The Semantic Structure Of Public Speaking (On Meaningful Perception)

Abstract

A study of the psychological mechanisms underlying the perception of messages and of processes transforming the products of such perception (thoughts, images, percepts) into needs, motives, goals, and attitudes in the perceiver has a rich tradition of research behind it in the psychology of propaganda and mass communication. On the one hand, this has led to the accumulation of numerous interesting empirical facts and the development of corresponding theoretical hypotheses that shed light on various aspects of the perception of messages; but on the other hand, it has resulted in rigid fixation of certain a priori conceptual models of a phenomenal field that prevent any deeper probing into the vertical structure of the mechanisms of perception and has driven research to spread itself thinly in a horizontal direction. Therefore, although the new second-order problems that have been singled out concerning message perception are doubtless important and interesting, they leave unchallenged the validity and prod...