Integrating the persons communicating: Towards a lay-oriented science of communication – defining the research agenda

The paper presents some grounds for the working out of insights developed by Roy Harris and the fellow integrationalists, including the person-centered focus of Otto Jespersen when dealing with future communication studies. Whenever we are speaking of ‘something verbal’, immediately we are opening a Pandora’s box of thought habits and beliefs, connected with our equally inevitable inveterate notion of ‘language’. If, however, we on the contrary notice how people in their daily practices actually go about integrating their actions with their expressions and vice versa, suddenly the traditional notion of ‘language’ evaporates, and we are left solely with persons and their understandings, actions and expressions to be investigated by us professionals, collaborating with the persons under scrutiny.

► Meaning is created on the background of experience as living creatures.
► No sign ever means anything by itself but only means something to someone.
► The notion of ‘language’-taken-as-something-in-itself turns out to be fatal.