Linguaggio E Processi Comunicativi (Language and Communication)

Abstract

This working paper results from notes for five lessons in a doctoral seminar on sociology of communication as invited professor in the PhD in Science, Technology and Society of the University of Calabria (Italy). The paper starts with a brief critical summary on the different models of communication (from telegraphic metaphor to an orchestral one, from transmission model to an interactional one, from Shannon and Weaver to the two-step flow of communication, and so on), to show the main questions and perspectives deriving from social sciences. Three authors are considered as crucial for a more complex vision of communication: the contribution of Alfred Schutz (especially in his essay on the well informed citizen and the distribution of social knowledge); the social representations approach suggested by Serge Moscovici, illustrating some examples of its efficacy when applied in empirical research on mass media effects; Irving Goffmann and his studies about the order of interaction. These working notes try to explain students the importance of a phenomenological point of view, underlining the main process in the social building of the common sense. Finally, arising the question on the role of subjectivity, it suggests the contribution that a sociological apperception of the individual (L. Dumont) may give our better understanding of contemporary communicative arenas.