Perhaps my favorite all time communication text book was one that I was introduced to my freshman year at MSU. The book was not used in the class that I took but in a section of Com 100 taken by several of my friends. The class was taught by Ed Wotring and Ed Millar two graduate students in communication. Ed Wotring ended up being my major professor at Florida State when I was in graduate school.
The book was Pragmatics of Human Communication by Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson. This book is still in print. I highly recommend it to anyone studying communication. Except for some of the information on schizophrenia which could stand some updating based upon more recent advances in medical science, the text stands up extremely well. The Verderber book which we use in class comments on some of the Axioms of Communication from pragmatics in the first chapter. I don't completely agree with the way that Verderber interprets Watzlawick, et al.
Here is an interesting site related to the book: Pragmatics of Human Communication.
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Dang! Here I have to agree with Dr. Parker! I also read "Pragmatics" as a student (grad school) as the textbook we used to teach our basic course (the late, great Aubrey Fisher's book) was greatly influenced by W, B & J.
Other key texts (dare I say "seminal") in my communication education were Berger & Luckman's "The Social Construction of Reality," Rogers' "Diffusion of Innovations," and my personal fave, Ken Gergen's "Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge." As far as I know, all three are out of print, but available used online.
-Len Assante
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