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.
Janae's Journey 
Let me tell you how much I admire your blog and how cute your theme is. I love how you are incorporating your own events to each theory in the book. When Isaac argued that the body is more than substance , it opened my eyes to reality a little bit. Because the body does perceive and express your thoughts, it is a mere tool for communication. Being able to find people of different backgrounds and cultures is so cool because somehow all the differences get dropped when you communicate and it becomes easier the more you get to know one another.
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