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Communication as Gesture
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Communication as Gesture

Media(tion), Meaning, & Movement

Michael Schandorf
Emerald
Emerald

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Hardback
9781787565166
19 June 2019
$104.99
eBook (PDF)
9781787565159
19 June 2019
$104.99
eBook (ePub)
9781787565173
19 June 2019
$104.99

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While the concept of communication has long been bound to a reductive model of the exchange of information, very few scholars of communication would argue that these assumptions are realistic, without a long list of qualifying caveats. But the concept of communication, built from the integration of semiotic signification with the idea of information as the 'carrier' of transmitted meaning, is so deeply ingrained and simple that even displacing it can seem futile, if not absurd. Nevertheless, these foundational assumptions tightly constrain the ways in which any interactional phenomena can be conceived--and constraints upon our ways of understanding communication drastically limit our capacity to understand our worlds and the social processes that generate them, at any scale or level of abstraction.  

Communication as Gesture traces the concept of communication from its roots in classical rhetoric to its integration in structural linguistics, semiotics, information theory, and cybernetics, integrating perspectives from contemporary rhetorical theory, relational psychology, interactional sociology, philosophy, cognitive linguistics, discourse studies, multimodal semiotics, and more. Because so much of our contemporary world is lived with and through digital media technologies, the study of new media and social media provides a rich illustration of the constraints imposed by our reductive assumptions--and hints at the possibilities generated by rethinking them. The gesture theory of communication introduced presents a dimensional account of communication that is intuitively accessible and theoretically rich while overturning reductive assumptions of the linear character of interaction.

Introduction Chapter 1. Digital Discourse  Chapter 2. Information & Meaning: The Semiotics of Cybernetics  Chapter 3. Making Meaning: Putting Space in Place  Chapter 4. Rhetoric as the Making of Meaning  Chapter 5. Dimensions of Interaction

    The author explores the concept of communication as a gesture consisting of a meaningful movement that creates relations and defines the space of interaction between people. He reconsiders the roots of the study of communication in rhetoric, linguistics, semiotics, information theory, and cybernetics, to uncover the theoretical and methodological limitations and traditional assumptions about communication, including digital communication; shows that a more relational understanding of communication processes can be gathered from the relations among these roots; and reintegrates these theoretical and philosophical roots with more recent work in spatial cognition, interactional sociology, and ecological and relational psychology to present an account of communication based on the concept of gesture. He examines the study of digital media and discourse, the semiotics of cybernetics, the role of space in communication, rhetoric as the making of meaning, and the dimensions of interaction in communication. The book is an extended version of the author's dissertation.

    - Annotation ©2019
    Michael Schandorf is Lecturer in Arts Studies in Research and Writing at the University of British Columbia. His research and scholarship focuses on the ways in which people make meaning, and the social and political implications of those processes.