Theoretical Foundations

The media ecological perspective is one that places human experience within the framework of the technological context of communication. That context is made manifest in many ways:languages which embody cultures' values and worldviews, media which become paradigms of human interaction, symbols which act as organizing principles for the categorization of experience. The following books explore the many ways in which the content of communication are subordinated to or modified by the context of communication.

Boorstin, Daniel The Image: or What Happened to the AmericanDream? (1961) Atheneum, New York.

Carpenter, Edward and McLuhan, Marshall Explorations in Communication (1960) Beacon Press, New York.

Ellul, Jacques The Technological Society (1967) Vintage Press, New York.

Innis, Harold Adams Empire and Communication (1950) Oxford University Press, Cambridge.

Innis, Harold Adams The Bias of Communication (1951) University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

McLuhan, Marshall The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

McLuhan, Marshall Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1965) McGraw-Hill, New York.

Mumford, Lewis Technics and Civilization (1934) Harcourt, Brace and World, New York.

Postman, Neil Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) Penguin Books, New York.

Schwartz, Tony The Responsive Chord (1973) Anchor Press, New York.

Watzlawick, Paul, Beavins-Bavelas, Janet, and Jackson, Don D. Pragmatics of Human Communication (1967) Norton, New York.

Whorf, Benjamin Lee Language, Thought and Reality (1956) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Ma.

White, Jr., Lynn Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962) New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Wiener, Norbert The Human Use of Human Beings (1956) Avon Press, New York.

Winston, Brian Misunderstanding Media (1986) Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma.

Communication and Culture

To the extent that different societies utilize their own peculiar means and media of communication, whether they be languages, tools or techniques, it can be said that cultural differences exist between those societies. The following books are useful in observing the interface between communication and culture.

Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckman The Social Construction of Reality (1967) Anchor Books, New York.

Carpenter, Edward Oh! What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me (1974) Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.

Duncan, Hugh Dalziel Communication and Social Order (1962) The Bedminster Press, New York.

Ellul, Jacques Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965) Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

Goffman, Erving The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) Anchor Books, New York.

Hall, Edward T. Beyond Culture (1976) Anchor Books, New York. Hall, Edward T. The Hidden Dimension (1966) Doubleday, New York.

Hall, Edward T. The Silent Language (1959) Fawcett World Library, New York.

Lasch, Christopher The Culture of Narcissism (1978) Norton, New York.

Levi-Strauss, Claude Structural Anthropology (1967) Anchor Books, New York.

Malinowski, Bronislaw A Scientific Theory of Culture (1944) Galaxy Books, New York. Mead, George Herbert Mind, Self and Society (1954) University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Language and Literacy

The transformation of Homo Sapiens into a speaking, writing, publishing animal is probably the most profound evolutionary event in human history. The following books consider man before and during that transition, and the implications it has for the organization of knowledge, power and society.

Campbell, Jeremy Grammatical Man (1982) Touchstone Books, New York.

Goody, Jack The Domestication of the Savage Mind (1977) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Goody, Jack The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (1987) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Goody, Jack The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (1986) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Gelb, I.J. A Study of Writing (1952) University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Havelock, Eric A. Origins of Western Literacy (1976) Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto.

Havelock, Eric A. Preface to Plato (1963) The Belknap Press, Cambridge, Ma.

Hudson, R.A. Sociolinguistics (1980) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Hymes, Dell Foundations in Sociolinguistics (1974) The University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976.

Johnson, Mark The Body in the Mind (1987) University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Johnson, Wendell People in Quandaries (1946) International Society for General Semantics, San Francisco.

Korzybski, Alfred Science and Sanity (1933) Institute of General Semantics, Lakeville, Ct.

Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark Metaphors We Live By (1980) University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Ong, Walter J. Interfaces of the Word (1977) Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy (1982) Methuen, London.

Whorf, Benjamin Lee Language, Thought and Reality (1956) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Ma

Television, Film and Mass Culture

The electronic media have become what Lewis Mumford calls a "defining technology" of modern global culture. The impact of television and film can be felt in nearly every aspect of modern life. Yet, curiously, these media often communicate more forcefully by "deed" than by "word." They are, in Suzanne Langer's terms, non-discursive and presentational rather than discursive, sequential and rational. The following books consider the implications for mass culture of such media.

Biskind, Peter Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (1983) Pantheon, New York.

Eisenstein, Sergei Film Form and Film Sense (1949) Harcourt, Brace and World, New York. Ewen, Stewart Captains of Consciousness (1980) McGraw-Hill, New York.

Greenberg, Bradley Life on Television: Content Analyses of U.S. TV Dramas (1980) Ablex, Norwood, N.J.

Herman, Edward S. and Chomsky, Noam Manufacturing Consent (1988) Pantheon, New York.

Himmelstein, Hal On the Small Screen (1981) Praeger Scientific, Westport, Ct.

Mander, Jerry Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978) Quill, New York.

Metz, Christian Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (1974) Oxford University Press, New York.

Meyerowitz, Josh No Sense of Place (1985) Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Monaco, David How to Read a Film (1981) Oxford University Press, New York.

Postman, Neil Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) Penguin Books, New York.

Ranney, Austin Channels of Power: The Impact of Television on American Politics (1983) Basic Books, Inc., New York.

Schudson, Michael Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion (1984) Basic Books, Inc., New York.

Related Readings in Philosophy and Criticism

The media ecological perspective demands insight into the workings of communication environments, as well as their effects on those who inhabit them. The following books represent critical interpretations of the relationship between thought, symbol, and meaning.

Aristotle, Poetics and The Rhetoric

Barthes, Roland Elements of Semiology (1964) Hill and Wang, New York.

Barthes, Roland Mythologies (1972) Hill and Wang, New York.

Chomsky, Noam Language and Mind (1972) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York.

Eco, Umberto A Theory of Semiotics (1979) Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

Ellul, Jacques The Humiliation of the Word (1985) W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Michigan.

Langer, Suzanne Philosophy in a New Key (1942) Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma.

Ortony, Andrew (ed.) Metaphor and Thought (1979) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Postman, Neil Conscientious Objections (1988) Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

Sontag, Susan On Photography (1977) Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, New York.

Sturrock, John (ed.) Structuralism and Since: From Levi-Strauss to Derrida (1979) Oxford University Press, Oxford.