Just think about how a prehistoric human could have communicated a lot using these words and hand gestures. You may remember from your English classes that onomatopoeia refers to words that sound like that to which they refer-words like boing, drip, gurgle, swoosh, and whack. Some scholars speculate that humans’ first words were onomatopoetic. However, humans haven’t always had the sophisticated communication systems that we do today. It’s true that you can teach a gorilla to sign words like food and baby, but its ability to use symbols doesn’t extend to the same level of abstraction as ours. The ability to think outside our immediate reality is what allows us to create elaborate belief systems, art, philosophy, and academic theories. We can also reflect on the past and imagine our future. For example, we have the capacity to use abstract symbols, like the word education, to discuss a concept that encapsulates many aspects of teaching and learning. Even though all animals communicate, as human beings we have a special capacity to use symbols to communicate about things outside our immediate temporal and spatial reality (Dance & Larson). While there are rich areas of study in animal communication and interspecies communication, our focus in this book is on human communication. In order to get a context for how communication has been conceptualized and studied, let’s look at a history of the field.įrom Aristotle to Obama: A Brief History of Communication In fact, since the systematic study of communication began in colleges and universities a little over one hundred years ago, there have been more than 126 published definitions of communication (Dance & Larson, 1976). This definition builds on other definitions of communication that have been rephrased and refined over many years. For our purposes in this book, we will define communication as the process of generating meaning by sending and receiving verbal and nonverbal symbols and signs that are influenced by multiple contexts. Review the various career options for students who study communication.īefore we dive into the history of communication, it is important that we have a shared understanding of what we mean by the word communication.Distinguish among the five forms of communication.Discuss the history of communication from ancient to modern times.
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