Summary
Contents
Subject index
Written as an introduction for beginning students, this book offers a thorough, yet lively, overview of human communication in all its aspects. Accessibly written and assuming no prior knowledge of the discipline Communication: An Introduction: offers a thorough, yet lively, examination of all aspects of human communication, including: a summary of its nature, form and function; a detailed analysis of all the levels of communication; a description and overview of the different traditions of communication studies; and a consideration of the future of communication - as a phenomenon and as a field of research.
Forms and Levels of Communication: Some Elementary Distinctions
Forms and Levels of Communication: Some Elementary Distinctions
A Communicating Animal
On Our History
Biologists sort animals into a complex typology (see section 1.2.1 above), a hierarchical system of
- phyla, e.g., insects and vertebrates;
- classes, e.g., among vertebrates, fishes, birds and mammals;
- orders, e.g., among mammals, whales, rodents and primates;
- families, e.g., among primates, hominids and monkeys;
- genera, e.g., among hominids, homo and apes;
- species, e.g., among homo, homo neanderthalensis and homo sapiens.
The genus of man (homo), as we know ourselves today, has a history covering about two million years, an immense evolutionary process starting even two million years earlier, when a group of now extinct hominids rose for good on their hind legs, so that the front paws could be used for other tasks than walking ...
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