Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyrical Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld by Lance Strate

Published by the Institute of General Semantics

December 1, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-970164-20-6 (Print) 978-1-970164-21-3 (eBook)

Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyrical Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld is a collection of essays that range across a variety of topics, including models of communication, language and symbolic communication, sense perception, the self, disability and autism, listening, reading, science, media literacy, ethics, innovation, systems theory, information, communication history, isolation, solipsism, technology, education, media ecology, and general semantics. Lance Strate’s unifying theme throughout this volume is the centrality of communication, as a phenomenon, to human life, and the importance of communication, as a field of study, to understanding ourselves and our place in the universe.

Expansive and engagingly written, Lance Strate’s Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld is a nuanced and profound collection of essays that gets to the heart of what it means to communicate and why it matters. Whether a student or scholar of education, this multi-faceted book is a must-have for anyone wishing to know more about the many ways communication permeates and shapes our lived experience.—Allison Peiritsch, Associate Professor, Slippery Rock University

Concerning Communication contains a swath of knowledge as big as the Serengeti. This huge and potentially confusing topic has a nonpareil guide to show you the hidden thickets of fact and the swamps of fiction and error in your search to understand communication. Your author and guide, Lance Strate, is an internationally acknowledged scholar of human communication and a philosophy of communication mensch. Chapter by chapter, essay by essay, you will be congenially accompanying Strate in his continuing effort to clarify the facts and fancies, the underlying assumptions, and the presumptions of that which provides all of us the ability to know, make and sustain contact with others. Winter is coming so get a bowl of good warm soup, a comfortable chair, and start reading.—Frank E.X. Dance, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Denver

A wide-ranging set of essays with wide-ranging implications. Thought provoking on multiple levels. —Dale Cyphert, Head, Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, University of Northern Iowa

As we struggle to respond to the rapid changes in our world, it is imperative that we find ways to create meaning out of the overwhelming amounts of information that inundate our lives. Concerning Communication provides both form and substance to engage the reader in spirit and mind. Through the weaving of theory, history and narrative, Dr. Strate elucidates how communication is artifact and process, listening and language, both-and rather than either-or. In doing so, readers understand how they can be the authors of their stories and bring meaning to our world.—Paaige Turner, Dean, College of Communication, Information, and Media, Ball State University