2. • Traditions of Communication Theory
• Multiple theories and perspectives shape the field of communication studies.
• Lacking a unifying theory, the field can be divided into seven traditions
• Cybernetic or Information Theory (Transmissional)
• Semiotics (All these are Constitutive)
• The Phenomenological Tradition
• Rhetorical
• Socio-Psychological
• Socio-Cultural
• Critical Theory
Two models:
Transmission (informational) model examines the process of sending and receiving
messages or transferring information from one mind to another. This model’s
limitations are that sending and receiving messages sometimes create gaps in
communication because communication signs can be perceived differently by
different people.
Constitutive model (the process of production and reproduction of shared meaning)
These models have several limitations, most of which are due to the fact that there
can be can be gaps that occur in an understanding of the communication process
either due to socio-cultural diversity and change or due to the limitations of being able
to measure authentic communication between people.
3. The Information or Cybernetic theory of Communication
Shannon and Weaver Bell Laboratories 1949
Useful for:
Researching how as a
designer your work makes
effective communication.
Main limitation is that it is a
linear process and is not
concerned with the
production of meaning
itself, which is a socially
mediated process.
4. Three levels of potential communication problems
Level 1 Technical Accuracy
Systems of encoding and decoding
Compatibility of systems/need for specialist equipment or knowledge
Level 2 Semantic Precision of language
How much of the message can be lost without meaning being lost?
What language to use?
Level 3 Effectiveness Does the message affect behaviour the way we want it to?
What can be done if the required effect fails to happen?
Client Design/er Media outlet Audience
See http://mtq.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/7/4/307 for communication theory applied
to advertising/marketing
5. Systems theory
The great advantage is
that you can switch
between mathematical,
biological, psychological
and sociological frames
of reference.
6. Who are we communicating to? Audiences and Social Class
National Readership Survey (JICNAR) NS-SEC 2001
Classification Description Classification Description
A Upper middle class 1 Managerial & professional
B Middle class 2 Intermediate occupations
C1 Skilled working class 3 Small employers & own account workers
C2 Skilled working class 4 Lower supervisory & technical
D Working class Semi-routine & routine
5
Never worked & long-term unemployed
E Subsistence
Registrar General's Social Classes
• The JICNAR National Readership Survey
Classification Description classifications (i.e. A, B, C1, C2, D, E) and the
Registrar General’s Social Class system (i.e. I, II,
I Professionals IIIN, IIIM, IV, V) are compatible but the National
Statistics Social and Economic Classifications
II Managerial & technical [NS-SEC] ) is not.
• This major shift resulted from dissatisfaction with
IIIN Skilled non-manual the previous systems, which were felt to be
IIIM Skilled manual increasingly unrepresentative of UK society and
the new patterns of work and employment within
IV Partly skilled it.
• The key issues in this debate are that, on the one
V Unskilled hand, the JICNAR categories are thought to be
more commonly understood than those from the
other systems, but on the other hand, the new
NS-SEC system was used by the 2001 Census
and has been built to reflect the current shape of
employment and occupations.
Key journals
7. BARB (Broadcasters' Audience Research Board)
• Audience categories
• The main audience categories are: individuals, adults, men, women, children, and housewives. These are further
subdivided by age and social class.
• Audience sub-categories/sub-demographic groups
• The division of the main audience categories is by age and social class. Social class is determined at the
household, rather than the individual, level. The classes are:
• AB - higher (A) and middle (B) management, administrative or professional
• C1 - supervisory, clerical, and junior management
• C2 - skilled manual workers
• DE - semi-skilled and unskilled workers and non-wage earners.
• AB and C1 audiences are sometimes described as 'upmarket', C2, D and E are correspondingly described as
'downmarket'.
• Age divisions generally used are:
• 4-9 years; 10-15; 16-24; 25-34; 35-44; 45-54; 55-64 and 65+ (although 55-64 and 65+ tend to be replaced by
55+).
• Broadcasters may be neutral about which sub-category watches their programmes but advertisers are not and
tend to prefer younger and more upmarket audiences. Both groups watch less television than the population
generally, so getting to them appeals to advertisers. Beyond that, upmarket audiences have more to spend, and
the 16-24 age group has no clearly established patterns of consumer spending, another appealing factor for
advertisers.
Strategies for reaching audiences as target markets. Marketers
have outlined four basic strategies to satisfy target markets:
undifferentiated marketing or mass marketing, differentiated
marketing, concentrated marketing, and micromarketing/
nichemarketing.
