This chapter was packed with tons of useful information, the majority of which I hadn’t known previously. Firstly, I found it interesting that communication as a field of study isn’t universally defined or consistently taught. Although it’s hard to come up with a fitting definition of communication, I had still assumed that all communication studies would be taught in a standardized way. The authors explained that one’s understanding of communication can vary depending on the person, as well as the university they attend, and the professor teaching them. However, trying to understand communication through a foundational lens of relationships helped my understanding greatly. One thing that I found particularly helpful was when the author’s explained that much of our differences in the way we understand communication comes from the differences in the way that communication has been recorded throughout history. The authors made sure to point out that all subgroups of communication will have different perspectives and care about different aspects of the topic, meaning that history is likely to be recalled differently in each case.
Another thing that I also found interesting was to discover how closely related the field of social psychology is to communication. Toward the end of the chapter when the authors discussed the different areas of communication studies, I found that many of the branches including cultural, family, and group communication, related closely to what I’ve learned in my Social Psychology class. Taking this perspective into account, I was very interested in the interpretive approach to studying communication as it is one that considers the biases that we all carry. I also appreciated that this approach seeks detailed qualitative data, and that researchers are able to observe communication in natural contexts.
