ABOUT THE COVER
The cover image is a “galaxy vortex marble,” created by glassblower Dan Neff of Duluth, Minnesota. Photos of the marble, sprinkled throughout the book, were taken by Beverly Hawkins and myself, held in the hands of a variety of people. Beverly also took the author photo.
Preface
Why choose a picture of a marble for the front cover of a book about communication? One reason is because it suggests the infinite complexity of the communication process. You can hold it in your hands, but if you start falling into the enticing world of studying communication, it feels a little like you may never “hit bottom.” Communication takes a wide variety of forms, can be intentional or unintentional, and often goes wrong. Depending on how you define it, Communication Studies has existed as an academic discipline for more than 100 years, although people have been trying to figure out the mysteries of communication throughout human history. My philosophy is that everyone on earth is a student of communication, trying our best to figure out this complex and vital phenomenon.
Psychologist Paul Watzlawick famously said “You cannot not communicate,” meaning that every form of behavior — as well as silence and lack of behavior — has the potential to convey meaning. Literally millions of books have been written with the explicit or implicit goal of helping people communicate with each other, and colleges and universities throughout the world teach numerous courses on the subject (whether or not they are labeled “Communication Studies” courses). So what can one author possibly hope to accomplish in a single book?
My goal is to provide an introductory look, aimed at college undergraduate students, into the useful concepts people have figured out about communication in a variety of contexts. This is certainly not intended as a comprehensive survey of an entire academic discipline: The International Encyclopedia of Communication, Stephen Littlejohn, Karen Foss and John Oetzel’s Theories of Human Communication (11th edition), and Em Griffin, Andrew Ledbetter and Glenn Sparks’s A First Look At Communication Theory (11th edition) have done that far better than I could. My aim is to get on with the “good stuff” that my target audience will find useful, which means that I will spend less time summarizing research studies than some textbooks do.
How do I know what the reader will find relevant and valuable? My answer comes in part from teaching communication courses to college undergraduates for over 35 years, including Introduction to Communication Theory, Small Group Communication, Organizational Communication, Family Communication, Persuasion, Argumentation, the Psychology of Communication, Public Speaking, and a seminar on Credibility. (A department chair once referred to me as the “utility infielder” of the department.) When I switched majors from psychology to “Speech” (as it was known back in 1982), I never turned back, and got a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph D in the subject. In addition to teaching, for 25 years I also held an interesting “side job” as a trial consultant for NJP Litigation Consulting, working with attorneys to improve their communication in the courtroom. It was a humbling profession, putting everything I thought I knew about communication to the test.
I am not, however, putting myself out there as a comprehensive expert in everything communication-related. When I taught my first class, I was nervous about my ability to be a convincing authority on the subject, thinking that my role as a teacher was to be The Person With All The Answers and my job was to dole out pearls of wisdom. I soon changed my perception of a teacher’s role, and now think of my job as posing good questions instead of providing answers. My concept of a “good question,” by the way, is one with no simple answer. To put it another way, if my students leave my classroom thinking they understand everything, I’ve done them a disservice. If they leave the classroom still puzzling over a question I put to them, and continue to be bothered by that question long after the course is over, then I’ve done my job well.
I don’t think of communication as a simple and easy process, so I don’t have much respect for simple and easy answers to communication-related questions. There are some principles that I and my students have found useful over the years, which is what I tried to put in this book — but I also recognize that those principles all have limitations and exceptions. I am fond of statistician George E.P. Box’s expression “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Models are, by their nature, attempts to neatly encapsulate phenomena that are messy, complex, inconsistent, unpredictable, and baffling — all words I would use to describe communication. Any time I get too complacent in thinking that I understand the communication process well, I am proven wrong. Like perhaps all communication teachers, there have been times in my life when someone pointed an accusing finger at me and said, “I thought you were supposed to be good at communication!”
Everyone knows something about communication. No one knows everything about communication. We are all learning, and I hope this book helps you on your journey.
It may be helpful to include here the set of values I put in my course syllabi, which I try to adhere to and encourage my students to emulate:
Accuracy, which includes: a) the intention to get the details right, as much as possible , b) open-mindedness and the willingness to abandon positions that are shown to be inaccurate, and c) overcoming bias as much as possible.
Curiosity, which includes: a) the desire to dig deeper and get a more complete picture , b) thoroughness, and c) avoidance of simplistic evaluations.
Respect for differences. The focus should not be on “Who is right?” but on “Why do they think that way?”
I am also reassured that my target audience of college undergraduates will find the concepts in this book useful because two of them agreed to serve as stand-ins for everyone else. So I must start my acknowledgements with the two students who read the book and told me their thoughts about it: Lauren Vander Pas and Evelyn Taylor, both students at the University of Minnesota. They knew they couldn’t represent the reactions of all possible readers, but I trusted their reactions implicitly and am grateful for their diligence in reading every word.
Next on the list of people that must be thanked profusely is Stephanie Galarneault, my colleague and collaborator, who was immensely helpful in helping me think through this entire process, filling in my areas of deficiency in several chapters, and serving as a project manager, taking care of all the tasks I’m lousy at. Stephanie’s teaching experience is as broad as mine, but I’ve stolen more good classroom ideas from her than from anyone else. After much discussion, we decided that I would be listed as the sole author of the book, but even though I did the actual writing, much of the thinking came about through conversations with her. Perhaps more important than all of that, however, is how incredibly supportive she has been.
Speaking of incredibly supportive people, I am grateful for the trust and support of Micah Gjeltema and Shane Nackerud of the University of Minnesota Library System [MORE SPECIFIC?], who both understand how to help an author tackle a project this big and make sure it gets finished.
In Chapter 2, I tell the story of switching majors from psychology to Communication Studies, and the person most responsible for “seducing” me into my new major was Art Bochner, who taught me Family Communication at Temple University in 1982 (and later went on to become president of the National Communication Association). I must also thank my mentor at NJP Litigation Consulting, Susie Macpherson, who has devoted her life to understanding how to communicate effectively in a courtroom.
Finally, I must acknowledge two people who never took a college communication course: my mother, Louise Rose, the best storyteller I know; and my father, Frank S. Rose, who taught me more about communication than anyone else.
