Last semester, I was fortunate enough to study under Professor Glick for the course, Language, Culture, and Communication in the U.S. Also known as ANTH114, the class focused on how linguistics form culture. His central argument was explained through a diagram of boxes inside of boxes. The most outer box was labeled behavior. Inside behavior was communication followed by culture and finally language. Through this diagram, Professor Glick explained that each category relied on the previous box. Meaning, the words that comprise the English language help construct our culture. Furthermore, culture creates ideologies and values that form the way societies communicate to reinforce desired behavioral patterns.[1]
From the perspective of this course, Hanno Hardt's article defines communication as, “the process of 'making common.'” It has also been noted that communication contains “the notion of 'transmission' (one-way) and 'sharing' (two-way).” [2]Thus, communication involves three processes. Nevertheless, these definitions do not account for meaning. If two people communicate through the two-way sharing method, the receiver might find underlying meaning not intended by the sender. This becomes even more complex with cyber communication for there is no human contact to insure the message's meaning is correctly comprehended. In Anth114, Professor Glick defined the problem as the difference between entailed and presupposed ideologies. In any conversation, the context may be conscious or unconscious. If the two parties do not share the same backgrounds, they might create varying meanings, leading to miscommunication. [3]
Additionally, the issue of miscommunication effects mass communication. Hardt describes mass communication as defining “reality and marks the boundaries of social knowledge, authenticating its representations of the world through public compliance and consent, if not sheer popularity.” [4]Therefore, mass communication intends to create a scope of understanding broad enough to encompass a global audience. By doing so, information is widely disseminated yet the complexities of communication are lost.
[1] Glick, Douglas J. Language, Culture and Communication in the US. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Holt Publishing, 2009.
[2] Hardt, Hanno. Myths for the Masses: An Essay on Mass Communication. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
[3]Glick, Douglas J. Language, Culture and Communication in the US. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Holt Publishing, 2009.
[4]Hardt, Hanno. Myths for the Masses: An Essay on Mass Communication. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
I was taking Prof. Glick's ANTH114 last semester too! I appreciate your use of his textbook for your blog post.
ReplyDeleteI like your point that in cyber space there is no human contact thus it can cause miscommunication. It is true that the Internet encourages people to share more information across the borders and continents, but there certainly is something missing due to the lack of real human contact. Cyber communication is, after all, still virtual and that means a lot in terms of communication.
I also took Professor Glick's Anthropology class, but last year. I also liked your point on miscommunication, and reviewing the point that if two people come from different backgrounds then they may have miscommunication. Sometimes words, phrases or experiences are different between people of different cultures or backgrounds.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. I really appreciate the feedback. I hope you do not mind that I respond to both of you at once since you seem to make similar comments on the idea of miscommunication. I too thoroughly enjoyed Prof. Glick's course on America's use of language, culture, and communication. Before his class, I had overlooked the complexities in the role of communication. He made me understand the infinite meanings associated with words. However, this too causes miscommunication. Thus, miscommunication is inevitable. Some might view this as the major flaw of communication. From a more optimistic perspective, perhaps this flaw makes communication complex and beautiful through those complexities. If language can be analyzed infinitely, one will always learn from people's interactions and alter their perception of the world. However, with the advent of cyberspace, there is a loss of non-verbal communication which could have added greater comprehension of meaning. Nevertheless, cyber communication has brought a global aspect to the role of language. Now there can be more learning involved by representing a more varied cultural community, contributing to a more holistic perception of the use of communication.
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