This course is about communication on various levels. Over these 9 weeks we will cover a number of theories, cases and applications in the field of communication science. We will start with the foundational concepts of communication theory, defining what the theory is and going through a number of approaches to communication itself. Each week you will have a test to check on your progress and understanding. We also have a final text in the end of the course and a little bit of writing. As Oscar Wilde said, if you cannot write, you cannot think. If you cannot think, others will do thinking for you. So we find writing and reflecting pretty important for our classes. Along the course we provide you with in-class materials: lecture presentations, articles and additional readings. If you really want to get into the topic, don’t avoid this extra work. Although a substantial part of this course is theory-based, communication theory has a very practical application. Communication is an underlying process which creates and develops relationships, communities, societies. We communicative on a daily basis via a variety of means and channels. In our globalised and increasingly interconnected world, communication skills are essential in both the personal and professional spheres. It is our goal to leave you with a contextualisation and conceptualisation of communicative processes that will poise you to hone your own communicative skills — in other words, to put theory into practice.
Narrative Paradigm
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來自 National Research University Higher School of Economics 的課程
Communication theory: bridging academia and practice
7 個評分
National Research University Higher School of Economics
7 個評分
從本節課中
Public Rhetoric and Persuasion
The main focus of this lecture is to introduce student to the field of rhetorics. This class focuses at theoretical approaches to persuasion and the ways how to craft messages that influence the audience. Here we discuss approaches to the public speaking and online communication.
與講師見面
Olga SolovyevaLecturer
Integrated Communications Department, Faculty of Communication, Media and Design
Maria MordvinovaHead of BA Program in PR and Advertising
Integrated Communications Department, Faculty of Communication, Media and Design
Welcome back. In the previous parts,
we discussed what rhetoric is,
how to craft quite a persuasive message,
and we focused on T theories,
the elaboration likelihood model,
and the theory of planned behavior.
The theory of planned behavior refer to the way how we can shape
individual's behavior on the basis of their attitudes, and the norms,
the social norms, as the predictors
for the intention formation and their following behavior,
as well as the controllability as a key factor which
allows an individual to perform or not to perform the particular action.
Elaboration likelihood model was focusing on the way how these attitudes are shaped,
and how they can be changed through the processing of
the information within the central route and or within the peripheral route.
What was defining and what was common for these two theories?
First of all, that all these theories would see an individual as quite a rational person.
And this person would be thinking out through carefully what is his or her intention.
And he would understand the major motivations as,
all together, people who are planning
their communicative campaign would try to understand their motivations.
But maybe there can be something irrational in our nature.
Maybe we do like something else.
Let's take a look at the narrative paradigm which was proposed by Walter Fisher.
And as Fisher wants to answer the main question,
what is the essence of the human nature?
He tells us that people are storytelling animals.
So people are narrative beings, claims Fisher,
who experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives,
as conflict, characters, beginnings, middles and ends.
So we don't really communicate.
In fact, we don't really communicate our opinions,
we do tell each other the stories about different aspects of our life.
It's all about the phatic communication as Fisher claims.
Phatic communication is devoted to communication aimed at maintaining relationship,
rather than passing along information or saying something new.
So this approach is close to what we really think of communication,
as we don't rationally test these or other goals.
We do think about the relationship.
We do think about negotiated meaning and creating our social realities,
along with the way how do we process the communication.
So through this phatic communication,
storytelling would be quite essential.
As the only form of the information presented for me,
I can properly understand would be the story.
You probably have already noticed that when you
were in class and the teacher would provide you
with the many bright examples on how these or other thing particularly works,
it would be easier for you to comprehend.
There are different types and different means of communication.
The written text and the spoken speech are quite different,
and they are not to be used vice versa.
So storytelling as an essential part underline the fact we create
our communication and move it towards the new level which would be comprehended easier.
And let's take a look now at the conceptual frames of
the narrative paradigm as Fisher brings us
five key terms which we're going to navigate with.
So the first one is narration.
Narration is symbolic actions,
words or deeds that have sequence and meaning for those who live,
create, or interpret them.
So basically, this is all about our speech.
This is all about our story.
This is what he calls the narration.
Paradigm in this case is a conceptual framework,
a universal model that calls for people
to view events through a common interpretive lens.
This is why the whole approach is called narrative paradigm.
So this is quite an ambitious goal,
and it's all about trying to provide
a proper explanation for the very large scale phenomenon.
Basically, Fisher says that he can explain all of us
communicating in a different way through this framework, through this approach.
This structure would provide a comprehensive explanation of the creation,
composition, adaptation, presentation, and reception of the symbolic messages.
Yes, we do need to remember that messages as symbolic as the stories are.
We don't usually tell the plot just in order to tell the plot,
we always want to communicate something more important for us,
some of our ideas.
And me telling you this story about what happened with me in
the metro wouldn't be exactly the story I want to communicate.
It's not just the sequence of actions.
So for example, I went down to the metro
today and I stepped accidentally on someone's feet,
and this person would behave very aggressively towards me.
It's not just for me complaining about what happened,
it's me trying to open the topic of how
the aggressive behavior should be perceived in the public spaces.
