PHENOMENOLOGY (International Encyclopedia of Communication 2008)

Phenomenology refers to both a tradition of Continental philosophy and a methodology of research that employs many principles and insights from that tradition. Most broadly construed, phenomenology attempts to provide a science of lived-through experience, and, in doing so, it seeks to reveal not only the essential or invariant characteristics of consciousness and all phenomena, but, also, to undercut the false dichotomy implied by the so-called "subject-object split." It exposes problematic assumptions embedded within notions of mind-independent reality just as it seeks to uncover how consciousness itself, including the consciousness of others, is indigenous to the lifeworld. In their diversity, range, and thick ambiguity, the processes of consciousness emerge from that very world for which they were made-a world to which they were always already destined to return .

Phenomenology is an approach in philosophy that emerged around the end of the 19th century. It aims to study and describe reality as it appears in concrete experiences. That description proceeds as much as possible independent of theories that provide causal explanations and free of assumptions that have not been questioned and investigated. The word phenomenology appeared prior to the late 19th century. Indeed, the concept only gains widespread attention with the publication of Franz Brentano’s writings. Brentano presented a systematic psychology that was designed to form the basis of a “science of the soul” and shifted the focus from the content to the activities of the mind. His approach greatly influenced Edmund Husserl’s (1859–1938) philosophy, which in its turn can be considered the most important source for many phenomenological traditions. This entry introduces phenomenology, paying specific attention to some of the movements’ key thinkers.

Meaning and Language: Phenomenological Perspectives, 2008

The communication of insight-be it through a transcription, translation, 5 a seminar or classroom lecture-is a philosophical task as old as Plato. 6 Phenomenological insight, according to Husserl, is to be gained by tem-7 porarily "bracketing" the various presuppositions of the different realms 8 of human activity for the purpose of intuiting the essential structures 9 of experience that appear to a consciousness purified by the method of 10 the epoché. And Husserl makes it abundantly clear that an essential part 11 of phenomenology's task is the communication of phenomenology's in-12 sights to the various regions of human activity which it claims to ground 13 through its activity. It is through such communication that phenomeno-14 logy invites humanity to return to "the things themselves" that underlie 15 all of our various preconceptions of these things, so that it may have a 16 deeper understanding of the lived world common to all. This is often 17 forgotten about phenomenology: it is not only about intuition, but also 18 expression. 19 This first half of this essay will show that Husserl was acutely aware 20 of the role that language must play in the successful expression of pheno-21 menological insight It will also show, through an analysis of his theory 22 146 Meaning and Language in Phenomenological Perspective just communicating the insights gained by his method. This analysis will 1 also reveal what might be called a nascent but essential rhetorical element 2 in Husserl's understanding of how insight is gained and meaning consti-3 tuted. 4 This points to the second half of the essay, which concentrates on the 5 considerable problems of the mobility of phenomenological insight via 6 expression, and the subsequent constitution of phenomenological mean-7 ing and community. This investigation will yield a clear sense of the 8 demands being made on phenomenological expression, as well as nega-9 tive insights into what phenomenological expression can not be like. It 10 will also suggest a possible way in which practicing phenomenologists 11

2015

A scientific procedure in the broad sense, phenomenology is a wedding of rationality and observation. It is methodical, systematic, critical, self-correcting, and progressive in its development and scope. The goal and subject matter of this method are to understand what has been called "consciousness" or "lived experience," and in doing so phenomenology seeks to freshly clarify and shed light on the very meaning of these words. Such nondualistic terms as "Dasein" (being-in-the-world) or "human existence," which emphasize the world, have been considered preferable given some contexts, aims, and findings of these investigations. Phenomenology is not a doctrine or fixed body of knowledge, but a core method of investigation that may be flexibly adapted and remains open to new findings, terminology, and modification of practices. The antithesis of dogma, its knowledge claims, concepts, and language are informed and shaped by concrete evidence gathered in research. Such investigations have led to the abandonment of some established concepts and to the development of new ones. Edmund Husserl identified, programmatically articulated, and named "phenomenological" procedures for use in the full spectrum of scholarly disciplines. Husserl's phenomenological, philosophical investigations underwent many extensions and revisions in his career. Over the last hundred years, Husserl's followers have produced a vast, variegated body of knowledge in 53 countries, in over 40 disciplines including philosophy, theology, psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, linguistics, law, architecture, literary criticism, musicology, and art history (Embree 2010). The phenomenological method has been modified for specific subject matters, problems, and goals. This chapter delineates the core of this method, some of its history, and applications relevant to psychology with a critical assessment of its limits and future.

Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 1990

Peter Šajda (et al.): Affectivity, Agency and Intersubjectivity. L´Harmattan 2012

lingua.amu.edu.pl

1988

First comprehensive explication of the Philosophy of Communication in two parts as (1) Communicology and (2) Semiology within the methodological context of Phenomenology as Applied Research. Each Part contains two sections: (1) Eidetic Studies based in Logic and (2) Empirical Studies based in Experimentation as Lived-Experience. Thus, a unique Discourse comparison of both the Philosophy Approach (eidetic studies grounded in logic) and the Human Science Approach (empirical studies grounded in linguistics).

Human Studies, 1994

Phenomenology is, at the very least, a choice to study an environment from a situated location in actual experience and oriented toward particular aspects of the spectrum of human activity. Communication is, at the very least, a process of informing someone about something, and so forming and perhaps transforming both the environment and those who communicate within it in particular ways. The essays in this issue of Human Studies show various sorts of phenomenological analysis at work in studying diverse aspects of human communicative activity. Thus, the essays themselves provide illustrations of how phenomenology can be useful, and actually is used, in communication research. Rather than summarize those investigations here, I would like to preface them with a consideration of why phenomenological analysis is suited to the subject matter of interest to these authors. Although readers of Human Studies typically are knowledgeable about phenomenological research, that comprehension may well not extend to reasons for using phenomenology to investigate communicative phenomena as distinct from, although also correlated with, phenomena of interest in longer-established disciplines within the human/social sicences. In what follows, therefore, I want to tell something of the character of this research area, and will focus on two topics in doing so. The first is the predominant mode of theorizing in the discipline; the second is the predominance of practice over theory. After this brief depiction of these dimensions of the field, I will set out some reasons in support of my claim that phenomenology is a preferable alternative orientation for communication research. Communication research as an academic discipline began in the early years of this century with assumptions which many in the human/social sciences now characterize as empiricistic, scientistic, or even, positivistic. Certain conceptions of human beings and our environments-and thus, of the subjects and objects of communication-were borrowed from academically acceptable and generally admired practices in the physical sciences,