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Abstract(s)
What do humanities bring to the study of communication? What concept of humanities can help us understand communication? Do communication studies belong to the humanities or to the social sciences field? In spite of a recent turn in communication
research towards empirical data that seems to be supported by a generation of young researchers, communication sciences have almost always maintained,
in their many branches, the existence of critical approaches highlighting a powerful link to the role of
language and symbols and their many connections
to social structures, placing particular emphasis on
the phenomena of meaning and relation. Human life
is essentially a life of meaning, of reflexive thought
and communication. My hypothesis involves considering this concern with relation as a social phenomenon as what distinguishes it epistemically. I also
believe that this distinction involves extensive attention on the nature of the human, helping maintain a
productive bridge with humanities and culture.
Issues such as the role of symbols in social life
are related to the constitution of subjectivity and the
transmission of cultural heritage in life-world, bringing questions concerning truth, rationality, the conditions necessary for autonomy of the self and the
nature of human agency to an on-going theoretical
debate.
Following this tradition, attempts are made to
establish communication as a discipline which finds
its foundations in the concept of mediated interaction and as the discipline that expresses the relational nature of human agency. Following this perspective, the field of communication studies, in a somewhat similar way to cultural studies, has redefined
itself by dealing with new cultural approaches, with
the help of American cultural studies (particularly
James Carey), critical theory, hermeneutics, symbolic interactionism, and critical realism as theoretical
keys to unveiling the dialogue between humanities
and social sciences that crosses through the communications field
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Keywords
Communication Humanities