Here goes my last post of the semester! — “Every act of communication–whether personal or mediated–is affected by and contributes to large cultural forms and patterns. We forget, for example, that what we perceive, how we understand, and how we act are very much shaped by the language, customs, and values of our culture” (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel, 2017). We know that our individual culture has shaped the way we are today, and that’s what makes each and every one of us so unique in our own ways.

In my case, I’ve played sports and have worked in sports in my life up until now, and I can honestly say that I have engulfed myself into the culture of sport. I am able to walk into a sporting event or athletic office and fit in because of the vast knowledge that I’ve acquired through the years, either participating or working in sports. As the authors state (2017), “Culture is any group of social significance in which members share elements of identity and communication patterns to varying degrees; people have different subjective experiences of these elements” (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel, 2017).

When trying to interpret culture, it is commonly referred to as ethnography. The chapter introduces three theories when scholars look at types of interpretation and construction of cultural communication, including: (1) cultural hermeneutics; (2) ethnography of communication; and (3) performance ethnography, in which I decided to look into further. British cultural anthropologist, Victor Turner, saw much in common between theatre and everyday cultural life. “Like actors, we say our lines as we perform with our bodies” (Littlejohn, et al., 2017).

Turner explains that public performances in a culture are like social dramas, in which sporting events are a perfect example. As the chapter states (2017), the teams come together in competition, creating a breach (threat to order). As the teams play and make gains against one another, a “spirit of crisis” arises and fans take sides. Rules, officials, time-outs, team huddles, and coaching all offer moments of redressive action, as the teams and fans deal with the crisis in a variety of ways. A game normally ends with both teams shaking hands and fans from both teams possibly hanging out after the game. “These performances, then, are more than just games… they teach us about competition, collaboration, loyalty, and a host of other values important to a culture (Littlejohn, et al., 2017).

I am thankful that sports has taught me all those things and has definitely been a huge part in shaping who I am today. So here’s one of my favorite pictures of me and one of my favorite teammates that I got the pleasure of playing beside for a year because she also taught me important values that have stuck with me for the last three years… and this picture displays the support she ALWAYS gave me (love you KP)!

Littlejohn, Stephen W., et al. Theories of Human Communication. Waveland Press, Inc., 2017.

What an interesting chapter — it honestly had me all up in my feelings, thinking about my own personal health in relation to health communication. The chapter states, “Health communication is an important element for both prevention and treatment; it is exchange of symbolic messages related to personal, organizational, and public health. Personal health relates to communication with family, friends, and clinical providers” (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel, 2017).

For this post, I’d like to focus on the social support theory that’s explained in the chapter as follows (in my own words): social support helps to lighten the impacts of stressors that bother us every day by providing resources and coping avenues to help rid of stressors.

I relate with this theory so much — sometime after my grandmother passed in 2015, I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression after reaching a very low point in my life; I couldn’t deal with her passing as well as I thought. If you can believe it, my mother has been the strongest one that has helped me through. Through her support, she suggested that I talk to someone, which led to my current volleyball coach at college to refer me to a counselor on campus.

My depression had taken over — it showed in my grades, my attitude, and my performance on the court. Today, with the continued support I receive from friends and family helps, as the chapter says, they all “aid, assistance, and comfort” me to continue to control what I’ve been living with for three years now.

So here’s an old picture of my beautiful angel and I (and may I add, I found this as I was packing all my crap to move down to Charlotte… she’s always with me).

Littlejohn, Stephen W., et al. Theories of Human Communication. Waveland Press, Inc., 2017.

Side note: If you’re wondering, we weren’t required to write posts on chapters 7 & 8, so here’s my chapter 9 analysis:

The chapter states, “Organizations consist of human beings, after all, and every organization has a certain tone, attitude, or feel to it. Further organizations are constructed in different ways depending on goals, attitudes, and principles” (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel, 2017). So think of the organizations in your life that you are individually a part of — for me, I’m a member of Queens University of Charlotte Athletics (along with being a graduate student), and I’m employed at Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Both organizations involve sports (of course, why would I be involved with something non-sports related) which are both comfortable work settings for me, where I am able to communicate well with my coworkers/customers. I have sport information knowledge, as well as knowledge about individual sports for sales purposes. This goes to show that I’m able to communicate well in a sports-related environment wherever I go in life (and I wouldn’t have it any other way; a life without sports is a life I don’t want to live!).

Getting back to the chapter, it introduced the network theory, in which Noshir Contractor and Peter Monge believe networks emerge from communication connections among people, serve a variety of functions, and make possible different network roles (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel, 2017). This makes me think about how I stay connected with the organization (and my favorite professional football team) the Buffalo Bills.

The network they’ve created, especially in social media, helps me stay connected with what is happening in the organization, along with live updates on games and events the team is involved in. Fans are also able to communicate with each other on these multiple mediums, which expands their network even further.