8. Media Distribution per 1,000
2500
2000
1500
Newspapers
Radios
1000
TV's
500
0
Pakistan India Japan
9. As the citizens of less developed countries are increasingly viewed
through the prism of consumerism, control of their values and purchasing
patterns becomes increasingly important to multinational firms.
At its peak in mid-1990s, Baywatch was watched by more than 1 billion
people a week in nearly 150 countries.
But what was communicated?
The Baywatch Theory of Art doesn’t distinguish between a work of art and the kind of object that it represents. For example, it
doesn’t distinguish between a sculpture that represents a woman with big breasts and a woman with big breasts. John Hyman.
10. Semiotics-Three basic concepts
– Semantics addresses what a sign stands for.
Dictionaries are semantic reference books; they tell us
what a sign means.
– Syntactics is the relationships among signs.
» Signs rarely stand alone. They are almost always
part of a larger sign system referred to as codes.
» Codes are organized rules that designate what
different signs stand for.
– Pragmatics studies the practical use and effects of
signs.
11. The semiotics of Baywatch
• Surf and Simulation: Baudrillard and Baywatch Marc Kipness
• ‘Baywatch’s hard bodies triumph with ease over the defenceless antibodies of other cultures’
• David Hasselhoff : A Semiotic Approach to One of the World’ s Most Recognized Images
Diane Stevenson
• Hasselhoff ’s physical signifiers—height , age, tight buns, six pack, suntan, wavy hair, chest
hair, voice—and his character, Mitch Buchanon, lead to a surprising semiotic thesis
• Decoding Baywatch: A Cross‐Cultural, Ethnographic Study Tamar Liebes
• Bakhtin Goes to the Beach: Dialogism and Baywatch Michael Dunne
• Mirrors of Sand: Baywatch from a Lacanian Perspective Elizabeth Kubek
12. • Semiotics and the ‘Semiosphere'
• The whole semiotic space of the culture.
• Semiotics examines signs as if they are part of a language.
• Structuralists adopted language as their model in exploring a much wider
range of social phenomena: i. e. culturally shared codes
• Lévi-Strauss for ethnography; myth, kinship rules and totemism;
• Lacan for the unconscious; psychology, the subjective aspects of
signification, “language is first of all a foreign one”
• Barthes for the 'grammar' of narrative;
• Julia Kristeva declared that 'what semiotics has discovered... is that the
major constraint affecting any social practice lies in the fact that it signifies;
i.e. that it is articulated like a language'
The language of
medicine
Tryptanol/Tofranil
Akamin/Accomin
Lasix/Losec
Lamictal/Lamisil
Aratac/Aropax
Amlodipine/Amiloride
Pramin/Premarin
Adalat/Aldomet
Hycor/Hyoscine
Prostin VR/Prostin F2 alpha
Zocor/Zoton
Oxynorm/Oxycontin
Sotahexal/Metahexal
Diclohexal/Diltahexal
13. Semiotics
• Useful for:
• Researching how we make meaning within any given situation and how art/design is
‘read’ within that situation.
• Semiotics teaches us that reality can be read as a system of signs and can assist us
to become more aware of reality as a construction and of the roles played by
ourselves and others in constructing it. It can help us to realize that information or
meaning is not 'contained' in art objects, design or audio-visual media. Meaning is not
'transmitted' to us - we actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes or
conventions of which we are normally unaware.
• Main limitations: The prioritization of structure over usage does not easily recognise
the socially mediated and constantly evolving nature of communication.
• Prioritises verbal/linguistic structures over embodied knowledge.
• Meaning consists of functional relationships within dynamic information systems.
Semiotics fails to explain factors that influence the production and interpretation of
messages. Sign systems are not autonomous; they exist only in the shared practices
of actual communities. Meaning is not fixed by a code; it is a site of social conflict.
14. Using semiotics to analyse an image
The first code is linguistic. To encode it we need to be able to read
French.
The next linguistic sign ‘Panzani’ is Italian and encodes not simply the
name of the firm but also an additional signified, that of 'Italianicity'. The
linguistic message is therefore twofold: denotational and connotational.
This would not work in Italy.
