COMS 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: General Semantics, Communication Studies, George Herbert Mead
Document Summary
Communication through symbols part 1 january 26, 2016. Richards (novice coms scholar) argues that communication is more than the speaker. It should also focus on the listeners, interpretation, and everyday communication: how listeners are interpreting and how misunderstandings occur through communication, expanded scope of communication to everyday communication, 3 features of symbols are important (ambiguous, arbitrary, and abstract) However, they can be confusing sources of misunderstanding: semantic triangle: Dotted line indicates the arbitrary component of symbols. Co(cid:374)(cid:272)ept is the thought e(cid:448)oked (cid:449)he(cid:374) thi(cid:374)ki(cid:374)g of the (cid:449)o(cid:396)d (cid:858)(cid:272)at(cid:859: the ladder of abstraction: Bottom of ladder is most concrete to increasingly abstract. The particular kitten as we perceive it. Cat: the species label of the cat. Animal: more abstract label for this creature. Living thing: increasingly abstract, lumps this cat with all living things. Possession: very abstract way of describing the cat, leaves out all references to the specific cat: context also plays a role in communication: