READING WITH OTHERS: LEVINAS' ETHICS AND SCRIPTURAL REASONING

This essay explores different frameworks for learning, progressing from a relatively basic model of acquiring information through first linguistic models, and then through social interaction, leading to textual practices, and culminating with reading with others from other traditions. For this sequence there is a parallel one concerning kinds of reasoning (and the relevant sciences). But the essay focuses on providing the best account of ethical responsibility for each practice of learning: the greater the social complexity and the respect for otherness, the richer the account of the ethics of learning.     

Fragmentation in the Field—and the Movement Toward Integration in Communication Science

Two aspects of disciplinary identity are addressed in this essay: (1) Who are we, members of one discipline or a loose confederation of scholars who each have some claim to the word communication; and (2) are we (whoever we are) becoming respectable members of the academic community? The first of these issues is examined in terms of the institutional history of communication. The various forces that contributed to a fragmentation of the discipline are discussed. Evidence that a clear disciplinary identity or “self-concept” is emerging in terms of a social science of communication is presented. This identity differentiates the emerging discipline from its various predecessors, including speech and journalism. While there is less evidence to be brought to bear on the second issue, what evidence there is indicates that respectability (and disciplinary maturity) is increasing, but that there is still much progress to be made.