The Signifying World between Ineffability and Intelligibility: Body as Sign in Communicology

Abstract

Research and pedagogy in the social science of communication focuses on information and behavior conceived as a message. Communicology represents a significant paradigm shift away from that limited perspective by prioritizing the conscious experience of communication. The paradigm exemplar for this human science of discourse is semiotic phenomenology where focus is on the body as sign. Communicology thus challenges the very grounds upon which discourse inquiry proceeds. Communication and culture are complex phenomena and warrant a paradigm approach of requisite diversity, rather than a reductionist commitment to the simplest of explanations. I advance two propositions about the communicology discipline, fleshing out important terminology. In that context, I then provide a semiotic phenomenological account of communication consisting of ten points about embodiment. The argument is for the priority of human science over social science. The foremost concern of discourse inquiry, then, is neither information nor messages, but rather the unique human experience of communication.