THE TAXONOMY OF COMMUNICATION.

The communication taxonomies we live by are represented by curricula, tables of contents, and the line items of budgets. Many of these are political products. Communication means different things at different times to different people, even to the same person. Therefore the communication taxonomy changes, is relative rather than absolute, and is probabilistic. Its categories are fuzzy sets, and generally multimodal. Computers can manage this complexity. Beyond a taxonomy, the field of communication rests on a philosophy and choices of priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]