This is me recalling for your pity,
and I want you to be empathetic for me,
and I don't know,
to help me somehow out here.
So these stories are symbolic.
Why I'm telling this story and showing that I was not
aggressive towards this lady in the particular case,
that would tell you something about me.
So it would have some other meaning unless just
the set of events which happened one by one.
All the stories which we tell should follow the law of narrative rationality.
Narrative rationality refers to the way to evaluate
the worth of stories based on the twin standards
of narrative coherence and narrative fidelity.
What are these narrative coherence and narrative fidelity?
Well, narrative coherence is
the internal consistency with characters acting in the reliable fashion.
So when I hear this story I will believe you,
and it somehow reflects with what I see usually.
And this internal consistency we go smoothly,
and the story goes smoothly,
and nothing interrupts the internal components of the story.
Narrative fidelity refers to the congruence between values embedded in the message,
and what listeners regard as truthful and humane.
So basically this is me trying to apply your story on my own experiences and my values,
in order to understand it clearly and to summarize it clearly.
So if the story has this characteristic of narrative rationality,
we would presume this story as truthful,
and we would go under this logic.
But it's quite obvious that if the story is solid and it goes smoothly,
you would be understood quite wise.
But this narrative paradigm's assumption would
go quite on the contrary with the rational world assumptions.
In the very beginning,
there was the word and it was logos.
And as we discussed about the Ancient Greek, about the rhetoric,
rhetoric fell somewhere between logos,
practical speech, and the pure logic.
On the other hand,
we had emotional stories and it was trying to somehow to balance them.
But now as we are moving towards the modern ages, modern times,
as we already discussed as well,
we do want some testimony,
we do want to follow the logic.
And we tend to think that the good speech would be logical,
clear, with solid arguments.
So here Fisher proposes that it doesn't have to be this way always.
And here in this table,
we can see the summary of the differences between two approaches,
the narrative paradigm proposed by Fisher,
and the rational world paradigm.
So to understand it more clear,
narrative paradigm sees people as storytellers.
And for rational world paradigm,
while people are pretty much rational, communication,
persuasion, and decision based on the logic of
the good reason is essential for the narrative paradigm.
The good reason is something that reflects our world and reflects our values,
as well as it goes smoothly and fails under the law of this narrative rationality.
So basically, the logic of good reason and the logic
of going with the flow with the and each story would be more important for us,
rather than on the other hand our arguments and the embedded logic within the message.
Culture, character, and experiences,
they somehow shape the good reasons,
these reasons that would be good for us.
So our background is quite essential,
and Fisher claims that we do need to consider the individual's background,
and their personal characteristics to understand and to craft the message
which would feed for their perception and not for a perception of someone else.
Rational world paradigm on the other hand,
relies on strong arguments for scientists and logic.
Basically, it doesn't have to break down
the initial path on how do we communicate what our idea is.
The next point here is,
that rationality is based on consistency and truthfulness compared to the own experience.
This is this phenomenological approach.
This is where I want to understand what I am thinking,
and what was my experience.
Do I find some sort of proof in my own life or do I not?
If I do find some sort of proof from my own experience,
this message would be more powerful and it would influence me rather not influence.
Rational world paradigm acknowledges the accuracy of
information and reliability of reasoning.
Well now it sounds quite boring.
Yes this is true.
We need to be accurate with the new information,
but maybe we don't have to rely on it all the time.
And the last one, is that our experience is for
narrative paradigms are our stories to create and recreate the reality.
So do you remember this social constructivism approach?
We are communicating, we are interacting with each other so
we can provide a solid understanding of what the world is,
what do we call different things and different issues.
And we do tell those through the stories.
Rational world paradigm sees world and reality
as the logical relationship revealed through a reasoned argument.
Once again, it sounds pretty boring.
Still, in order to understand and in order to craft a very influential message,
we need to somehow combine both of the approaches.
The rational world model holds that only experts are capable of presenting
or screening sound arguments that the narrative paradigm maintains that,
armed with a beat of the common sense,
almost anyone of us can be a good referee,
and can create a good story,
and judge its merits as the basis of
the beliefs and the actions which are presented in the story.
So the good story goes along with the logic of the good reason.
What is the good reason? First of all,
values should be embedded in the message.
Secondly, we need to reveal those values to the decision made.
So the story would sound quite coherent.
It would somehow be flagged on
the information presented and the outcomes of the information presented.
We should keep in mind the consequence of adhering to those values.
So somehow, the story which never end,
each should has its message in the very end.
The story would overlap with the world view of the audience.
This is why we do need to know what our target audience is,
or what our audience is in general when we are presenting a public speech.
The conformity with what the audience members believe is an ideal basis for conduct.
So basically, if we will present our audience something they would initially believe,
that would be quite successful.
But for this, we need to do and drive out our research quite carefully.
So summarizing here, the good story is
quite a powerful means of the persuasion accordance with narrative paradigm of Fisher.
School would remind us however,
that almost all communication is a narrative and
that we evaluate it on the basis of the narration.
And adding a little bit here to
our rational approach to the attitudes formation and the behavioral intention,
the power of narration and the power of
the good reason might be quite useful for persuasive communication.
