New Perspectives in Applied Communication

This work was begun in 1998 but it suffered the seemingly long delay because the pressure of work in the Nigerian University system is almost horrendous. How some of my colleagues are able to cope well perhaps can be claimed as due to individual survival skill.

Most of the preliminary thoughts and basic research had been carried out between 1992 and 1996 but the actual task of putting together the various pieces did not start until April 1998. This again had to be held up when a serious personnel crisis inspired by labour demagogues forced the system into a traumatic spell and l was tied down by administrative assignments. This was further aggravated by a freak accident in 1999 which almost claimed my life and that of my wife own our way from a funeral service about eighty kilometres from Uyo.

Additional chapters were written in 2000 and the project went to sleep again. It was luckily revived in july 2002 when a dispute between the University of Uyo management and students over fees forced the University to embark on an indeterminate ‘holiday’. It was during this period that the rewriting and review of all the chapters were carried out.

The original intention was to write a seventeen-chapter book covering most of the areas of my interest which had not been fully addressed in my first book and the second edited work. The number was reduced to ten to give the final work a prim look rather than an unwieldy one. Surely, everything cannot be said in one, two or three books. There are always new perspectives, new visions and new fields to explore. I have attempted to do that in these ten chapters.

The book itself is an act of God. l have had the inspiration to express some of these thoughts with greater profundity than I had done in my previous works. In fact, I have attempted to delve into more polemical and theoretical issues than l have done in the past. For example, chapters one, two, six, eight and nine deal with ideas that can lead to possible new theories. And I have also examined their practical implications.

I am sure readers will have cause to agree or disagree with me at various points in these chapters. For instance, the terrace hypothesis (Chapter 9) proved very challenging to me as I do intend to develop it beyond these pages. Our past debates on this in the classroom, seminars and in books were not terminal. I shall welcome criticisms from readers so that we can have a basis for an intellectual engagé.

This book is indeed meant for those who have studied communication as a discipline for up to two years in the University and those pursuing research programmes at the postgraduate level. Teachers of communication studies whether as communication arts, language arts, mass communication, journalism, technical communication, or business and organisational communication will find it quite useful. I believe those in the field – industries, civil service, church administration and other bureaucracies – will equally find it helpful.

You are all welcome to our new perspectives, our Republic of Intellectual Conscience. It is perhaps instructive that I am writing this on this fateful day.