ANALYSING COMMUNICATION is an introductory textbook to communication studies.
This book introduces various approaches to communication analysis and shows how
different theoretical and ontological perspectives on communication and communication
processes change how we analyse communication.
This second edition is radically different from the first book. The discussion and presentation
of the seven communication traditions are extended and each of the chapters
on the seven traditions now contains an analysis of the same case in order to highlight
what the change in perspective does to the analysis thereby showcasing the book’s
claim that different theoretical perspectives give different analyses.
The seven traditions, originally identified by Robert T. Craig, are:
- The cybernetic tradition
- The sociopsychological tradition
- The rhetorical tradition
- The semiotic tradition
- The sociocultural tradition
- The phenomenological tradition
- The critical tradition
Each of the traditions gives a specific and unique insight into how we can see and
discuss communication from different theoretical, epistemological and ontological perspectives.
In addition, chapter 11 introduces and discusses four approaches to communication
theory and analysis that deserve a special mention, because of their novel understandings
of communication.
