Symbolice Forms and Human Encounters
Roshni Sengupta
COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, AND CONFRONTATION (COMMUNICATION PROCESSES VOLUME 3) by Bernard Bel Sage, 2010, 504 pp., 850
December 2010, volume 34, No 12

The function of communication to shape the dialectics of the time provides it with a rare power. Defined as the interplay of various, often conflicting, images and symbolizations, the process of communication as well as the import of that process hold within them the innate will to move thought-processes in a particular direction. Communications, therefore, is the conglomeration of symbolic forms that tend to embody and promote dialogue, interaction, links, rapports, and human encounters. These symbolic forms can be grouped together under the category of the cultural or cultural forms. The volume under review addresses the contextual and physical forms of these symbols as integral markers of culture. The overarching strain of the argument posited encapsulates within its boundaries the primordial and earliest definitions and characterizations of the means, processes, and ends of communication. Cultural patterns, systems of representations and knowledge and cognitive structures contrive modes, forms, and means of communication within given communities and between communities.

This communication may be both cordial and conflictual. Collective forms of communication convey the essential moorings of a peoples cultural practices. Songs, tunes, drama, images at home, posters on the streets, narratives, films, rituals, deities, occupational skills, village festivals, pilgrimages to holy places, carnivals, folk art forms, bazaar art forms, street plays are some of the recognized forms of communication that draw heavily from local and primordial cultures. Herein lay the seeds of conflict.

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