Key concepts in the work of Arnold Shepperson: representing communication and collaboration

Abstract

This article is divided into two main sections. The first section exposes the ways in which the work of Shepperson mobilises the concept of communication, while the second focuses on the concept of collaboration. First, we want to show how the work of Shepperson tackles the study of communication, by paradoxically adopting and rearticulating at the same time the theoretical linearity of the sender–receiver model, which was then the widely accepted canonical model for the study of communicative processes. Second, we will illustrate how the concept of collaboration appears in the works of Shepperson as both a cornerstone theme as well as a methodology orienting his critical discourses. In this second section, we approach Shepperson's critical discourses from a different critical purview by highlighting how exactly he deploys the theme of collaboration. With this emphasis, it becomes evident that collaboration is not only constitutive to the (re)production of knowledge in the world but, concurrently, becomes his representation of worldly experiences as well.