From typology of communication to typology of communicators: communicative behaviour and communicative identity

Abstract

The present article revisits and revises one of the traditional classifications of communicators which centres on the four generally acknowledged types the mobile, the dominant, the rigid, and the introvert communicator(s). The methodology elaborated and adhered to in the article goes beyond these clear-cut distinctions and accounts for the need to add ten new types of communicators to the traditional four types. This allows to arrive at a more comprehensive view of both the process of communication and the range of individuals participating in varying and varied communicative events across national, organizational, and corporate cultures. The complex approach prioritized in this study is based on the integration of several methods (observation, comparison, confrontation, conceptualization, categorization) as ways of ordering activity and is effected through sets of techniques that encourage the researcher to subject the new correlations to ongoing testing as they are presented at lectures, identified and observed in real communicative settings, discussed at practical seminars and gradually organized and, if need be, reorganized for better functional use in the teaching of the essentials of communication at university level across departments and specializations.

Keywords

• communication
• communicator
• typology
• classification
• categorization
• methodology
• approach(es)
• method(s)
• technique(s)
• theory
• practice
• principles of communication
• laws of communication