Communication as an Individual Act

I believe that to be able to comprehend a paradigm that is almost completely out of focus due to its far - fetched nature, you must at least have some basic knowledge about the topic at hand (of course in this case that’s communication). So, if you haven’t gotten the opportunity yet, I strongly advise that you read the first blog post regarding this extremely broad subject.

As we have mentioned before, it is quite common to think of communication as a completely social process, taking into account the fact that we as humans are supposedly social beings. Of course, you may argue with this premise, and there are theories that tend to do so, but the fact is that most paradigms regarding this statement are indeed embracing ourselves as “social beings”, henceforth they are currently in most of our mindsets and linked with most theories that use those studies as a base. Nonetheless, it is possible to think outside the box and somewhat “prove” that other processes (such as in this case with communication) can actually be more than just restrained to a social aspect, or at least make people doubt that the social aspect isn’t the soul core of the communication process.

Of course, as all other scientific theories, it results necessary to clarify what type of methodological approach is to be taken. In this specific case, there are two concepts that act as different ways of analyzing a certain topic, but that compliment each other. These are synchrony and diachrony. If you aren’t familiarized with these two concepts, I’ll briefly explain them. Synchrony refers to the study of something in a specific point of time, while diachrony studies its change over time, you can easily see how these two perspectives can go hand in hand. Both these concepts are normally used in the study of linguistics, specifically to analyze a language, but in the most recent years, they have been adopted into various other studies as a historical methodological approach. In communication for example, it’s frequently used to understand a single media (for example television), this would be synchrony, and once that media is fully comprehended, you would compare its evolution over time and how it relates to other media. If you aren’t able to visualize how these concepts could help us analyze communication as an individual process, I’ll make it much clearer in the next paragraph.

In most studies where you’ll find that they mention individual communication, they’ll refer to it just as another step in the more complex social process of its nature. Let me clarify with an example. Let’s say you’re trying to study something, so you’ve vaguely incorporated the main concept in your mind and decide to leave the books to a side for a while just so you can repeat this concept every now and then to yourself in hopes of transferring it to your long term memory. In this case, there isn’t a physical presence of another individual, therefore the communication process involving you apprehending this concept is individual, right? Well, not exactly. There is in fact the existence of another individual who wrote down the concept you’re trying to learn. If you were to apply a synchronic view, it would be able to be considered individual communication to a stretch, but when you analyze from a diachronic perspective the whole picture is seen, and it’s brought to our attention that the process is in fact of social aspect. In simpler terms, is a matter of perspectives. 

Now, it is possible to imagine extremely specific situations where an exclusively individual communication process may take effect, but it’s also refutable. Let’s make this clear with a mundane example. Think of a hypothetical situation where you plan to talk to another individual about something, you’re looking for this communication to be a complete success and therefore thoroughly plan it out, but because of certain circumstances you never get the opportunity to execute it. In this case the communication process never left from a single individual, henceforth it could be considered an individual communication. Some may say that to be able to plan out a conversation there has to be another individual in existence, even if they never actually participated. Although this last thought is technically true, I consider it too much of a stretch, but it’s debatable. 

Taking all these elements into account, we’re able to conclude that an individual communication process is a rather fickle idea, and when researched it must be done with extreme carefulness. It may possibly exist, but effectively the paradigm that currently “rules” is that of the communication process as an almost exclusively social process in its nature.