Towards a critical theory of communication. The early contributions of Alvin Gouldner and North American sociology of language

Abstract

Our purpose in the present work is to trace Gouldner’s contributions to a critical theory of communication that provides tools for analyses of communicative stereotypes, prejudices, authorities, and discriminations. To do so, in the context of North American philosophy and sociology of language, we address such key notions as symbols, meanings, expressions, opinions, speech, writing, and gestures, codification and decodification, conversation, and discussion, among others. After systematizing these notions, we link Gouldner’s early contributions to contemporary sociological theory, from the linguistic turn to the pragmatic turn, while also highlighting the critical meaning and current productivity of this theory of communication in order to reflect on the newest communications media, such as the so-called social networks. The problem under study is, then, that of communication, while the controversy we explore is whether or not Gouldnerian theory provides productive conceptual contributions for the study of this problem. The methodological procedure adopted to achieve these goals consists in analyzing key texts on language with dialogues from the early 20th to the beginning of the 21st century.