Abstract:
This essay submits the modern communication theory to a
critical analysis. This theory constructs an abstract and reductive
model which can not give a pertinent account of what emerges
in the process of existential communication which is a
multilayered structure not only of being together but of
becoming together one through the other. This notion of
structure should not be confused with that of system.
Ontologically speaking beings are structural phenomena which
are essentially becoming in time and space in a situation of cocreative
exchange amongst them. A becoming is always under
way and can therefore also fail. The human self is such a
structure in its interpersonal becoming through dialogue in
which language has to be reinvented so that the interlocutors
can co-create meaning and contribute reciprocally to their own
becoming. The term ‘word’ refers to this co-creative process
whereby the mere informational or communicational aspects of
language are exceeded in the spoken word so that a true
existential communication can become.
