Whether in the Andes, the Sahel, or Lapland, transhumant herders who must focus on linear access routes tend to clash with farmers who focus on fields along the way, when animals eat or trample crops. People who derive their livelihood from land in different ways perceive and communicate about it in different geometric and geological idioms. Between people who assume that humans can own land and master it, and those who assume on the contrary that humans belong to the land and must respect it and conform to its requirements, communication easily goes awry. To speak of land as a ‘resource’ implies it exists to serve human use. To speak of land as a commodity denies psychological attachments to space and place. English terms like ‘property,’ ‘rights,’ or ‘ownership’ sometimes carry culture-bound overtones of civilization, justice, or morality. Such metaphorizing imbues poetry and politics, while imagery of ‘grounding’ or ‘terra firma’ imbues legal and scientific discourse. Human communication about land draws heavily on metaphoric imagery from the human body (headwaters, heartlands, fertility, etc.), kinship (motherland, fatherland), domicile (gateway to Asia), and other human-centered sources. Parker Shipton, Daivi Rodima-Taylor, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015 Metaphor and Rhetoric How these trade-offs are solved, and how the solutions influence the nature and consequences of communication, are major questions for future research. Communication involves trade-offs among different motives. ![]() ![]() Both communicators and audiences use communication to signal and control relationships and to serve other interpersonal goals. As social actions, messages can be used strategically to imply causality and generalizability. Audiences also use the communicator's characteristics to draw inferences about the meaning intended by the communicator. Audiences also infer that the communicator intended to formulate the message in a particular way, and these inferences influence how they understand the message. When communicators do so, their messages can change their own knowledge and attitudes. Communicators choose how to formulate their message by taking the characteristics of the audience, including their audience's situation, into account. By the communicator and the audience taking each other into account, communication both creates new knowledge and constructs a shared reality. The social psychological perspective on communication emphasizes the fact that communication also involves social motives and has interpersonal consequences beyond just information reception. Human communication is a process by which individuals exchange information and influence one another through a common system of symbols and signs. Semin, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001
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