The pragmatic perspective would in fact make sense to think of as a patterned interaction. Going deep into detail about communicating; you look at your phone, find the person, write or send your message, and wait for them to respond. If you don't hear or see a response you look at your phone again and see if they've responded. You do this over and over until your read the response, send your response back and wait for them again. Until one person stops, it's usually the person who's turn it is to respond.
I do think of it as a game as well, kind of like most games played today, you both get a chance to go, you wait for your partner to go and when the other person has a chance to respond, you play your part to return the favor, and it goes on and on until one loses (or fails to respond.) In any way someone communicates, I think of it as a game, whether they are trying to win an audiences attention or cheering in a grand stands at a race or game. Trying to beat their oppenents by helping out who they are communicating with.
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I like your analogy of texting. I wrote my blog about face to face conversations. I did not even think about our cell phones. Texting is definitely a big conversation tool for many people today. I see the connection between texting and games, a lot more obvious than verbal conversation. There is definitely an A and B, back and forth motion. Typically one sends a message and waits for response; then reply's to the response. I really like that texting enforces what the book says about that communication must be between at least two people. You can't text yourself, just like you can't have a conversation with yourself.
ReplyDeleteWhen you phrase it that way, it does make sense to think of it as a kind of game or back-and-forth. I guess I had a hard time seeing it this way because I think of communication as a process constantly occurring. You are always sending a message through your body language and nonverbals, and you are also constantly receiving input from the environment. I wasn't thinking of communication as isolated incidences. But I think I can see where you are coming from with the text messaging example. The pattern aspect of the theory definitely makes sense to me more than the “game” analogy though. Although, it still is hard to characterize something as vast as communication.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who communicates primarily through electronic means, I’ve been very curious to find out how all of these different communication means have thrown wrenches into the study of communication. The most poignant example was when the book was describing two people playing a game, and if one person doesn’t respond then they’re not playing. Well that may work with face to face communications, but what about instant messaging, emails, and text messaging? I mean there could be any number of reasons why the receiver didn’t actually get the message. Their phone could have died, the message was improperly addressed, or they just started driving and did the responsible thing and began ignoring their cell phone. Does this mean that the person isn’t interested in the conversation, or only that their interest is delayed until they are better able to formulate a response?
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