Ştefan Vlăduţescu : The Magic of Communication
By Mirela Teodorescu
Ştefan Vlăduţescu is an exegete in communication with several books published in this area, being fascinated by the diversity of the aspects offered by this segment of science, that are interrelated by notions of sociology, psychology, philosophy, literature, journalism, public relations, computer science, mathematics controlling them skillfully in the book „Concepts and Communication Notions and Message Theory” (Craiova, Sitech, 2009).
Communication is an event composed in varying proportions of communicative acts and facts. „The man communicates whether he will or he will not.” When he is communicating intentionally, his manifestation is a communicative act. Communicational facts occurs mainly in nonverbal communication.
The author assigns a large space communication issues such as conviction and persuasion, generous explained. „In the first instance, our world is one of the appearances of truth. Fundamental human gnoseological situation is the following: every time through conviction (true belief) or persuasion (persuasion improperly induced) the spirit choose what is true from what seems true”(p.169).
Cultural History of persuasion begins with the Greek sophists, is an insidious method of communication and using procedures such as rumors, lies, sophistry, lighting, myth, fascination. In case of persuasion, once it is controlled the mechanism, used methods, evaluation of results, it is addictive, it becomes a drug as a tool of manipulation and intoxication.
Conviction corresponds to a communicative act aiming the mental state of an individual, being a method of effective influencing, based on the rational, the facts, the inferences, the arguments, the testing, the confirmations.
In case of communication, axioms help to its construction, for information are necessary „statements” of structuring, principles of organization of notice material, of meanings (p. 63). It should be noted that we have a substantial Romanian contribution in this regard, by M. Dinu. He based on a natural logic of communicative tone, changing the dynamics of coloring emphasized psychological of Palo Alto axioms, he has reformatted them and he added another two. Axioms mentioned by M. Dinu (M. Dinu, 1999, pp. 99-107) are:
- “;Noncommunication is impossible”
- “Communication takes place in two levels: informal and relational”’
- “Communication is a continuous process that cannot be treated as cause-effect terms”;
- “Communication is either a digital form, or an analogical one”;
- “Communication is irreversible”;
- “Communication supposes relations of force and involves symmetric transactions or complementary”;
- “Communication supposes adjusting and accommodation processes”;
Communication is not a fixed anticipated structure: „its rules and regulations are constructed during the exchange” (M.F. Agnoletti, 1988) with the condition to exist a common repertory for a minimal understanding (p. 86).
Systems theory is a science that defines, models, optimizes, follows up the systems on mathematical models and classifies them into stable, controllable, observable, adaptable, each with basic features and specific. Extrapolating and adapting this science to social systems, we find the correlation for each parameter set. The models are defined on inputs / input, processing it, input / output and negative / positive feedback representing a partial return of the output to input. This feedback notion is a measure that can disrupt or regulate the system.
In sociology, the term „feed” either back or forward represents, the first, the relation present-past, second, the relation present-future. Feedback helps us to evaluate, to confirm, gives a measure of something that was performed, while the feed forward is an estimation, a forecast of what will follow.
The book written by Ştefan Vlăduţescu, an appreciated professor of University of Craiova, Romania, is impressive by the amount of information, concepts presented, explained, developed, suggested but also through extensive suggested and studied bibliography to bring the reader a more comprehensive image of the treated subjects.