ABSTRACT
Edward Tylor identified a number of what might be called primary modes of communication that he believed to be nearly universally present in early cultures: gestures, languages, various types of notation for counting and classification, myths, story-telling, and dance. The anthropologist Jack Goody has called all of the modes of communication the technologies of the intellect. Media refers to mass communication systems, their organization, hardware, and messages. The concepts of feedback and reflexion provide an introductory example of how the mode of communication can be identified and analyzed. The interdependence of writing and bureaucratic practices provides people with a remarkable example of how new modes of communication both enable and constrain the development of repeated activities and shared ideas in a culture. Susanne Langer, a philosopher of language concerned with the problems of pragmatic understanding, characterized the difficulties of grasping the meaning of communicative acts and events.