The next code involves the image. This provides a series of discontinuous
signs. First (the order is unimportant as these signs are not linear), the
scene represents a return from the market. A signified which itself implies
two values: that of the freshness of the products and that of the
essentially domestic preparation for which they are destined. Its signifier
is the half-open bag which lets the provisions spill out over the table,
'unpacked'. You can read this sign in a variety of ways. The bag is a net.
Fishing is a basic form of catching food, and if ‘in the net’ the food must
be very fresh. A second sign is more or less equally evident; its signifier is
the bringing together of the tomato, the pepper and the tricoloured hues
(yellow, green, red) of the poster; its signified is Italianicity.
The collection of different foods (onions, tomatoes, mushrooms etc)
makes it feel is as though Panzani provides everything necessary for a
carefully balanced dish and it also seems as though the concentrate in the
tin were equivalent to the natural produce surrounding it.
The composition of the image, evokes the memory of innumerable
paintings, and produces an aesthetic signified: the 'still life'; the
knowledge on which this sign depends is therefore also heavily cultural.
The colour is rich and sensual suggesting that this is a ‘quality’ product.
The shape and orientation of the image is ‘portrait’, suggesting this is
person to person communication, therefore you should be interested.
15. • How to set about analysing a text
• A 'text' (such as a printed advertisement, an item of furniture, a set of clothes, an
interior, a painting, a beer can, an animated cartoon or a web site) is in itself a
complex sign containing other signs.
First task: Identify the signs within the text and the codes within which these signs have
meaning (e.g. 'textual codes' such as camerawork; codes relating to sub-group
preoccupations or 'social codes' such as body language).
Second task: Within these codes you need to identify paradigm sets (such as in the case
of camerawork shallow depth of field and other related DofF effects, cropped image
and other framing devices, panning, long shot, mid shot, close up, in the case of a
sub-group preoccupation it may be dress code or a particular language used).
Third task: To identify the structural relationships between the various signifiers
(syntagms) Syntagmatic relations are possibilities of combination. You could point to
how a written text is used to ‘anchor’ a photograph’s meaning or the way polari (gay
slang) was interwoven into British comedy routines during the 1960s.
Forth task: To discuss the ideological functions of the signs in the text and of the text as a
whole. For example a text may presume a certain set of class relationships and
individual signs may either reinforce these or operate as potential levers for change .
(As in the case of the use of polari)
Fifth task: Determine what sort of world view the text constructs and how it does so?
Finally: What assumptions does the text make about its readers?
By working your way through to the readers (social class etc.) you can then embed
the analysis into the Shannon and Weaver Communication model. This is a useful
ploy if you are to demonstrate application of differing research methodologies.
16. Code
No language, Danger Plane Airport Danger due to
even if it’s a proximity of a place
visual one, is where aircraft fly
self frequently at low
explanatory. + = altitude over the
Languages road.
have to be
learnt Stipulated Car Stipulated for cars Drivers of cars are
obliged to use the
+ = road at the entrance
of which this sign is
placed.
Danger Car Car forbidden Drivers of cars are
forbidden from
driving in this area
Note that the blue sign could contain the plane and would be a syntactically valid
signal, although it would be useless. The same happens with written language,
where you can write a valid sentence but it can be completely meaningless.
17. • The Phenomenological Tradition
• …is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the way in which humans
come to understand the world.
• Phenomenon refers to the appearance of an object, event or condition in one’s
perception.
• Makes actual lived experience the basic data of reality.
• A failure in communication can be seen as an absence of, or failure to sustain,
authentic human relationships
• Merleau-Ponty “The theory of the body schema is, implicitly, a theory of perception“ in
which "our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible
spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it
forms a system”
• The weakness of Merleau-Ponty’s position is grounded in his attachment to semiotics.
18. The Corporeal Turn
The Incredulity of St Thomas by Caravaggio
The basic physical nature of communication rests in the fact we inhabit a body and that our senses are dominated by touch
Sheets-Johnson, M (2009) The Corporeal Turn: An Interdisciplinary Reader London: Imprint
19. The Embodied Mind
Communication seen as an extension of the
nervous system. It starts with an awareness
of the body. Language is seen as part of
that system existing as as neuronal
pathways that are linked within the brain.
The key is a physiological classification of
coding and encoding.
21. • The process of interpretation is central
• Unlike the semiotic tradition, where interpretation is separate from reality, in
the phenomenological tradition we are interested in what is real for the
person.
• Interpretation emerges from a hermeneutic circle in which interpreters
constantly go back and forth between experience and assigning meaning.
