COMMUNICOLOGY: Lexicon Definition

n. Communicology is the science of human communication. One of the Human Science disciplines, it uses the research methods of semiotics and phenomenology to explicate human consciousness and behavioral embodiment within global culture. Subdiscipline applications include: (1) Media Communicology—the anthropological, psychological, and sociological analysis of human behavior in the context of electronic media, photography, and telecommunications. (2) Clinical Communicology—a therapeutic focus on (a) communication disorders within the context of speech pathology and audiology or (b) behavioral mistakes caused by pragmatic and semantic misinterpretations. (3) Art Communicology—the study of aesthetic media as cultural transmission and diffusion with particular emphasis on performative creativity, e.g., dance, folklore narrative, music, iconography. and painting. (4) Philosophy of Communicology—the study of communication as the larger context for the explication of language and linguistics, cognitive science, and cybernetics within the philosophical subdisciplines of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and aesthetics. Common originary attribution of the term Communicology is to Wendell Johnson in 1958.

adj. Communicological cognate: Communicologist, a person who studies communicology. archaic cognates:
    Symbology—the science of symbolism in human communication;
    Symbologist—a person who studies symbolism.
    General Semantics—the human science of semantic misunderstanding;
      resolving the semiotic confusion of message meaning and code signification. Etymology: Latin communicatio, from communicatus (past participle of communicare to communicate) + Latin logica, from Greek logik, from feminine of logikos of speech, argumentative, logical, from logos, word, reason, speech, account. Latin/Greek combinatory precedent: Socio + ology [Latin socius + Greek logos] coined by Auguste Comte. Author: Richard L. Lanigan
Date: 12 December 2007
Copyright: Open Source; no restriction.
Citation Form: Richard L. Lanigan, "Communicology: Lexicon Definition" (2007), http://www.communicology.org/def_comm/

Etymology Reference Sources
Key Historical Dates are Shown in Bold Font.

1922. Edmund Husserl, “Syllabus of a Course of Four Lectures on ‘Phenomenological Method and Phenomenological Philosophy’”, JBSP: The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology vol. 1, no. 1, 1970, pp. 18-23. [Trans. of the lecture series syllabus given in German at the University College, London, UK on June 6, 8 9, 12, 1922. In Lecture 1 (p. 18), Husserl says the purpose of the lecture is to explain “transcendental sociological phenomenology having reference to a manifest multiplicity of conscious subjects communicating with one another”. ]

1923. Charles K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and the Science of Symbolism (Reprint: New York: Harcourt, 1946). “[Appendix D, Section 1. Husserl” (pp. 269-272 summarizes the content and translates quotations including the one given above at 1922, p. 18) from Edmund Husserl’s London lectures. The first book in English to discuss Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of communication.]

1923-1996. Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 3 vols. (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer). Vol. 1, Die Sprache (1923); Vol. 2, Das mythische Denken (1925); Vol. 3, Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis (1929). Reprinted: 3 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), trans. Ralph Manheim, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953-1957). Vol. 1, Language (1953); Vol. 2, Mythical Thought (1955); Vol. 3, The Phenomenology of Knowledge (1957). Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen, ed. John Michael Krois, Vol. 1 of Ernst Cassirer, Nachgelassene Manuskripte und Texte, ed. John Michael Krois and Oswald Schwemmer (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1995, trans. John Michael Krois, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). Vol. 4, The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms. [First designation of “Communication” as a Cultural Science.]

1926. Alfred Korzybski, Time-Binding: The General Theory (Lakeville, CN: Institute of General Semantics).

1931. Edward Sapir, “Communication” in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan,), pp. 78-81. Reprint, Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality, ed. David G. Mandelbaum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), pp. 104-109. [First designation of “Communication” as a Human Science.]

1933. Edward Sapir, “Symbolism” in The Psychology of Culture: A Course of Lectures, reconstructed and ed. Judith T. Irvine. (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 219-238.

1933. Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (Lancaster, PA: Science Press; International Non-Aristotelian Library). (Second ed. 1941.)

1934. Karl Bühler, Sprachtheorie. Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1934: reprint 1982; trans. Donald R. Goodwin, Theory of Language: The Representational Function of Language (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990). [The first book in German to analyze Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of communication.]

