Reconstructing Communicating: Looking To A Future

by Penman,Robyn

• ISBN13: 9780805836486
• ISBN10: 0805836489
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-07-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In this innovative and potentially controversial book, Penman examines the future of communication as a discipline. She foresees a time in which communicating is conceived as a social construction process, in the anticipation that this will allow a genuine practical response to contemporary social problems. The book sets out a map toward accomplishing that future--laying the foundations for a different way of conceiving of communication, enabling direct action, rather than just theorizing about it. It begins with a history illustrating how the communication discipline has arrived to where it is today and then goes on to demonstrate Penman's conception of communication. Reconstructing Communicating is an exploration of what it means to inquire into communicating; to treat communicating as the essential problematic of concern; and to recognize that we construct our reality in our communicating. In undertaking this exploration, the author pursues a central theme of what constitutes good communicating and good communication research. Arguments throughout this book provide a radical departure from mainstream communication studies and especially from the rationalist's quest for truth and scientific knowledge. A way of acting in good faith is offered, both with the process of communicating and with the participants in it, that generates practical understandings for constructing new futures. Designed for communication scholars and graduate students primarily in organizational communication, public relations, and communication theory, this book will also interest those in management and business as it deals with practical communication issues.

Author Biography

Robyn Penman is executive Director for the Communication Research Institute of Australia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Communicating matters	1	(11)
Imagining communicating	2	(4)
A discontinuous leap into a different realm	6	(2)
The reconstruction process	8	(4)
Understanding context	12	(18)
Contemporary context and challenges	13	(4)
Historical legacies to be exorcised	17	(9)
Looking to the future	26	(4)
Communicating in a different game	30	(14)
Being in language	31	(5)
Making sense in communicating	36	(5)
Communicating	41	(3)
Understanding where we are---in communicating	44	(20)
Knowing and experiencing	45	(6)
Finding our way about	51	(4)
Reconstruing the classic questions	55	(7)
Doing it wisely	62	(2)
Judging with moral import, in good faith	64	(18)
A basis for judging	65	(5)
Evaluating communicating	70	(9)
Using the creteria	79	(3)
The Possibility of dialogue	82	(17)
Understandings of dialogue	83	(5)
Dialoguing	88	(6)
Dialoguing as practicial inquiry	94	(5)
Research practices	99	(16)
Research positions	100	(4)
Research questions and accomplishments	104	(8)
Research judgments	112	(3)
Research tools	115	(18)
Preparatory tools	116	(6)
Doing it----tools of the moral hero	122	(5)
Telling of---tools of the author	127	(6)
Practical inquiry in our daily lives	133	(18)
An inquiry into the possibility of dialogue	134	(6)
An inquiry into information needs in a medical context	140	(4)
Constructing futures	144	(7)
References	151	(10)
Author index	161	(4)
Subject index	165	(4)
About the author	169