Communication

From Geography

Language gives us an appearance of communication as being something that is normal and quite easy to produce. Communication helps us to give meaning to what we perceive in the world (our environment). According to Niklas Luhmann (in: Lee, 2000), communication is the fundamental unit of society, not humans as individual actors. As individuals we are socially meaningless. Society can only exist when individuals communicate. Luhmann introduced social systems, based on communication. Social systems emerge when communication starts. Someone has information which he/she want to share with other people. This results in all kinds of utterances towards other people. These other people need to understand this, in order to create new information. This new information results in new utterances, which in turn result in new understandings and new information (Jacobs, personal communication, 2012). This way its goes in a circle. So, after this the system builds upon itself. Communication is seen as autopoietic, because it is created only in combination with other communications. Communication tightens the distance between people, but also between other closed systems. However, we can’t conclude that communication is natural or simple. It is highly improbable, what often results in misunderstandings.

Luhmann distinguishes two kinds of communication media. One kind is disseminating (spreading) media, the second kind is success media. The first kind helps us to increase the amount of recipients of communication, for example television, internet, writing or a speech. Luhmann considers a speech as a very important instrument of communication, because it is able to attract attention and gives possibility for specification. Success media are more institutionalized as a result of social differentiation. These media are symbolically generalized and used to carry meaning within a specific system. For example money which is a generalized symbol which we all understand. In this example the specific system is the economy.

Nowadays it is experienced normal that communication occurs across borders (political or regional) as a result of globalization and global interdependencies. Boundaries are no longer a limitation to communication. Although people in different countries have a lot in common, Luhmann points out the ‘improbability’ of successful communication. Successful communication is not a product of our backgrounds, but the result of established systems and new understandings from what is communicated in the past.

Literature

Lee, D. (2000). The society of society: the grand finale of Niklas Luhmann [Electronic version]. Accessed on 7 october 2012.

Jacobs, personal communication, 2012)

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