1939. William Marshall Urban, Language and Reality: The Philosophy of Language and the Principles of Symbolism (New York: Books of Libraries Press / Arno Books, reprint ed. 1971). [The first book in English to analyze Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of communication.]

1946. Wendell Johnson, People in Quandaries: The Semantics of Personal Adjustment (New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers; ISBN: 0918970-27-X). [“Outline of the Process of Communication: Stages, Functions, and Possible Disorders”, pp. 71-81.]

1951. Jürgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson, Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry (New York: W. W. Norton and Co. Inc.) Reprint editions, 1968, 1987. [Table D (p. 277) First designation of the Discipline of Human Communication and its scientific divisions: (1) Intrapersonal, (2) Interpersonal, (3) Group, (4) Cultural.]

1953-1972. Jürgen Ruesch, Semiotic Approaches to Human Relations (Approaches to Semiotics, Vol. 25), (The Hague and Paris: Mouton). [Reprint edition of Ruesch’s collected articles and books in one volume; original sources are given on pages 8-10].

Key articles include:
1953. “Synopsis of the Theory of Human Communication”, pp. 47-94.
1955. “Nonverbal Language and Therapy”, pp. 727-738.
1957. “Principles of Human Communication”, pp. 125-137.
1960. “Mass Communication and Mass Motivation”, pp. 345-353.
1967. “Technology and Social Communication”, pp. 260-276.
1967. “The Social Control of Symbolic Systems”, pp. 277-300.
1969. “Action Models”, pp. 393-412.
1969. “A General Systems Theory Based on Human Communication”, pp. 450-465.

[1958] 1968. Wendell Johnson (1906-1965), “Communicology?”, compiled and edited by Dorothy W. Moeller, ASHA [Journal of the American Speech and Hearing Association] vol. 10, pp. 43-56. [First known use of the term “Communicology” to name the Human Science; influenced by the General Semantics movement originating with Alfred Korzybski [1879-1950] , (see 1926 and 1933 above) at the University of Chicago, USA; see Wendell Johnson 1946 above.] From p. 45: “It [Communicology] was first proposed in 1958 or 1959 in the course of discussions carried on by Kenneth O. Johnson, Raymond Carhart, Wendell Johnson, and various other members of the profession concerned with the need for a suitable single name; subsequently they and others have used the term repeatedly, occasionally in published statements, for example, Jack Matthews” [see 1964 below]. From p.46: “. . . There is a need for a blanket term to serve as a name for the emerging large field represented by the rapidly increasing number of scientists, engineers, scholars, teachers, and clinicians who are distinctively concerned with communication. “Communicology” appears to be a possible name for this field. By means of suitable adjectives the various areas of specialization within the general field could then be indicated. We might speak, for example, of oral communicology, literary communicology, telephonic communicology, mass media communicology—and, if preferred, speech communicology and hearing communicology.” Note: This article chronicles an active discussion of the name Communicology published in various issues of ASHA from September 1959 through November 1966. Wendell Johnson was ASHA President in 1950.

1962-2002. Roman Osipovîch Jakobson, Selected Writings (9 vols.), Vol. 1, Phonological Studies, 1962, 2nd ed. 1971, 3rd ed. 2002; Vol. 2, Word and Language, 1971; Vol. 3, Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry, ed. Stephen Rudy, 1981; Vol. 4, Slavic Epic Studies, 1966; Vol. 5, On Verse, Its Masters and Explorers, ed. Stephen Rudy and Martha Taylor, 1979; Vol. 6, Early Slavic Paths and Crossroads: Part 1 and Part 2, ed. Stephen Rudy, 1985: Vol. 7, Contributions to Comparative Mythology; Studies in Linguistics and Philology, 1972-1982, ed. Stephen Rudy, 1985; Vol. 8, Completion Volume One: Major Works, 1976-1980, ed. Stephen Rudy, 1988; Vol. 9, A Complete Bibliography of his Writings, compiled and ed. Stephen Rudy, 1990. (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). [Unless noted, volumes were edited by Jakobson.]

