Communicative success vs. failure

David A. Good
Table of contents

There is no way of telling, but it seems likely that interest in communicative success and failure (CSF henceforth) is as old as the human capacity for reflection on communicative behaviour. Indeed, if arguments as to the role of interpersonal manipulation and reflection thereon in the evolution of intelligence and language are correct (Byrne & Whiten 1988; Good 1995; Goody 1995), it may well have been with us for even longer. It can certainly be dated to the classical interest in rhetoric, which Richards aptly described as the “study of misunderstanding and its remedies” Richards (1965: 3), and it has been an issue for various creeds and academic disciplines ever since.

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