Theory in communication

Visible Language, 2003 by Storkerson, Peter

WITHIN COMMUNICATION DESIGN, theory is in the process of formation. Within the profession, attitudes toward theorizing vary from an intuitionist rejection of theories to humanist positions, observational empiricisms and scientific reductive approaches. This heterogeneity reflects the many intellectual influences on design from the humanities, social sciences and hard sciences and engineering. We can even burrow to the philosophical foundations-Cartesian rationalism, positivism, constructivism-and their ontological and epistemological positions.

This paper presents a theoretical position with regard to communication design research and summarizes the findings of two experiments based on this theoretical construct. The theory points the way to rigorous and useful research for communication design in the future.

WHAT IS THEORY GOOD FOR, ANYWAY?

Sociologist Howard Becker opened one of his books on research with an anecdote in which students at the University of Chicago asked their teacher about theory. "He looked up at us grumpily and asked Theory of what?' He thought that theories were about specific things... but there wasn't any such animal as Theory in general."1 There is a wise attitude in this quote. Theories are, foremost, technologies for thinking: tools for accomplishing particular goals. Telescopes make it possible to look deep into space by excluding all but a tiny window of the visual field and gathering light from the remaining portion to disclose detailed structure. A theory excludes most of the flow of experience, focusing attention on the view through a tiny window of discourse to illuminate and specify that view and what is in it. Perception does this too, as it organizes the flow of experience into gestalts of discrete objects, events, relations and contexts. Technologies are often thought of in terms of how they transform perception.2 Theory is another method for channeling and informing perception.

The development of theory in communication design is in its formative stages. Its current limitations pose two problems that compound each other: one of means and one of ends. First, there is no clear, agreed upon taxonomy to isolate strategic communication variables. Put simply, we have difficulty accurately specifying and measuring which aspects of a communication are critical to communication and which are not. Second, the communication and design goals are themselves vague and ambiguous-is communication message, coding or behavior modification, and are form and content the same thing, are they unrelated, etc.? It is not surprising that there is a lack of direct ways to measure communication outcomes and relate them to design choices.

Take the following example: a photograph of a woman from the waist up. She is wearing a dark tight fitting jacket and sunglasses. Her left arm is extended toward the camera and the hand is palm facing the camera, so that the torso and the face are obscured except for hair and sunglasses. Most of the rest of the photograph is white, though a building is visible in the background. By itself, this image has little meaning. Now, forget the image and consider the following sentence: "Dianna used the press as the press used Dianna." By itself, this sentence is enigmatic. When, however, the text is placed next to or over the image, the two are combined. Now, it's a picture of Dianna on a ski slope. We are looking through a picture taken by a press photographer whom Dianna is fending off by shielding her face. She is a celebrity and the press are 'using' her by invading her privacy. But, if she is using the press, her pose is also ironic. She is both fending-off and attracting the press. She is negotiating her celebrity. As receivers, we cannot 'know' these things in the veridical sense of warranted proof-the picture could be staged and the caption was certainly added-but the combined image and text convey the meaning and give us the sense of knowing what we are seeing. Such presentations are all the more persuasive because we, as receivers, are prompted to make the interpretations. We experience them as our conclusions rather than as somebody else's statements, at least until we become postmodern media-savvy consumers of 'constructed' images.

The meanings we create when we combine elements such as images and texts go far beyond what could be inferred from any element alone or by a summation of all. Rather, the elements transform and extend each other by specifying otherwise indeterminate domains, to create a new configuration of the whole or gestalt. We intuit when juxtapositions work and we are alike in our interpretations of composites like images and captions, which is why they are so commonly used. Designers have a vested interest in reliable communication, thus in making reception predictable. But we have little understanding of the mechanisms by which those interpretations work.

Communication designers function on the anatomical levels of communications. Designers engineer juxtapositions-planning the compositions of layout and image, appropriateness of gestures, etc.-and they design the text-both what text is used and how it is displayed. As communication technologies progress, design is in a basic transition from shaping to construction, thus communications are subject to more thoroughgoing, deliberately controlled design. With this increased control comes the increased need for designers to specify methods of construction and accurately predict results. In communication design, there is a gap between designers' spheres of knowledge and the practical problems they are asked to address.