Global Comm. section 2 (2 of 3)

Pamplona, February 2010 Paolo Volonté - Politecnico di Milano 1

Communication in the Era of Globalization


Paolo VolontéSociologia dei processi culturali

Politecnico di [email protected]

http://paolovolonte.wordpress.com


Communication in the Era of Globalization

Today:A New Model of Communication


Human beings are capable of producing signification.

Semiologists define “signification” as the act that unites a signifier with a signified – an expression with a certain content – the outcome being what they call a “sign”.

The “phenomenological-inferential model” of communication


Human beings are capable of producing signification.

Semiologists define “signification” as the act that unites a signifier with a signified – an expression with a certain content – the outcome being what they call a “sign”.

Signification is the source of meanings, the act whereby they are formed.



«If the foot of a walking man hits a pebble, energy is transferred from the foot to the stone; the latter will be displaced and will eventually come to rest again in a position which is fully determined by such factors as the amount of energy transferred, the shape and weight of the pebble, and the nature of the surface on which it rolls.»




«If, on the other hand, the man kicks a dog instead of the pebble, the dog may jump up and bite him. In this case the relation between the kick and the bite is of a very different order. It is obvious that the dog takes the energy for his reaction from his own metabolism and not from the kick. What is transferred, therefore, is no longer energy, but rather information. In other words, the kick is a piece of behavior that communicates something to the dog, and to this communication the dog reacts with another piece of communication-behavior.»

(Paul Watzlawick, Pragmatics of Human Communication)


The human being is endowed with that special kind of expertise we call the faculty of signification. It allows her/him to reprocess her/his response to the surrounding world on the basis of the body of experiences s/he accumulated in the course of her/his life.



Signification = act of interrelating the current experience with the heritage of past experiences as a whole: a message (or a situation) is meaningful to us insofar as it acquires a specific arrangement in the context of our overall experience of the surrounding world.



a) Meaning relies primarily on the receiver (it isn’t a matter of the sender nor of the message itself).

Some consequences



b) The “first axiom of communication” (P. Watzlawick) is the impossibility of not communicating.



Some consequences


c) The world we live in is not made out of things, it is made out of meanings (meaningful situations, meaningful objects, etc.).




Some consequences




c) The world we live in does not consist of things, it consists of meanings (meaningful situations, meaningful objects, etc.).

d) The faculty of signification is independent from the occurrence of a state of communication. Signification precedes communication.


Some consequences


What does it mean to communicate?

Starting point: in our world signification is a universal feature, while communication is not. Signification is the same as living, communication is just a limited feature of living. Signification is previously here when communication begins, it comes before, it precedes communication.




Starting point: in our world signification is a universal feature, while communication is not. Signification is the same as living, communication is just a limited feature of living. Signification is previously here when communication begins, it comes before, it precedes communication.

Communication is thus the accomplishment of conducts that are able to affect the process of signification of the other, aiming at urging him toward a desired behaviour (or state of mind).



«Communication is a process involving two information-processing devices. One device modifies the physical environment of the other. As a result, the second device constructs representations similar to representations already stored in the first device»

(Sperber and Wilson)



Communicating means performing actions in order to modify the behaviour of the other appealing to his/her faculty of signification.




To communicate means to modify the physical environment of the Other so that they will realise what we want them to realise.



Global Comm. section 2 (2 of 3)

Technology

Transcript of Global Comm. section 2 (2 of 3)