Les sciences de la communication : un phénomène de dépendance culturelle ?

Communication sciences : a cultural dependency ? First the authors question the foundations, the logic and the conceptual tools of the so-called communication sciences. Then they point out the ambiguities and the contradictions of these sciences, which together with their all entrapping capacity, "enables" them to pontify and to claim all tilings to be in the realm of communicology. A recall of their main episte-mological breeding ground — interactionism, structuralism and cybernetics — is followed by an examination of the historical contect within which these sciences emigrated and settled in France. We witness the "French-ization" of these native American communication sciences. The authors then raise the question of the social issues which these sciences can effectively study and those which they simply obfuscate. In the beginning, these sciences were imported by practionners who dealt in communication expertise. During the present decade they spread over into the academic field and have begun to infiltrate university curricula and research programs where they now hold a position of some importance. Their rather rapid rise may be explained thus : — the inability of traditional social sciences to come up with conceptual models and techniques which are both simple to apply and readily adapt¬ able, — and by the felt need of new auxiliaray administrative services of monop¬ olistic corporations and of governments to control the production and the distribution within society of those symbols which support public relations campaigns by reinforcing and/or modifying the public image of private firms and public policies. In view of this, the contribution of the communication sciences is all the more valuable because contradictions within ideological apparatus are becoming increasingly acute.