Boxing Plato's Shadow: The Study of Human Communication

This book is about the systematic study of communication, and about efforts to apply the knowledge produced by this study to achieve better outcomes. Anyone who seeks to become a professional scholar, teacher, or practitioner of communication should have a basic understanding of the origins of our ideas about communication, the key issues with which communication scholars struggle, and the processes by which knowledge about communication is generated. We hope in this small volume to provide a starting point for this understanding by presenting the rhetorical and social scientific roots of communication study.