Presentation English
‘A cultural Approach to Communication’

SUMMARY
James W. Carey describe, in his book ‘Communication as Culture, two conceptions of communication. Namely a transmission view of communication and a ritual view of Communication.

The transmission view of communication
The transmission view of communication is de commonest in our culture. It is defined by terms such as “imparting”, “sending”, “transmitting” or “giving information to others”. In the nineteenth century were ‘the movement of goods or people’ and ‘the movement of information’ both described by the common noun “communication”. The center of this idea of communication is the transmission of signals or messages over distance for the purpose of control.

The roots of the transmission view of communication, in our culture at least, lie in essentially religious attitudes. The moral meaning of transportation was the establishment and extension of God’s Kingdom on earth. The moral meaning of communication was the same. By the middle of the nineteenth century the telegraph broke the identity of communication and transmission. The new technology entered not as a mundane fact, but as divinely inspired for the purpose of spreading the Christian message farther and faster. The new technology of communication came to be seen as the ideal device for the conquest of space and population.

Soon, as the forces of science and secularization gained ground, the obvious religious metaphors fell away and the technology of communication itself moved to the center of thought. Communication was viewed as a process and a technology that would, sometimes for religious purpose, spread, transmit, and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and information farther and faster with the goal of controlling space and people.

The historic religious undercurrent has never been eliminated from our thought.

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