Communication as a Discipline: Development and Approaches
Introduction
Communication is something we all use, it’s how we express our needs wants, tell a story, and work together with one other. When understanding communication it’s important to have the knowledge and an understanding of communication, this allows for better communication skills to create better relationships with the people around you. Employers look for individuals with these skills, having strong communications skill is valued in professional careers. With employers wanting employees with strong communication skills, that why the education for these skills is growing and important to lean. With our society evolving every day, the study of communication has found new approaches to educate students and communities.
How Communication as a discipline Developed
In the early 1900s, the National council of teachers of English and speech teaches broke ties from each other. Speech teacher wanted to form their own association called the National Association of Academic Teachers of Public Speaking, also known as the NCA. The purpose of breaking ties with the National council of teachers of English was to declare the teaching of communication is own discipline. Teachers from the NCA through communication deserved its own institution of higher education.
The goal of the NCA has grown and for the next century students from graduate and undergraduate programs were taking communication courses in universities all over the world. The discipline of communications was being taught in all forms. The study of commutation was focusing on the use of the messages and finding meaning from those messages from different contexts.
Approaches of Communications as a Discipline
There are several approached to the study of communication as a discipline. We will go over three approached that had the biggest influence. . The first approach that I will mention is the social scientific approach. Duck and McMahan, 2018 states “This approach views the world as an objective and predictable”. The social scientific approached assumes that the Truth exists. Truth is independent of the researcher and will be discovered by different researchers using a different methods. Using this approach, researchers might seek to describe patterns of commination among close friends. The social Scientific approach primarily uses experiments, questionnaires and surveys to study communication. With the social scientific approach and an experience is being performed, it normally involves a induvial experience and the results will determines how they would respond to this approach. To study commination surveys and questionnaires are used for the experiment.
Interpretivist approach is the second approach and according to Duck & McMahan, 2018 “interpretivist approach, this is the study of communication seeks to understand and describe the communication”. Unlike the social scientific approach., the interpretivist approach communication is observed in a natural setting rather than a laboratory. The idea that a single reality exists is rejected by the interpretivist approach. Communication is viewed as a unpredictable, creative, and uncertain. Therefore, interpretive scholars do not believe the truth cab be discovered or that even exists.
The third approach is the critical approach, according to Duck & McMahan, 2018 this approach “uses communication to seek and identify the hidden but formidable symbolic structures and practices that create or upholds disadvantage, inequity, or oppression of some groups in favor of others”. The critical approach to the study of communication assumes that a built -in structure in society gives advantages to once set of people rather than another. Certain members of society (men, white people, heterosexuals) have a greater ability to force their views and create an ungrateful view for people in society other than (women, people of color. Homosexuals). The critical approach is different from the other two approaches, because they don’t have a pre-exposed idea on groups that have a greater ability to impose their value.
Summary
Communication as a discipline was created so scholars can have a better understanding of how people communicate Different approached were created to better help scholars understand. The creation of the discipline of communication has a growing number of scholars interested in the study of commination and will continue to grow along with our society and culture. Communication has been studied in all forms and contexts. It’s always changing and evolving as our society constantly evolves.
References
- What is Communication? (2019, March 21). Retrieved from https://www.natcom.org/about-nca/what-communication.
- Duck, S. & McMahan, D.T. (2018). Communication in everyday life: A survey of communication (2nd edition). Thousand Oaks, Sage. ISBN: 978-1-4522-5978-9