Key articles include:
1932, 1933, trans. 1976. “Is the Film in Decline?”, vol. 3, pp. 732-739.
1954, 1956, 1957. “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances”, vol. 2, pp. 239-259. [Discusses metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and Semiotics as the general science of signs in communication.]
1956. “Metalanguage as a Linguistic Problem”, vol. 7, pp. 112-121. [First presentation of the Theory of Communication and the diagrammatic model.]
1958, rev. 1959, rev. 1960. “Linguistics and Poetics”, vol. 3, pp. 18-51. [Full presentation of the Theory of Communication at pp. 21-27, diagrams at pp. 22, 27.]
1960, 1963, “Parts and Wholes”, vol. 2, pp. 280-284. [Discusses Husserl’s phenomenology of language.]
1960, 1961. “Linguistics and Communication Theory”, vol. 2, pp. 570-579. [Specifies Communication Theory, the “rhetorical branch of linguistics”, as distinct from mathematical Information Theory.]
1961, 1963. “Implication of Language Universals for Linguistics”, vol. 2, pp. 580-591. [Jakobson notes his defense of, and the necessity for, a phenomenology of language based in the work of Husserl and Marty during his doctoral examination.]
1967. “Linguistics in Relation to Other Sciences”, vol. 2, pp. 655-696. [Cites the importance of Husserl, Sapir, and Bühler.]
1967, 1972. “Language and Culture”, vol. 7, pp. 101-112.
1968. “Language in Relation to Other Communication Systems”, vol. 2, pp. 670-708.
1969. “The Fundamental and Specific Characteristics of Human Language”, vol. 7, pp. 93-97.
1971. “Retrospect” [for the publication of Selected Writing: Word and Language, vol. 2], vol. 2, pp. 711-722. [Chronicles the context in which “phenomenological structuralism” is the appropriate description of his work beginning with Brentano, then Husserl and Anton Marty, along with Sapir and Whorf and the foundational work of Cassirer.]
1972. “Verbal Communication”, vol. 7, pp. 81-92. [Argues for the centrality of C. S. Peirce’s semiotic phenomenology in communication theory.]
1973, 1974. “Communication and Society”, vol. 7, pp. 98-100.
1974, 1975. “A Glance at the Development of Semiotics”, vol. 7, pp. 199-218. [Includes a discussion of Husserl’s “Zur Logik der Zeichen (Semiotik)”, Peirce, and Saussure.]
1975, 1977. “A Few Remarks on Peirce, Pathfinder in the Science of Language’, vol. 7., pp. 248-253.

[1963] 1964. Jack Mathews, “Communicology and Individual Responsibility”, ASHA [Journal of the American Speech and Hearing Association] vol. 6, pp. 3-7. [ASHA Presidential Address, 1963 National Convention; First known use of the term “Communicology” in a journal article; first known use of the term by a professional association president.] From pages 4-5: “As teachers of a future generation of communicologists we must point out our concern with the normal and the deviant of communication; our interest in speech and hearing. We need to make it clear that human communication is dependent upon a coding system and for this reason we are deeply interested in language. Our students must have this broader concept of Communicology. ... Viewed in this context education in semantics and linguistics is no less vital than education in physiology or acoustics if we are to give our students the concept of a broad and unified field of Communicology.]

1966. Émile Benveniste, “Communication” in Problemes de linguistique générale. (Paris: Editions Gallimard); trans. Mary E. Meek as Problems in General Linguistics (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1971), pp. 41-75.

1967. Hubert Griggs Alexander, Language and Thinking: A Philosophical Introduction (New York: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc.). Revised and enlarged edition under the title The Language and Logic of Philosophy, University of New Mexico Press, 1972; reprint edition, University Press of America, Inc., 1988. [Chapter one is “Communication”. The book relies heavily on Cassirer, Whorf, and Sapir, all at Yale University with Alexander.]

1968. Hubert Griggs Alexander, “Communication, Technology, and Culture”, The Philosophy Forum (Special Volume, 4 issues: Communication), Vol. 7, no. 1 (September), pages 1-40.