22. • Three schools of the phenomenological tradition
• Classical phenomenology. Key thinker Edward Husserl, who states that it is highly
objective and claims the world can be experienced, through bracketing, the putting
aside of bias without the knower bringing his or her own categories to bear. This is
often criticised as being an impossible task.
• The phenomenology of perception. Key thinker Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Most
contemporary phenomenology rejects the objectivist view and posits that we can only
know things through our personal, subjective relationship to things.
• Hermeneutic phenomenology, the interpretation of being, extends the subjective
tradition even further by incorporating the communication system itself as a further
interpretive mechanism.
• Hermeneutics, can be thought of as a type of reading between the lines:
Interpretations of interpretations, reflecting the fact that communication is a matter of
dialogue and is multi-channel.
23. We could define
judgement as placing a
"value" on what you
perceive, believing it to be
"good" or "bad" instead of
just accepting that it "is."
Hermeneutics
Originally referred to
Judgement is much more
the study of the about the ability to discern
interpretation of what is best honourable
religious texts. and just . Right thinking is
more difficult to find then
a needle in a mountain of
straw for those who miss
the simple light of life.
A hermeneutic circle
This definition is too
ideological, in everyday life
judgement is much more
concerned with the capacity to
assess situations or
circumstances shrewdly and to
draw sound conclusions. How
can God judge if he knows
everything?
24. Rhetoric
Socrates: The fact is…that the aspiring speaker needs no knowledge of the truth
about what is right or good... In courts of justice no attention is paid whatever to
the truth; all that matters is plausibility... Plato, Phaedrus 272
Aristotle first addressed the problem of communication and attempted to work out
a theory of it in The Rhetoric. He was primarily focused on the art of persuasion.
In photographic and filmic media a close-up is a simple synecdoche - a part
representing the whole. It is a type of ‘rhetoric trope’ such as…………
Synecdoche Hyperbole Irony
25. • Rhetoric
• Useful for thinking through how you are going to achieve certain effects on
the ‘reader’ or audience. In particular if a ‘theatrical’ or ‘performative’
approach to communication is required. The key concept is the use of
metaphor. Often used for propaganda.
• Main limitations
• The art of rhetoric can be learned only by practice. Intervention in complex
systems involves technical problems rhetoric fails to grasp. Rhetoric lacks
good empirical evidence that its persuasive techniques actually work as
intended. Rhetorical theory is culture bound & overemphasizes individual
agency vs. social structure. Above all, because its difficult to prove how it
effects change, (although many would argue that it is the most effective type
communication ) it can be difficult to prove its research value. Therefore
best used when triangulated with other theories.
26. Rhetoric can be used to change the way we ‘read’ things. It persuades us to
see or read things differently. Because most of the information we receive is
ambiguous we can easily be persuaded to read it as others do. Rhetoric relies
on communication as a social activity and is a device that is designed to help
individuals exert the power of their ideas and views over others.
Pictures without context are meaningless; they need to be anchored.
“All images are polysemous; they imply… a 'floating chain' of signifieds, the reader able to choose some and ignore others.
Polysemy poses a question of meaning and this question always comes through as a dysfunction....Hence in every society various
techniques are developed intended to fix the floating chain of signifieds in such a way as to counter the terror of uncertain signs”
Barthes
27. Employing rhetoric
“BURYING THE
LUSITANIA’S DEAD AND
SUCCORING HER
SURVIVORS”
Newspaper headline at the
time
The use of ‘pathos’ a
means of persuasion in Lusitania
classical rhetoric that
appeals to the audience's
emotions. On the evening of May 7th, 1915, the
RMS Lusitania was off the coast of
Ireland en route to Liverpool from
“ENLIST” was a WWI New York when it was torpedoed by
Recruitment poster designed
by Fred Spears. Spears’ a German U-Boat and sank. About
design was inspired by a 1,200 of the nearly 2,000 passengers
news report from that
described, among the and crew aboard drowned, including
recovered bodies from the more than 100 Americans. The loss
Lusitania, “a mother with a
three-month-old child of life provoked America out of a
clasped tightly in her arms. hereunto neutrality on the ongoing
Her face wears a half smile.
Her baby’s head rests war in Europe. With cries of
against her breast. No one “Remember the Lusitania” the U.S.
has tried to separate them.”
entered into WWI within two years.
