Communication in Everyday Life: A Survey of Communication (Download PDF)

[Thijmen Sijtsema]

Communication in Everyday Life by Duck takes on a slightly different tone compared to previous communication texts by Duck. Rather than address the ever-changing nature of communication, this text shifts the focus to everyday situations and the ways that we interpret and use language to get ourselves out of trouble. With a thematic approach, Communication in Everyday Life provides an introspective look at how we process and understand language within a society where communication is faster, more informal, and less formal than ever before.

Download Here : Communication in Everyday Life: A Survey of Communication by Duck, Steve, McMahan, David T. (Loose Leaf).pdf

The book starts out by presenting the basics of how language functions, the four major types of communication, the social nature of human interaction, and basic communication theories. Then it proceeds to present some of the more challenging topics, such as the nature of relationships, the political nature of language, the definition of communication, the media and advertising industries, and even includes a few poems about the nature of language.

In addition, this text also briefly looks at how music and other culture influence language as well as the effect that certain words and phrases have on how we communicate. The book then goes on to describe four types of communication: visual, auditory, written, and tactile. It then goes on to explain that all these categories are related to the relationship between the communicator and the receiver of the message or idea. One section of the book describes the characteristics of each type of communication. Some examples it uses include: the "body copy" format (where the writer copies his thoughts into the recipient's head), "hidden meaning," and the "linguistic code."

One thing that I thought was interesting about this book was its implicit assumption that we come into contact with many more people across the world than we realize and that many of these people use more than one form of communication. I also found the author to be a very intelligent person, whose main thesis is that we all use some form of language to communicate with each other. I liked that the book was not condescending or polemical and did not offer many facts or figures. In short, the book provides interesting insights about how language works around us in everyday life and in communication. And it is very accessible to an undergraduate level, which many people might find impressive given the fact that most college courses are taught in the sciences and engineering.