It is the means through which we build our identities, our relationships with people and institutions, our affiliations with cultures and subcultures, and, more broadly, our senses of the world.
Communication is also a process.
Communication is processual because it is constantly in motion much like our identities, our relationships, our affiliations, and, in fact, the whole world around us. As we ll see in Comm 10b, just defining the word communication can prove to be a significant source of tension within this discipline. To understand communication as a social process, then, involves focusing on conflicts and debates rather than on fixed, universal laws or scientific formulae. The ideas you ll encounter in Comm 10b reflect the dynamic, multi-faceted, and contested nature of human communication. Therefore, success in this class will involve not simply memorizing the right answers, but, more importantly, exploring concepts, making critical judgments, and putting different ideas and sometimes difficult ideas together with one another.