10.1: Communication Literacy

in this course, we've learned that Communication Studies is one of the oldest fields of study. We’ve learned that messages and Rhetoric are at the core of the field. And we've learned that communication scholarship focuses on both public messaging meant for mass or public consumption and relational communication that exists between individuals in both private and public relationships. One of the key things we must then consider is whether core aspects of communication and the study of communication have changed over time, or if we are still performing the same basic communicative roles and analyses that were observed by the earliest people in the field.

Communication Studies: The Academic Field

You'll note that at the heart of this course is the idea of messages. In communication studies we look at how messages function in multiple contexts. We've looked at things like power and hegemonic influences on messages. We've also looked at how messages are not always received the way they were sent...that author intent is not always carried out. And therefore we've studied a variety of things that can impact messages.

A number of students take communication courses as part of their degree programs, both as majors in communication and as required coursework in other fields. This is because communication skills and communication literacy are necessary for most academic and job fields. Take a look at the following video from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte's Career Center, and you can get a brief discussion of some of the many careers available with a communications degree.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): "2014 NASA Goddard Video, Animation and Journalism Fellowships" by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Think about the messages that you send out about yourself on a daily basis. Do you always present the person you want people to see? Do you always choose the best public identity? Who are the people who should see your private identity? Do you put the wrong aspects of yourself up on Facebook or Twitter for the world (and potential employers) to see?

Communication Processes: Reality Construction

We’ve looked at Rhetoric as the art of speech and persuasion, and learned about rhetoric as a field that has more than 2,000 years of history. We’ve also discussed the relationship between Rhetoric and philosophy, and how among the earliest scholars associated with this field are the Sophists and other ancient Greeks such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. We deepened that discussion by considering how Rhetoric is applied to understanding symbolic truths including the labels, arguments and rhetoric used to construct social realities: what we call the Rhetorical Construction of Reality.

Building on that Rhetorical framework, this course then looked at the various fields of Communication Studies which evolved from that original Rhetorical approach. We investigated how the field is constructed around the concept of messages, and how messages are studied from three perspectives: as text, as texture, and as part of a context. These perspectives then lend themselves to the three research paradigms that are most often used in Communication Studies:

• Behaviorism
• Interpretivism
• Critical Theory

With that basic understanding of communication out of the way, we investigated how communication studies, as a field, operates in several sub-fields that revolve around specific communication contexts. These sub-fields or communication contexts include:

• Identity
• Culture
• Relationships
• Media
• Digital Communication

You probably noticed that there were several constant themes that ran throughout all of the modules. First, messages are not always received the same way that they are sent out. This is, in fact, one of the primary reasons that we need to study communication processes. Second, messages are composed of symbols, both symbols of language and nonverbal ones. Therefore, we learned that symbolic interaction and the rhetorical construction of reality are the bases for human communication practice, and therefore a key element of what we study in Communication.

Take a look at the following video from Monash University Malaysia's Communications and Media Studies Program, and you will see an example of how many academic programs frame the need for communication literacy in today's marketplace.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): "Higher Education Chalkboard" by bluefield_photos is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Communication Literacy: Applied Critical Thinking

Consider the following definition from Texas Tech University (2017) regarding their graduation requirement: Communication Literacy:

To be effective leaders, workers, and citizens—whether in the arts, government, health care, information services, industry, education, or anything else—college graduates must possess the ability to communicate effectively. That is, they must possess communication literacy.

Above all, communication literacy is about competence and proficiency; the attainment of both entails fostering a critical understanding of how communication functions in different contexts, appreciating its uniquely transactional nature, adapting messages to situations and audiences, and communicating in ways that are ethically and socially responsible in a diverse global society.

This definition illustrates the need for humans to understand messages and messaging, and to understand how we construct our reality through communicative practices.

References

Texas Tech University. (2017, January 19). Curriculum: Communication literacy requirement. Retrieved from https://www.depts.ttu.edu/provost/cu...racy/index.php