A comunicação em Charles Horton Cooley : circunstâncias, ideias e discussão

Abstract

Inside the field ofthe history of communication theories, this dissertation proposes a documental research of the Americansociologist Charles Horton Cooley. Published mainly in the first decades of the twentieth century, his work is one of the first to address the communication media as a distinguishable object of study in the sociological field, dealing both with its symbolic and private instance, as its technical and public instance. The dissertation observes the theoretical context to lecture, write, analyze and discuss the concepts and characteristics of the communication presented by Cooley.Based on the analysis made by Hans-Joachim Schubert, it is identified in Cooley’s social theory the pragmatic vision that correlates the subjective, objective and social knowledgethrough meaningful symbols. What follows, then, is that Cooley gave to communication the role of the knowledge, the individual (self) andthe societyfoundation; first forits role in the production of symbolic meanings, second for developing the subject of knowledge, third for making the sociability to spring out of the human nature.