Communication: The Expectation of Interaction

• 영문명: Communication: The Expectation of Interaction
• 발행기관: 한국외국어대학교 영미연구소
• 저자명: Jeremy Hawthorn
• 간행물 정보: 『영미연구』제10집, 179~202쪽, 전체 24쪽
• 주제분류: 사회과학 > 지역학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2004.06.01

영문 초록

  The article builds on what Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson (1968) refer to as ‘the impossibility of not communicating’. Using a brief extract from George Eliot’s 1871？72 novel Middlemarch, I argue that in an interpersonal communicative situation in which interaction is expected, the attempt to not-communicate is inevitably interpreted as a form of communication, producing a ripple-effect that effects transformations in successive behavioural moves.
  Although this example is concerned with interpersonal communication in a dyad, much of our internalized communicative ‘script’ is based on early conditioning through the learning of culturally specific interpersonal communication conventions. Moreover, very often other forms of communication mimic, or are parasitic on, learned interpersonal communicative conventions. I next consider the influential 1956 article by Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl entitled ‘Mass communication and para-social interaction: observations on intimacy at a distance’. In this article Horton and Wohl argue that much popular television attempts to convey the illusion of an intimate interpersonal relationship between performer and viewer. They term ‘this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship’. The article suggests that the pretended intimacy may be seen through by the viewer, and I argue that because the proffered illusion of intimacy encourages the expectation of interaction, the technique may well end up being counter productive.
  Finally, I turn to a similar process that I argue characterizes our relationship to the still, but not the moving, photograph. Because many still photographs present individuals and particularly their faces in ways that mimic interpersonal communicative self-presentation, at a less than fully conscious level they lead the viewer to expect to be able to interact with the depicted individual. It is, I argue, for this reason that there is something frustrating about such photographs, a frustration that is connected to the association between such photographs and death that has been commented upon by a range of theorists.

목차

Ⅰ. The complexity of interpersonal communication
Ⅱ. Expectations
Ⅲ. Para-social interaction
Ⅳ. Unresponsive texts
Ⅴ. Death and the photograph
Ⅵ. Conclusion
Works Cited
Abstract

키워드

gaze interpersonal communication interaction television intimacy photograph