Books
Recovering the Voice in our Techno-Social World: On the Phone, 2020
Using a communicological perspective, Recovering the Voice in our Techno-Social World: On the Phone identifies voice (phone in Greek) as the essential medium for a re-enchantment of human communication in our highly impersonal techno-social environment. This book is a response to the growing concern by social critics that we are becoming a de-voiced society because of our preferences for hyper-textual, image-based forms of electronic connectivity. Ironically, while we are increasingly “on the phone,” we are sacrificing our vocality within immediate ear-to-ear relations. Framed by the trope of enchantment, Deborah Eicher-Catt argues that the immediacy of the sounding voice calls us and enchants us to make possible productive moments of resonance in which we might cultivate an interpersonal resilience in today’s fast-paced, media-saturated environment. Scholars of media studies, communication, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.
Winner of the National Communication Association, Philosophy of Communication Division Outstanding Book Award 2021
Winner of the Media Ecology Association Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Social Interaction 2021
Deborah Eicher-Catt profoundly transforms the discourse of human communication, meaning, and technology in her book about voice and human experience. Her writing throughout is at once inviting and incandescent. What is more, this study could not be more timely or more original. As we take note of the fragility of intimate relationships in this era, the discussion of communication technology has tended to be hasty and careless. Eicher-Catt’s book is the first of its kind to systematically address the embodied presence of self and other–it is brilliant and absolutely vital. — Frank J. Macke, Mercer University
In this book overflowing with deep learning, profound understanding, and brilliant insights, Deborah Eicher-Catt provides a philosophical study and critique of one of the most troubling aspects of contemporary life in our electronic media environment: the loss of voice and the proliferation of noise and visual distractions that are a consequence of our unhealthy infatuation with our digital devices and mobile technologies. — Lance Strate, Fordham University
While appreciating the convenience and functionality of advanced technologies, Eicher-Catt brings our attention back to the immediacy of the actual speaking voice—an originary source of human discourse. It is this source from which we truly experience the sublime, true beauty, passion, music, love—everything that makes us human. A vocal advocate for the crucial role of vocality in our life, Eicher-Catt’s book is original and powerful, her style persuasive and lucid. This book will resonate with all students and scholars of communication, leaving them transformed—re-enchanted. — Igor Klyukanov, Eastern Washington University
Link to the Publisher’s Website
Link to Review in European Journal of Communication 37(6), 2022
Link to Reviews in Communication Theory Journal (6/8/21)
Communicology: The New Science of Embodied Discourse, 2010
This book offers a new way of thinking about communication that moves beyond normative perspectives. Exhibiting postmodern theory, communicology is an idea whose time has come. Working within the European human science tradition and the philosophy of American pragmatism, the authors included in this first anthology of its kind apply a synthesis of semiotics and phenomenology to the study of the cultural and social conditions of communicative praxis.
Editorships
1. Past Associate Editor, The American Journal of Semiotics
2. Special Issue Editor, Language and Semiotic Studies, “The Play of Signs/The Signs of Play,” Vol. 4(2), Chinese Association of Language and Semiotic Studies, 4(2), 2018.
3. Special Issue Editor, Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture, “Semiotics and the Sacred,” 48 (3), 2014.
4. Special Issue Co-editor, The Atlantic Journal of Communication, “Agency and Efficacy in Communicology,” 16 (3-4), 2008.
5. Special Issue Editor, The American Journal of Semiotics, “Gregory Bateson’s Centennial,” 19(1-4), 2006