetoricsof what it means to be a person, how persons can and should be linked together in social relations, and how communication can and should be used in interpersonal conduct. From these studies of speaking in two cultures emerges an understanding of communication as an activity in which people not only draw from and express but also shape and fashion their understandings of self, society, and strategic action.
Discusses major theories of interpersonal communication.
Concern with various matters related to humans as they communicate has led to an increase in both research and theorizing during the second half of the 20th century. As a matter of fact, so many scholars and so many disciplines have become involved in this process that it is virtually impossible to understand and appreciate all that has been accomplished so far. This book focuses on one important aspect of human sense-making -- theory building -- and strives to clarify the thesis that theories do not develop in some sort of social, intellectual, or cultural vacuum. They are necessarily the products of specific times, insights, and mindsets. Theories dealing with the process of communication,...
In Inside Evangelicalism, Mark Ward Sr. combines ethnographic, autoethnographic, and sociolinguistic research to identify and analyze white evangelicals’ distinctive culture and speech code from a perspective rooted deeply in both communication studies and the evangelical community. The Bible emerges as evangelicalism’s one dominant symbol that unifies all meaning and divides the world into a cosmic dualism between secular humanism and an all-encompassing “biblical worldview.” The associated language of literalism drives evangelical culture, cognition, and identity, creating a system of ordered social relations enacted through patriarchy, anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, and w...
In The cultural Communication of Emigration in Bulgaria, Nadezhda Sotirova weaves disparate threads of Balkanism, complaining practices, and the myth of the “Bulgarian Situation” in order to illuminate local discourses on emigration in Bulgaria. Utilizing ethnography of communication and cultural discourse analysis, the author examines and contextualizes the lived experiences of Bulgarian communities through ethnographic observations, interviews, and cultural discourse analysis. Based on assumptions of communication as infused with voices of the past, reflective, constitutive, and active, this case study of emigration discourses highlights the local social reality as navigated through interaction. Sotirova examines local discourses on emigration as cultural currency available to the members of the community, where discussion of issues in Bulgaria serve to communicatively enact larger cultural notions of being (Bulgarian-ness), social relations (oplakvane), dwelling (Bulgarian Situation), and action (emigration).
Explores how linguistic differences can lead to cultural misunderstandings. For use in communication/linguistics courses and scholarship in those areas.
How is cultural identity accomplished interactively? What happens when different cultural identities contact one another? This book presents a series of papers, from classic essays to original expositions, which respond to these questions. The view of communication offered here -- rather than ignoring culture, or making it a variable in an equation -- is based on cultural patterns and situated communication practices, unveiling the multiplicity of factors involved in particular times and places. The contributors to this unusual volume represent a wide range of fields. Their equally diverse offerings will serve to clarify cultural distinctiveness in some communication phenomena, and lay groundwork for the identification of cross-cultural generalities in others.
Global communication can be difficult in the best of circumstances. The contributors in this book take seriously the premise that one can examine communication within specific global settings and scenes with the goal of ensuring that the meanings made among those within specific communities is more clearly understood. This includes recognizing that we often communicate based on specific assumptions and act in ways that have normative bases that are shared with those within communities, but are often difficult to discern or navigate by those who are not members of them. Situated within the Ethnography of Communication research program, the contributors in this volume use Cultural Discourse An...
Communication theory provides a compelling way to understand how people of faith can and should work together in today's tumultuous world. In A Communication Perspective on Interfaith Dialogue, fifteen authors present their experiences and analyses of interfaith dialogue, and contextualize interfaith work within the frame of rhetorical and communication studies. While the focus is on the Abrahamic faiths, these essays also include discussion of Hinduism and interracial faith efforts. Each chapter incorporates communication theories that bring clarity to the practices and problems of interfaith communication. Where other interfaith books provide theological, political, or sociological insights, this volume is committed to the perspectives contained in communication scholarship. Interfaith dialogue is best imagined as an organic process, and it does not require theological heavyweights gathered for academic banter. As such, this volume focuses on the processes and means by which interfaith meaning is produced.