28. Metaphor; from the Greek: metaphora, meaning
"transfer" is language that directly compares
seemingly unrelated subjects or activities
Originally used as a rhetorical
trope, metaphor enables us to
grasp new concepts and
remember things by creating
associations.
"[W]e have noticed a decrease in the
amount of anchoring copy used in
visual metaphor ads . . .. We theorize
that, over time, advertisers have
perceived that consumers are growing
more competent in understanding and
interpreting visual metaphor in ads."
(Phillips, B. J. (2003) Understanding Visual
Metaphor in Advertising, in Persuasive Imagery,
ed. by L. M. Scott and R. Batra. London: Erlbaum)
Images in Advertising: The Need for a Theory of
Visual Rhetoric Linda M. Scott
On JSTOR
29. The Sociopsychological tradition
• The study of the individual as a social
being
• Three key areas
• Behavioural
• Cognitive
• Biological
30. The socio-psychological tradition of communication is useful when
used to study the development of a relationship
VC Visual Communication NVAE Non Verbal Affiliative Expressiveness
32. • Social and Cognitive Psychology
• Paivio's notion of dual coding states the visual and verbal
information are encoded and decoded by separate specialized
perceptual and cognitive systems. One system is visual/pictorial and
manipulates the elements of imagery simultaneously; the other is
linguistic and propositional and operates in sequence.
• The two systems are assumed to be structurally and functionally
distinct. Although independent, the two subsystems are also
interdependent so that a visual concept can be converted into a
verbal one and vice versa. A more recent approach to explaining the
interaction between the two systems is the metaphor of interactive
parallel processing.
Limitations of verbal language mediated by visual languages
33. Socio-psychological communication
Expression, interaction and influence Psychological communication
Communication as the act of sending
a message to a receiver, and
(Informing)
assessing the feelings and thoughts
of the receiver upon interpreting the
message and how these will effect
an understanding of the message.
Useful for: Deep analysis of the
moment of communication.
Other things happening
Feelings can be ones of fear and apprehension
34. • Gestalt psychology (a type of cognitive theory) refers to a structure,
configuration, or layout that is unified and has specific properties
that are greater than the simple sum of its individual parts. For
example, a person reading text perceives each word first as a
complete word and its meaning rather than seeing individual
letterforms. Each letterform is clearly an individual unit, but the
greater meaning depends on the arrangement of the letterforms into
a specific configuration (a word). Another analogy is the individual
frames in a movie. Each frame in a movie may be considered
separately, and judged on its compositional strength, but it is the
rapid projection of multiple frames across time that forms the
perception of movement and narrative continuation.
• Gestalt theory provides rational explanations for why shifts in
spacing, timing, and configuration can have a profound effect on the
meaning of presented information.
Simple changes
in spacing can
dramatically change
meaning.
“Gestalt perceptual factors build a visual
frame of reference which can provide the
designer with a reliable
psychological basis for the spatial
organization of graphic information.”
Greg Berryman
35. The sociocultural tradition
• If defining yourself in terms of your identity with
terms such as father, Catholic, student, lesbian,
Asian, Yorkshire etc. you are defining yourself in
terms of your identity as part of a group and this
group frames your cultural identity.
• The sociocultural tradition looks at how these
cultural understandings, roles and rules are
worked out interactively in communication.
• Context is seen as being crucial to forms and
meanings of communication.
36. • Socio-cultural communication theory within education
• The social cognition learning model asserts that culture
is the prime determinant of individual development.
Humans are the only species to have created culture,
and every human child develops in the context of a
culture. Therefore, a child’s learning development is
affected in ways large and small by the culture–including
the culture of family environment–in which he or she is
enmeshed. (Vygotsky)
• Vygotsky's theory was an attempt to explain
consciousness as the end product of socialization. For
example, in the learning of language, our first utterances
with peers or adults are for the purpose of
communication but once mastered they become
internalized and allow "inner speech".
• A difference exists between what child can do on her
own and what the child can do with help. Vygotskians
call this difference the zone of proximal development.
• A useful approach to thinking through the educational
development of children and therefore important in
educational design.
37. Using socio-cultural communication
theory to understand both how to
educate and how beliefs may have
been built up
Wertsch, J.V. (1985). Cultural, Communication, and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives Cambridge University Press
38. Critical Communication Theory
• The basis of critical communication theory rests on two aspects of
Hegel’s thinking.
