Communication professor Klaus Krippendorff from the University of Pennsylvania

Communication professor Klaus Krippendorff from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School Of Communication presented his topic, “From Conversation to Discourse,” in the Oct. 10 Annenberg Research Seminar. His presentation examined how conversation erodes into discourse and how the components of discourse strengthen and weaken communities. Krippendorff said that when a conversation between individuals is disrupted, it needs to be either repaired or it will develop into discourse. Disruption within conversations may occur in many forms. Whenever two parties cannot come to an understanding, the conversation between them is disrupted. Professionals from different specialties will often confront this problem since they evaluate their data based on different observations and measurements. A physicist will not often agree with a sociologist about what is most important, therefore their conversation is constrained. “Most discourses maintain their identity by drawing their own boundaries,” Krippendorff said. This results in the varying data within different communities because most fields specialize and are not all-inclusive. Krippendorff said that the concept of a universe alone is a bounded concept since physicists believe that “everything in the universe must be consistent and if it’s not, then it doesn’t fit into the universe and must be an anomaly.” Also, Krippendorff discussed how discourse communities will justify themselves to materially relevant outsiders. They do so in order to attract new members, maintain appropriate reputation, and find material support for construction of projects. Krippendorff said that by understanding why and how discourses are formed, it will better shape our understandings of conflict relationships that emerge with acts of submission and claims of authority. “This reveals the unequal realities of different discourses and allows us to question imperialist truth claims. There are constant changes to what the universe is, nothing is fixed, and truth claims are dangerous,” Krippendorff said. The next Annenberg Research Seminar will be Oct. 17, when University of Illinois professor Christian Sandvig visits USC to discuss his topic, "Video Killed the Internet Star."