So here’s a picture of my sister and I at a preseason game on my birthday since we won BIG today! (GO BILLS!)

Littlejohn, Stephen W., et al. Theories of Human Communication. Waveland Press, Inc., 2017.

How do you communicate with people every day? On your phone, face-to-face, through social media… this is what chapter five describes as “the medium” — our channel for communicating with others (Littlejohn, Foss, Oetzel, 2017).

I decided to focus in on the new media theory here because it refers to the world we live in today. It describes that “Web 2.0  and related technologies have unique features that have changed the way people communicate with each other” (Littlejohn, Foss, Oetzel, 2017). It’s no secret that the addition of social media has seriously changed how we communicate with our friends, family, and colleagues. For example, this is my first time ever having a blog, which adds another medium where I get to communicate with my classmates and other readers. And I wouldn’t even be able to have this blog without the help of the internet. But of course the new media that we have today are not the same as face-to-face interaction, but they provide new forms of interaction that bring us back into personal contact in ways that older media could not do, the chapter states.

I have my bestie and I pictured here because if it wasn’t for technology I wouldn’t have been able to attend her wedding this past summer. We met through AAU when we were in high school and haven’t lost contact since! Having multiple ways to communicate with her (on the phone, in a text, or through social media) have kept our friendship going! I’m so blessed that I was able to witness her marry her best friend — thank you technology for giving me multiple avenues to stay in contact with awesome people in my life!

Littlejohn, Stephen W., et al. Theories of Human Communication. Waveland Press, Inc., 2017.

This chapter was interesting to me because it really went into depth about how we communicate the way we do to better help understand why we communicate a certain way. Obviously everyone communicates differently, but there is one constant stated in the book: you bring yourself to the encounter, meaning you most often look at the situation from your own perspective as a communicator (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel, 2017).

There are five major groups of theories that each offer a different way communication scholars focus on the communicator, including: (1) the biophysiological; (2) cognitive and information processing; (3) communication competence; (4) theories of identity; and (5) theories of agency (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel, 2017). I decided to rein in on the first category, biophysiological.

Within the biophysiological theories, the chapter describes embodiment which refers to theories that consider the body as central to communication, which I thought was pretty cool. Specifically, communicology (hopefully it’s hard for you to pronounce the first time too) is the study of human discourse. The founder of the theory, Isaac Catt, argues that the body is more than mere substance but is a perceiving and expressing channel of discourse. The body is then an expressive and perceptive point of mediation between the person and the cultural signs and codes of discourse in the larger society (Littlejohn et al., 2017).

A quote that stuck out to me about this theory was “the emergence of and understanding of the self as a communicator happens in the act of coming to consciousness about and sharing experience with others” (Littlejohn et al., 2017). This is so true in that we as humans communicate with each other every day, therefore we learn from each other every day by sharing what we’ve individually experienced in our lives. I have my best friends and I pictured here at a Bills game (GO BILLS) to show that all three of us are different in means of the way that we communicate (i.e. our faces in this pic). But above all we are able to share our experiences with each other to help each other grow as individual communicators (especially learning new facial expressions in our case).

Littlejohn, Stephen W., et al. Theories of Human Communication. Waveland Press, Inc., 2017.

First and foremost, I have to share this quote from chapter one that stuck out to me right off the bat: “Communication is one of those everyday activities intertwined with all of human life so completely that we sometimes overlook its pervasiveness, importance, and complexity” (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel, 2017).

How freaking true is that! We take communication for granted sometimes, and don’t understand or appreciate the importance of it. For example, I have my best friend and I (pictured at Crowder’s Mtn. when she came to visit me) in this entry to show that we never take communication for granted because no matter the 650 mile distance, we never lose contact and I’ll always be thankful for that! But I know that for others that’s not always the same case, and even for me sometimes in certain situations!

In chapter one, Stephen Littlejohn, Karen A. Foss and John G. Oetzel (2017) explain that we need to treat communication as central to human life — I couldn’t agree more. He explains that there’s so many ways to define communication, which makes sense to me. Communication theory helps us see things we’ve never seen before and helps us understand things about our communication that we couldn’t explain before…which led me into chapter two.

In this chapter, I explored the four typologies used for organizing theories into larger frameworks to make sense of the discipline of communication as an area of inquiry (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel, 2017). I resonated most with Robert Craig’s approach to organizing theories, specifically one of the seven traditions he describes when dividing the world of communication theory, the cybernetic tradition. This tradition is the tradition of complex systems in which interacting elements influence one another (Littlejohn et al., 2017). Isn’t this true of communication, especially in today’s society? This tradition made me think about how we are so influenced by what others are putting out into the world that we sometimes let that information influence us. But it is OUR individual decision to decide whether or not to let it!

Littlejohn, Stephen W., et al. Theories of Human Communication. Waveland Press, Inc., 2017.