Week 11 Discussion, Ayla Kress, A Cultural Approach to Communication

A Cultural Approach to Communication –J.W. Carey

Summary:

           

A cultural approach to communication reflects greatly upon John Dewey’s views and beliefs of transmission view and ritual view communication. The transmission view aligns with the sending, spreading, and transmission of information to other as suggested in its name. Ritual view is more associated with the commonness, community, and common faith. He continues on in the second chapter to analyze “communication is a symbolic process where by reality is produced, maintained, repaired and transformed.” He hits largely on both science and society while discussing communication and the ways in which we view the information we receive.

1.      Do you agree with the belief that there are two types of proposed communication -transmission view and ritual view?
2.     Do you agree with the belief that communication is derived from religious views or that it comes from a deeper more primal need to survive?
3.     Carey states “the historic religious undercurrent has never been eliminated from our thought” do you agree or do you feel that before this reading you hadn’t thought about communication as having a strict religious history?
4.    Despite the religious background associated with the two types of communication described do you feel communication is more geared towards ritual or transmission? Ritual being focused on commonness, community, and common faith and transmission being the spread, transmission, and sending of information to others.
5.      How do you feel about the transmission and ritual views of news? Do you believe the news is not information but drama as described by Carey as the ritualistic way of viewing news?
6.      Regarding Carey’s main point of the second paragraph, “communication is a symbolic process where by reality is produced, maintained, repaired and transformed” do you believe communication is symbolic and has the significant effect on reality as described in A Cultural Approach to Communication?

Although I understand the history of communication and agree that religion has influenced it’s history, as the bible being the first book printed by the printing press, however I do not believe that religion is the sole origin of communication, but that we are a social organism and communication is a tool for survival as seen among other species on our planet.