Some Concepts and Axioms about Communication

Written Communication Jan 1994

Some Concepts and Axioms about Communication

DAVID S. KAUFER ; KATHLEEN CARLEY

Abstract

An important element of written and other technological forms of communication is that they accommodate “distance” between sender and receiver in a way proximate communication does not. Despite its importance, the notion of distance has remained pretty much undeveloped in theories of written communication, and the reference points for developing it have remained scattered across various, often noninteractive, literatures such as social theory, network theory, knowledge representation, and postmodernism. Synthesizing across these diverse literatures, we formulate a set of concepts and axioms that lays down some baselines for the general communication context, proximate or at a distance. Our baseline concepts include, among others, relative similarity, signature, reach, and concurrency. We then move beyond these baselines to concepts and axioms that accommodate the specialized distance characteristics of written (also print and electronic) communication. These concepts include asynchronicity, durability, and multiplicity. We conclude by discussing how these concepts and axioms matter to (a) the theoretical modeling of proximate and written systems of communication (including print and electronic systems); and (b) the educational challenge of teaching communication at a distance in the proximate space of the writing classroom.

Journal: Written Communication
Published: 1994-01-01
DOI: 10.1177/0741088394011001003
Open Access: Closed
Topics: multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (4)

Duin (1998)

The culture of distance education: Implementing an online graduate level course…

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GUNNARSSON (1997)

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GURAK (1996)

Technology, Community, and Technical Communication on the Internet

Journal of Business and Technical Communication

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