2005/4
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An alien being visits Earth. It has evolved in a world totally different from ours. Its environment is totally different. Its ways of existing, its cultures and cosmology are equally ‘alien’ to ours. Yet, paradoxically, it has far greater understanding of a universe that we have come to believe is ours and ours alone. How will it communicate? What kind of language or system of signs and symbols will it use? Will it have music, dance, and poetry? For what purposes will it ‘communicate’? Conversely, are some of our terrestrial forms of communication equally ‘alien’ to such an ‘outsider’ and perhaps even to ourselves? How do we communicate communication?
Patricia A. Made
In her now classic work on psychological theory and women’s development, In A Different Voice, Carol Gilligan states that ‘to have a voice is to be human. To have something to say is to be a person. But speaking depends on listening and being heard; it is an intensely relational act’.1
Throughout Southern Africa, as in many parts of the world even today, women still struggle to exercise the basic right to have a voice, to speak in order to be seen as persons in their own right, and to be listened to and heard.
Jacques Fortier
“ Le disciple à son maître :
- Je dois, maître, absolument vous communiquer quelque chose !
Le maître à son disciple :
- Avant de me parler, as-tu passé ton message par les trois tamis ?
Réponse interloquée :
- Les trois tamis ? Heu, je ne crois pas. Quels sont-ils ?
Le maître :
- Les trois tamis sont ceux de la vérité, de la bonté, de l’utilité. Ce que tu veux me dire, es-tu sûr que cela soit vrai ?
- Heu, pas vraiment, je l’ai entendu dire…
- Deuxième tamis : es-tu sûr que cela soit bon ?
- Heu, ce n’est pas sûr, même, à vrai dire…
- Troisième tamis : es-tu sûr, au moins, que cela soit utile ?
- Heu, je ne crois pas vraiment.
Le maître au disciple :
- Eh bien, si ce que tu voulais me dire n’est ni vrai, ni bon, ni utile, je préfère ne pas le savoir, et je te conseille, toi-même, de l’oublier ! ”
Jeet Heer
The Jesuit scholar Walter J. Ong (1912-2003), a pupil of Marshall McLuhan, studied the evolution of human consciousness via the history of communication. The following article reflects on the legacy of his explorations from the ‘purely oral’ to the ‘multimedia carnival’ of today.
Philip Lee
Music is often described as a ‘universal language’, one that everyone can understand. Can it, then, communicate anything significant in the context of barbarism, in places where humanity’s basic precepts have been trampled in the mud?
Alma D. Montoya Ch.
“Sueño con una sociedad reinventándose de abajo hacia arriba donde las masas populares tengan de verdad el derecho a tener voz, y no apenas el deber de escuchar. Es un sueño que me parece realizable, pero que demanda un esfuerzo fantástico de crearlo…” (Paulo Freire).
Rowan Atkinson
A leading British comedian considers the dire effects on his profession of the United Kingdom government’s proposed legislation on incitement to religious hatred.
Roel Aalbersberg
What makes for good communication? This is, of course, a highly subjective question that can only evoke highly subjective answers. It all depends on what one’s values are – for good or evil. It is a matter of values and of ethics.
Francis B. Nyamnjoh
African people are often bitter about the fact that the cultures and worldviews of others have coloured their own outlooks and, in certain cases, claimed centre stage in their lives. This makes it difficult to articulate what people consider their authentic cultural values with the freedom and confidence they would like to enjoy. The following article identifies a certain nostalgia for a real or mythical golden age prior to the unequal encounters with cultural others that have reduced people to playing second fiddle even in matters of utmost concern to themselves and their communities.
Paddy Scannell
Speaking into the Air is, quite simply, the most original and thought provoking book on communication that I have read. It is dazzlingly and sometimes obscurely erudite yet with a clear and coherent argument that challenges our current commonsense views about communication.
Jan Servaes
‘Asia is still discovering the Internet and issues of access, in a larger sense of the term, of censorship and regulation, and of de-politicization and self-censorship still restrict the political impact of the Internet in Asia. The relative immaturity of Asian democracies themselves constitutes an important impediment to greater public and political debate, participation and the promotion of civil and political liberties. Notwithstanding these limitations, the Internet has, to an extent, provided for an expanded political and public sphere and the voicing of alternative political views. In a context where the mass media has often been strictly controlled by the state, the Internet offers a new channel of communication, a new voice, a new hope for those who have been marginalized and prevented from participating in the political process’ Indrajit Banerjee, (2003: 22)