1971. Gregory Bateson, “Communication” in Interaction and Identity (Information and Behavior, Vol. 5), ed. Harmut B. Mokros (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995), pp. 45-70. Publication of “Chapter 1: Communication” in Norman A. McQuown (ed.), The Natural History of an Interview, pp. 1-40 (Microfilm Collection on Cultural Anthropology, 15th Series; Chicago: University of Chicago, Joseph Regenstein Library, Department of Photoduplications). Translations: (1) “Communication” in Y. Winkin (ed.), La nouvelle communication (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1981), pp. 116-144; (2) “Comunicación” in Norman A. McQuown (ed.), El Microanalisis de entrevistas: Los Methodos de la Historia Natural Aplicados a la investigacion de la sociedad, de la cultura y de la personalidad (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Automa de Mexico, 1983), pp. 69-95.

1972. Roman Osipovîch Jakobson, “Verbal Communication” in Communication (A Scientific American Book), ed. Dennis Flanagan, et al. (San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman and Co.), pp. 37-44. [First published in the September 1972 issue of Scientific American.]

1973-74. Vilém Flusser, “Was ist Kommunikation?” in Kommunikologie, Schriften 4, ed. Vera Eckstein and Stefan Bollmann (Manheim, GR: Bollmann). English trans. “What is Communication” in Vilém Flusser, Writings, ed. Andreas Ströhl, trans. Erik Eisel (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), pp. 3-7.

1974. Elmar Holenstein, Jakobson ou le structuralisme phénoménologique (Paris: Éditions Seghers), trans. C. and T. Schelbert as Roman Jakobson’s Approach to Language: Phenomenological Structuralism, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976).

1976. Edmund Leach, Culture and Communication: The Logic by which Symbols Are Connected; An Introduction to the Use of Structuralist Analysis in Social Anthropology (New York: Cambridge University Press).

1977. Paul Ricoeur, “Phenomenology and the Social Sciences”, The Annals of Phenomenological Sociology vol. 2, pp 145-159. [Discusses the methodological conditions for doing phenomenological research, notably the logic conditions of validity and reliability in which one case is sufficient to confirm a typology for general depiction.]

1978. Joseph A. DeVito. Communicology: An Introduction to the Study of Communication. Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1978), page v. [First textbook to use Communicology in the title.]

1979. Richard L. Lanigan, “The Phenomenology of Human Communication,” Philosophy Today vol. 23, no. 1 (Spring), pp. 3-15.

1979. Robert T. Craig, “Information Systems Theory and Research: An Overview of Individual Information Processing” in Communication Yearbook 3, ed. Dan Nimmo (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books; International Communication Association), pp. 99-121. From page 100: “I suggest that the cognitive science approach offers communicology new ways to study messages and message processes, while communicology offers cognitive science a tradition of concern with transaction, coorientation, and rhetorical forms of communication. The interaction of cognitive science with traditional communicological concerns promises to shed new light on human communication.” From page 116, note 1: “I . . . have tried to write the whole review as a communicologist. . . .”.

1979. Ernst Cassirer, Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer, 1935-1945, ed. Donald Phillip Verene (New Haven: Yale University Press). Italian trans., Simbolo, mito e cultura (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1981); Japanese trans., (Kyoto: Mionerva, 1985).

1982. Richard L. Lanigan, “Semiotic Phenomenology in Plato's Sophist,” Semiotica , 41, nos. 1-4, pp. 221-245.{Reprinted as “Semiotics, Communicology, and Plato's Sophist” in John Deely (Ed.), Frontiers in Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986, pp. 199-216.}

1986-87. Vilém Flusser, “On the Theory of Communication” in Writings, ed. Andreas Ströhl (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002; ISBN-13: 9780816635641 ). pp. 8-20. [Original ms. in English]

1987. Richard L. Lanigan, “Foundations of Communicology as a Human Science,” (Special Series on Foundations of the Human Sciences), The Humanistic Psychologist vol. 15, no. 1 (Spring), pp. 27-37.

1988. Richard L. Lanigan, “From Saussure to Communicology: The Paris School of Semiology” in Hermeneutics and the Tradition (Proceedings of the ACPA, Vol. 62), ed. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Washington, D.C.: American Catholic Philosophical Association), pp. 124-135.

