Communication Case

Communication is the key to human existence. It has allowed us to grow, learn, build, and survive day to day. There have been different ways that humans communicate with each other such as talking, body language, or sign language. The purpose of this paper is to explain the different theories of communication. Theories I have selected to inform the reader are dramatism, rhetoric and relational dialectics.

Dramatism is a very complex theory with a very interpretive perspective. The basic idea is that everything in life can be viewed as drama, complete with a plot, actors, setting etc. It also describes the lenses, in which we can view life as identification. Dramatism claims that the communicator must act as if he or she were an actor in a drama, where they are trying to get the audience to accept their view of reality as true. The communicator must try to identify with the audience members through various means to gain acceptance. The dramatistic pentad of act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose is the critic's tool to discover a speaker's motive. The ultimate motive of rhetoric is the purging of guilt. Without audience identification with the speaker, there is no persuasion.

The best example of this I could think of was when I was sitting in a lecture my freshman year at De Anza College, and the professor was going on and on about Shakespeare and something I wasn't really interested in. Then he explained how as an undergrad he hated studying Shakespeare, especially the play we were looking at. He told a story about how someone explained it to him in a different way, and afterwards he fell in love with it. After he told that, I identified with how, yes, I hated studying it, but the second explanation definitely cast a different light on the play. The theory of Burke 's dramatism provides another view of rhetoric analysis of symbolisms that have been utilized in the society.

Rhetoric is the art and study of the use of language with persuasive effect. This provides more dimensions for the communication process to make it clear and understandable. This theory says that communication process is not a single process or it is not a linear process. It is not like just to send message and receive it but it is a continuous circular process. The whole communication process is dynamic according to the rhetorical theory. The rhetorical theory adds more things to the communication process. Many people in the business do not take care of accuracy of the message, which is very important aspect of communication.

The theory of Relational Dialectics is the intimate communication that takes place in close relationships. Baxter and Montgomery developed this theory in the late 1980's and the early 1990's. There are many different aspects of this theory such as the push-me-pull-you dialectics of close relationships. This is basically the idea that the closer you become with someone the more problems or conflicts