In the late 1700s, Immanuel Kant had his first attempt to investigate the ground from which human knowledge established certain limits by investigating the structures of the human mind. In Kant’s (1781) Critique of Pure Reason, he argued that knowledge does not just come from experience but also from impressions created from the faculty of knowledge or a priori, which is independent of all experience. Meanwhile, Kant’s theory of perception insists “imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself” (Kant, 1965, p.120). It appears therefore, that impressions tend to produce images through the receptive sensible capacities of the mind, insisting the importance of imagination in perception. Communication scholars should understand this theory of Kant, as it gives them the capacity to distinguish imaginative from perceptual activities whenever they write something, which allows them to distinguish between fact and fiction, or that which is pure imagination.
In the book that Tim Muehihof (2010) wrote, he reiterated the words of Sonja Foss when he wrote that: “Rhetoric does not simply provide a name for a situation [but] represents a creative strategy for dealing with that situation or for solving the problems inherent in it” (p.137). With this, communication refers also to the cultural context of the situation that, in a manner, instructs the readers how to maneuver through life by what they have learned from the written context. Thus, there is great cultural communication lesson to be taken in the writings of Muehihof (2010), as it pertains that words are not just letters being written or spoken but that they have the power to affect the environment or the framework. As Muehlhoff & Lewis (2010) reiterated from Foss, words may provide “a vocabulary of thoughts, actions, emotions, and attitudes for codifying and thus interpreting a situation” (p.137). Thus, pure observance becomes more of a reality because of the power of words.
Lastly, it is important to view communication through the lens of social constructionism or the Constructivist framework, since meaning also arises from social systems and not just from people of the society (Allen, 2005, p.35). In social constructionism, it is reflected that humans create knowledge through social practices in which they insist on constructing a world based on how they perceive the surroundings. They learn about certain phenomena related to the society, such as gender, race, and social class—things that are said to be “natural, inevitable, universal, and biologically determined” (Allen, 2005, p.36). In this lens of social constructionism, people would understand that communication is more than just the use of words but also about interpreting the society.
References:
Allen, B.J. (2005). “Chapter 3: Social constructionism.” In S. May & D.K. Mumby’s (Eds.), Engaging organizational communication theory research: multiple perspectives (pp.35-50). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. Print.
Kant, I. (1965). Critique of pure reason. (N.K. Smith, Trans.) New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Print.
Muehlhoff, T., & Lewis, T.V. (2010). “Chapter 7: Communicating about and evaluating the messages of popular culture.” Authentic communication: Christian speech engaging culture (pp.131-145). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Print.
