Summary Thinking through communication_sarah Trenholm_open book exam Hogeschool Utrecht
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Course
Principles Of Communication (JICPROCOM.1V16)
Institution
Hogeschool Utrecht (HU)
Book
Thinking Through Communication
In this summary, I talk about each key term, blue and italic ones. The summary works well for the cntrl+F function. Besides this, the document also gives examples of certain theories and phenomenons.
Communication is the process of generating meaning by receiving and sending verbal and nonverbal
symbols and signs that are influenced by multiple contexts.
Chapter 1: the communication tradition
Studying rhetoric in ancient Greece
Rhetoric: the study of communication
Rhetorics: teachers of communications
Plato: a Greek philosopher
Aristotle was his student and attended his academy
Three pillars of persuasion
Ethos: credibility, personal character
Pathos: emotions, the ability to arouse emotions
Logos: reasoning, the wording and logic of the message
The classical period (500 B.C. – 400 C.E.)
Corax and Tisias: two Sicilian Greek rhetoricians
Sophists: professional speech teachers who advertised their services by posting notices in public
places where they could find an audience
Cicero: a prominent roman politician
- Helped to create the five canons of rhetoric
The five canons of rhetoric (table 1.2)
1) Invention: research as much as you can
2) Arrangement: arrange ideas for maximum impact
3) Style: select and arrange wording carefully
4) Memory: remember what you want to say
5) Delivery: nonverbal -> the way you deliver the content
Quintilian: the last great classical theorist
- Stressed the ethical dimension of communication when he defined rhetoric as the study of
“the good man speaking well”.
Medieval (400-1400) and renaissance (1400-1600) communication
Augustine: major Christian theorist -> argued that it would be foolish for truth to take its stand
unarmed against falsehood.
- Believed people communicate through signs: something that causes something else to come
into the mind as a consequence of itself.
,Natural signs: are created by God (smoke, which causes to one think of fire)
Conventional signs: are arbitrarily created by humans (the spoken or written word)
The modern period (1600-1900)
Four approaches in the modern period
1) Classical approach: recover the insights of the great classical rhetoricians, adapting them to
modern times
2) Psychological/epistemological approach: investigating the relationship of communication and
thought, trying to understand in a scientific way how people influence each other through
speech
3) Belletristic approach: focusses on writing and speaking as art forms
4) Elocutionary approach: designed elaborate systems of instruction to improve speakers (non)
verbal presentation
Francis Bacon (1561-1626): identified four ‘idols’ or distortions that get in the way of clear thinking
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) and John Locke (1632-1704): mistrusted normal uses of rhetoric -> truth
can only be obtained through discourse that is grounded in an understanding of human rationality
George Campbell (1719-1796): combined these ideas of modern thinkers with the teachings of
classical rhetoricians.
Contemporary Period: Communication today
Two approaches to the study of communication:
- Scientific method: a belief in controlled laboratory experimentation and careful, objective
measurement.
- The rhetorical tradition: using the historical and critical methods of the humanities in their
studies, which are symbolic activity shapes public response to political and ethical issues ->
rhetoric remains a human discipline
Chapter 2: definitions, models and perspectives
A product or phenomenon can have different kinds of definitions that can be correct (example:
phone can be a product to communicate, a design of a product, or maintaining relationships)
Definition: clarifies concepts by indicating their boundaries
Objective processes of discovery: a single correct definition exists for everything
Subjective process of construction: assume that most of the things we try to define are human
constructions
Breadth: how broad or narrow we want our communication to be
Intentionality: does the sender always consciously have to communicate in order to participate in
communication?
, Sender-based: the person sending out information, either intentional or not, is the one
communicating
Receiver-based: the person observing or hearing information is the one communicator
Spoken symbolic interaction: the way people create common meaning by using symbols (words) and
share that meaning with each other
Nonverbal interaction: unspoken and often unintentional behavior. Can be accompanied by verbal
communication to create a fully interdependent meaning.
Communication sub-fields:
- Interpersonal communication: how people use the one-to-one interaction to build
relationships
- Small group communication: how small collections of people can work together to discuss
and solve a problem
- Public communication: how public speakers sway audiences
- Intercultural communication: how people from different cultures, values, understand and
accept each other
- Organizational communication: how communication plays out in business and industry
settings
- Mass communication: how messages are broadcast to large mass audiences
(newspaper/tv/radio)
Mediated interaction: messaging (E-mail, social media, whatsapp) via indirect sources where
individuals can work together as well as co-group communication
Theory: how I think things work. Proposition thus may not always be true (can be proven by testing)
-> commonly remain unproven and thus does not truly represent reality
Model: abstract representation of a process, description, of its structure or function. Models are
representations and cannot capture a process in its entirety.
- Can be useful to help us understand how a process works.
Why: trying to make sense on processes
How: explanatory (explain the process), predictive (to test a process), control
function (how to modify/control a process)
What: make assumptions, different ways to model a process, models are
incomplete by definition
Models can serve:
- Explanatory functions: dividing a process into constituent parts and showing us how the parts
are connected
- Predictive functions: allow “if….then” questions (traffic simulations)
- Control functions: show how to control a process
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