• In the ‘Phenomenology of the Mind’ the critique was an examination
of various forms and sources of deceptions and illusions that the
mind is subject to on its journey to absolute knowledge. This attitude
led Marx to clarify how society is subject to the deceptions of
capitalism how labour transactions are hidden within the fetish of
exchange value.
• Hegel believed that human history has a purpose. He assumes that
we are driven by a common interest in freedom and therefore we
seek to break free of all systems of overt and hidden constraints.
Marx developed his own views of historical materialism in response
to Hegel and developed Communism as a vehicle for historical
change.
39. • Critical Communication Theory
• A synthesis of philosophy and social science .
• Critical theory approaches to communication examine social
conditions in order to uncover hidden structures.
• Useful to use when examining the ways the media produce encoded
messages, the ways audiences decode those messages, and the
power base apparent in these processes.
• Key thinkers and schools of thought: Frankfurt School, Michel Foucault, Pierre
Bourdieu, disability studies and feminist theory
• However: Critical theory easily confuses facts and values, as well as
imposing a dogmatic ideology. Critical theory questions the rational validity
of all authority, tradition, and conventional belief, therefore as a theory it can
be difficult to use if the main purpose of research is to examine simply the
fact that communication is taking place and how well it is working.
40. “Who says what to whom in what channel with what effect"
41. • The cybernetic tradition in communication is mainly specific to our modern
technological society. It presents communication as “information processing”.
However, ideas of consciousness and emotions are not recognised, which can mean
that the languages of distortion, noise and overload are not compatible with the
human realities of social discourse.
• The rhetorical tradition, the practical art of discourse, appeals to popular ideas and
beliefs about communication; however it requires us to believe in collective
deliberation and judgment and the power of individuals to shape these.
• The semiotic tradition explains the use of languages and other sign systems and
tends to see all other sign systems as ‘texts’. The problems of this tradition are the
gaps and misunderstanding that take place when presupposing that all
communication can be boiled down to textual issues.
• The phenomenological tradition focuses on the experience of otherness or dialogue
within the parameters of perception: it seeks to explain what is ‘real’ for the individual
as communication takes place. The Embodied Mind is seen as a key factor in the
development of authentic human relationships. However, it is hard and practically
impossible to measure authentic communication between people.
• In the socio-psychological tradition communication is presented as a “process of
expression, interaction and influence,” where behavioural and emotional factors play
an essential role. This is the process where people interact and influence each other.
Nevertheless, this tradition challenges the personal autonomy of humans and relies
on a belief in our ability to understand or have a dialogue with what might be going on
in the unconscious mind.
• Socio-cultural communication theory looks at communication as a symbolic process
that produces and reproduces shared socio-cultural patterns, which means that our
everyday communication is based on some common pre-existing cultural and social
structures. The problem of this theory, as in semiotic tradition, is that there can be
gaps during the communication process based on socio-cultural diversity and socio-
cultural change, as well as the fact that it does not fully recognise individual agency.
• The critical theory tradition describes communication as discursive reflection. Critical
theory, however, questions the rational validity of all authority, tradition, and
conventional belief and can itself be questioned if communication needs to stand
outside of this debate.
44. Bibliography
• Baldwin & Roberts (2006) Visual Communication From Theory to Practice London:
Ava Books
• Craig, Robert T (1999) Communication Theory as a Field” Communication Theory
9.2. 119-161
• Curry Jansen, S (2002) Critical Communication Theory: Power, Media, Gender and
Technology London: Rowman and Littlefield
• Griffin, E (1997) A first look at communication theory. 3rd edition, New York: McGraw-
Hill
• Littlejohn, S. W.,(2002) Theories of human communication. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
• Miller, K. (2005) Communication Theories: Perspectives, processes, and contexts.
2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill
• Werner, E., (1989) Cooperating Agents: A Unified Theory of Communication and
Social Structure", Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2, L. Gasser and M. Huhns,
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• Werner, E. (1988) Toward a Theory of Communication and Cooperation for
Multiagent Planning Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning About Knowledge:
Proceedings of the Second Conference, Morgan Kaufman Publishers, pp. 129-143
• Witzany, G, (2007)The Logos of the Bios 2. Bio-Communication", Helsinki, Umweb,
• For Gestalt design see:
http://www.scientificjournals.org/journals2008/articles/1288.pdf
• Semiotics for Beginners http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem06.html