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Communication in this mode emphasizes the shared act of constructing, celebrating, and repairing common worlds.Carey famously suggests that communication is here akin to attending religious mass, where the point is not to transmit information but to draw people together in communion—to produce and maintain a shared view of the world through repeated practices. What makes the prayer, chant, and ceremony significant is their function as both social practices and techniques of the self. Through their repetition, we develop collective sensibilities and patterns of perception by which we can build common worlds. —meaning gets enacted in the very midst of unruly bodies that excrete “all levels of expression, from the minute details of discourse—from pitch, emphasis, gesture, head tilts, and eye gaze” (p. 44). Twitching bodies, stuttering tongues, signing fingers, and slurred lips (and all the affect they carry along) are no longer distracting “accidentals,” but the very materiality of communion. —In the mode of transmission, meaning would flee this scene, yet in the mode of ritual, the frozen supplication is a link to the body’s ancient relation to meaning and language, one in which we do not command but must together wait in the unexpected.
- Carey, J. (2009). Communication as culture: Essays on media and society. Routledge.
- Padden, C. (2015). Communication. In R. Adams, B. Reiss & D. Serlin (Eds.), Keywords for Disability Studies (pp. 43-45). New York University Press.
- Constantino, C. (2016). Stuttering gain [Paper presentation]. International Stuttering AwarenessDay Conference. http://isad.isastutter.org/isad-2016/papers-presented-by-2016/stories-and-experiences-with-stuttering-by-pws/stuttering-gain-christopher-constantino/