1988. Richard L. Lanigan, Phenomenology of Communication: Merleau-Ponty’s Thematics in Semiology and Communicology (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1988; ISBN: 0-8207-0199-8). Korean trans. DuWon Lee and Kee-soon Park, Seoul, Korea: Naman Publishing House, 1997; ISBN: 89-300-3554-X.

1992. Richard L. Lanigan, The Human Science of Communicology (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press; ISBN: 0-8207-0242-0). 273 pp. [First research report book to use the disciplinary designation Communicology.]

1993. Mehdi Mohsenian Rad, “Communicology: An Innovative Definition and Model for the Communication Process”, Communications [The European Journal of Communication Research/Mouton de Gruyter] vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 331-353. [ISSN: 0341-2059]

1994. Alfred Balk, “Showdown at Communicology Gap”, Nieman Reports [Harvard Business School], vol. 48, no. 4 (Winter), pp. 63-66 [ISSN: 0028-9817, No. 02198588]

1994. Richard L. Lanigan, “Capta Versus Data: Method and Evidence in Communicology,” Human Studies: A Journal for Philosophy and the Social Sciences, 16, no. 4 (October), pp. 109-130; Printer’s Erratum for p. 119 published in Human Studies vol. 17, no. 1 (1994), p. 285. Portuguese trans. “Capta versus Data: Método e Evidência em Comunicologia” Revista “Psicologia: Reflexão & Critica” [Brazil] vol. 10, no. 1( 1997), pp. 17-46.

1994. Richard L. Lanigan, “The Postmodern Ground of Communicology: Subverting the Forgetfulness of Rationality in Language,” (Presidential Address to the Semiotic Society of America) The American Journal of Semiotics vol. 11, nos. 3-4 (1994), pp. 5-21.

1995. Richard L. Lanigan, “Time Binding: The Conjunction of Semiotics and Communicology,” Cruzeiro Semiótico [Portugal], (Special Issue: Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Sebeok), Nos. 22-25 (1995), pp. 325-336.

1997. Richard L. Lanigan, “Communicology” in Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, general ed. Lester Embree (Boston, Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers; ISBN: 0792329562), pp. 104-110. [First encyclopedia entry on Communicology.]

1997. Richard L. Lanigan, “Television: The Semiotic Phenomenology of Communication and the Image” in Semiotics of the Media: State of the Art, Projects, and Perspectives, ed. Winfried Nöth, (No. 127: Approaches to Semiotics), (New York and Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter; ISBN 3110155370), pp. 381-391.

1997. Roland Posner, Klaus Robering, and Thomas A. Sebeok, Semiotik: Ein Handbuck zu den zeichentheoretischen Grundlagen von Natur und Kultur/Semiotics: A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foiundations of Nature and Culture, 4 Vols. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter). [Enrtries are variously in German and English with translated titles in the second language.]

2000. Richard L. Lanigan, “The Self in Semiotic Phenomenology: Consciousness as the Conjunction of Perception and Expression in the Science of Communicology,” The American Journal of Semiotics vols. 15-16, nos. 1-4, pp. 91-111.

2002. Richard L. Lanigan, “The Communicology of the Image”, an article review of Instantanes [Snapshots] by Alain Robbe-Grillet in The American Journal of Semiotics vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 255-265.

2007. Richard L. Lanigan, “Communicology: The French Tradition in Human Science” in Perspectives on the Philosophy of Communication, ed. Pat Arneson (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press; ISBN: 1557534314), pp. 168-184.

2007. Richard L. Lanigan, “The Phenomenology of Embodiment in Communicology” in Phenomenology 2005: Vol. V, Selected Essays from North America, Parts I and II, 5 vols., ed. Lester Embree and Thomas Nenon (Bucharest, Romania: Zeta Books, 2007), pp. 371-398. [e-book edition available from www.zetabooks.com]

2008. Richard L. Lanigan, “Communicology” in International Encyclopedia of Communication (10 vols.), ed. Wolfgang Donsbach (Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing Co.; International Communication Association), 4 pp. in press.