Alicia was having the most interesting morning. It was late August, and the days were already starting to have that slight hint of a chill in the morning that reminded her that the school year was just around the corner. She’d woken up in the little hotel room she was occupying for a week at the …
Continue reading “Chapter 6: Alicia flings a watermelon wedge and finds a friend”
A friend of mine challenged me recently to explain why I am a university professor. “Why did you choose this path?” she asked me, over a glass of pinot grigio and nibblies on the terrace of the Bad Dog Café on trendy Locke Street in Hamilton, Ontario. “You’ve sacrificed a lot of your private life …
I had quite the unusual day today. It made me think a lot about what it like being me right now. Here are a couple of thoughts… Yesterday, I was recovering from food poisoning, so I thought I would spend today at home. I was Acting Chair of the Department of Communication Studies & Multimedia, …
Continue reading “An odd day – I think the single life has its drawbacks.”
There is very little that is natural about communication. Word associations. Metaphors. Our vision of the world is like a kaleidoscope of moving bits of glass, settling in a slightly different configuration every time we pause to ponder. In fact, most of concepts, symbols and metaphors that we process as we communicate are of a …
Continue reading “For communicators, listening is key. A few tips to improve your skills.”
I have always been fascinated by hermeneutics, which is the study of meaning and understanding. What does it mean to mean something? More importantly, how what does it mean to understand something that someone else is communicating? In my PhD thesis, I explored whether it was possible to use the structures in a text (syntax, …
Continue reading “The study of how we understand one another.”
Today had started peculiarly for Dr. Chang – he had arisen from his bed at the usual time, about 5:45 – a time he liked because it often allowed him to stand on the porch and sip his steaming tea as he caught the glimmering lights of dawn as it rose over the ravine lot …
It looks like men have had it. According to Hanna Rosin, in her article The End of Men, from The Atlantic Monthly, it’s women rule the roost and bring home the bacon. What’s a man to do? Many excuses are put forth about men’s failure to compete in school, in the marketplace and in the …
Continue reading “The end of men? No – it’s just time to for men to change.”
Mass broadcasting systems permitted the marketing revolution of the 50s and 60s. Now, the social media revolution is opening up the same radical possibilities for public relations. PR is the business of building relationships, in Canada that means preferably symmetrical relationships between an organization and its various publics. In the past, it was very hard …
Continue reading “Public Relations and the Social Media Revolution”
People no longer live one life, but many. Physical. On-line. With whom are we really communicating? You may think that this is a silly topic, if you’re someone who hasn’t grown up on-line or thrown yourself into the world of the Internet and social media. But you would be mistaken – a significant proportion of …
Continue reading “We live two lives, in two realities: physical and online”
A week ago, my colleague and old friend came, Stephen Svenson, who is doing his PhD in sociology at the University of Waterloo, but is from the Okanagan Valley and has had many past lives: park ranger, sushi chef, geological consultant, research assistant to Gerard Kennedy, arborist and university instructor. He came over and we …
