Boxing Plato’s Shadow: An Introduction to the Study of Human Communication
Michael Dues and Mary Brown
Figure 2 – Study of Communication in 20th century – streams of influence (80)
Chapter 5: Communication Study Today and Tomorrow
Growth as an academic discipline (82)
Hey Comm Majors - What do you think of this claim?
“Communication . . . offers practical knowledge and skills that are useful in both
professional and personal life.” (82)

Challenges Facing Social Scientists
What’s a “soft science”? (83)
And so what? (83)
“. . . the best that social scientists can do is to use approximate indicators of theoretical
concepts to discover partial (incomplete) predictions or explanations for human
behavior.” (83)

Challenges Facing Humanist Scholars
“The fundamental challenge faced by contemporary humanist scholars, therefore, is the
problem of achieving agreement on what constitutes knowledge and what constitutes
scholarship.” (84)

The Challenge of Changing Technology
Innovations affect how (& why?) humans communicate (84-85)
More so than even the printing press?
Information overload? (85) –
 Try to recall this when we get to Neil Postman’s “Little Eva?”
What’s the “digital divide”? (86)
Media literacy – Is it a “survival skill”? (86)

Areas of Specialization (86-90) All possible ‘places’ or ‘topoi’ for you to look for
topics for your paper & presentation!

Communication Study as Interdisciplinary Scholarship

Enduring Issues
1) What is communication? Define it! What’s its proper scope? (91)
Aristotle – Plato & Socrates (91)
More questions (92), e.g., dealing with ‘boundaries’?
2) Primary purpose?
Public speaking teachers = sophists?  (92-93) Plato’s Shadow! 
3) Appropriate methods? (93)
“In debates among communication scholars, issues of definition, scope, and
purpose are intertwined with issues of method. At the core of these debates are
philosophical questions about the nature of truth and the nature of reality, as well as
epistemological disputes about the nature of knowledge.” (93-94)
Traditional social scientists (94)
Postmodern theorists & critics (94)
Recall - Plato’s “comparison of the practical art of rhetoric with ‘cookery’” (94)
Both social science & humanism have something to say – keeping the
conversation going is the key (94-95)

Living with Plato’s Shadow
Spin Masters? (95)
Examples: Bill O’Reilly? Glenn Beck? Chris Matthews? Keith Olbermann?
“Sophistry, in the most pejorative sense of the term, abounds.” (95)
Can you think of some EXAMPLES?
 “Why, then, are communication scholars, teachers,
and practitioners still doing battle with Plato’s
shadow? It may be that Plato’s characterization of the
sophists and their work is so deeply rooted in Western
culture that the shadow is permanent. The academic
culture, with its powerful commitment to pure
research – to the acquisition of knowledge for the sake
of knowledge – tends to devalue matters of practical
application. The ideology of modern science, which
values development and testing of theories above all
else, tends to diminish any study whose focus is
interpretive or practical.” (96)
 Dues & film instructor anecdote?