But what did he profess? Lewis’s title was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, yet he had eclectic academic interests in a variety of subjects. As noted earlier, his formal education included not only classical Greek and Roman literature, typical curricular components of an Oxford education, but also philosophy and English literature. His lectures at his first teaching position for University College focused on philosophy. His writing reflects his diverse interests and ←10 | 11→broad scope of knowledge, including an interest in words, language, meaning, and philology; this book suggests that in addition to his other diverse academic interests, he was a professor of communication.
To make the case that Lewis should be embraced for his knowledge of human communication, it helpful to know how the communication discipline and Lewis’s interests intersect. The central focus of the communication discipline, according to former National Communication Association president David Zarefsky, is the study of the relationship between messages and people.59 Meaning, messages, and the importance of language are also consistent and pervasive themes running throughout Lewis’s professional work. As this book documents, Lewis possessed a sophisticated understanding of the nature of meaning and the centrality of using language to develop human connections.
The communication discipline is interdisciplinary; it embraces several academic traditions, some as ancient as the study of rhetoric, and others more contemporary, including social media and critical cultural theory. Mirroring the multifaceted nature of the communication discipline, Lewis, too, had interdisciplinary interests; his study and writing ventured into literature, literary history, theology, psychology, philosophy and other topics found in both the humanities and social sciences. An essay or lecture about education and Natural Law blossomed into a multi-part lecture series that continues to be required reading in philosophy classes: The Abolition of Man.60 Lewis’s writing reflects his own interdisciplinary approach to whatever topic or issue he is exploring. Ideas emanating from philosophy, literature, theology, and literary criticism are sprinkled throughout his writing and speaking.
The National Communication Association, the oldest and largest national professional academic communication association, defines communication as “how people use messages to generate meanings within and across various contexts” and “the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media, and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific, and aesthetic inquiry.”61 The U.S. Department of Education defines the academic domain of communication as including “instruction in the theory and practice of interpersonal, group, organizational, professional, and intercultural communication; speaking and listening; verbal and nonverbal interaction; rhetorical theory and criticism; performance studies; argumentation and persuasion; technologically mediated communication; popular culture; and various contextual applications.”62 C. S. Lewis was not just mildly interested in these topics, he had insightful and detailed observations about the theory and practice of human communication.
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The growth of the contemporary communication discipline parallels C. S. Lewis’s growing interest in language, words, and meaning. The academic discipline of communication studies has most fully developed in the United States in the years since World War II, as evidenced by the plethora of organized departments and schools of communication established in that interim. There were no U.S. departments of “speech” in 1900.63 By 1930 (the same time Lewis was coming into his own as a tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford), a survey of selected U. S. institutions found more than 25 U.S. departments that included the word “speech” in their titles.64 As Lewis’s career began to soar, a 1948 survey reported 256 U. S. colleges and universities that included the word “speech” in a department title; 51 were titled “speech and drama,” 18, “public speaking,” 48, “English and speech,” and 5, “communication.”65 Today there are approximately 2,000 U.S. colleges, universities and community colleges that include a study of what used to be encompassed by the word “speech” or “public speaking” and what today is more often labeled “communication” or “communication studies.”66
There are several reasons to consider C.S. Lewis a communication educator and scholar—a Professor of Communication. First, applications of communication ideas and principles, as well as explicit observations about words, meaning, messages and human behavior, can be found in virtually everything he wrote. C. S. Lewis was a meta-communicator. He communicated about communication; he wrote about the process of writing and speaking. His principles of how to communicate well are found in many of his works. Although some well-known authors write about the writing process (such as Stephen King67), only a handful of celebrated and prolific writers have described in such considerable detail how they developed their communication craft. Lewis’s title “Communication Professor” is appropriate because of the number of words he devoted to writing about how he communicated. His former student V. Brown Patterson noted that Lewis “loved to talk about the sheer mechanics of turning thoughts into sentences.”68 Had Lewis been only a popular author, or only a successful writer and teacher, this book probably would not have been written. But he made copious comments about the communication process. In addition to being an effective communicator, Lewis also discussed how to be an effective communicator. The chapters ahead, especially chapters four–eight, document the numerous principles, suggestions, and observations that he had about the human communication process.
A second reason to consider Lewis a professor of communication is that communication studies scholars historically tend to emphasize oral communication. Lewis was interested in writing and speaking, both in theory and in application; he gave special attention to the oral nature of messages. Lewis’s academic training ←12 | 13→focused on English literature and the written word, but there is evidence Lewis was especially interested in oral communication, as evidenced by his definition of language as “spoken language.”69 Reflecting Lewis’s holistic interest in communication and supporting his Professor of Communication title, he was interested in both.
Lewis was a skilled writer and speaker. Gervase Mathew, who for nine years coordinated his lectures for the English faculty with Lewis, confirms, “His influence on his contemporaries was at least as much as orator as writer.”70 In response to suggestions that Lewis thought lectures and tutorials a waste of his valuable time, Mathew vehemently disagreed: “No travesty could be further from the truth.”71 In describing Lewis’s oratorical skills, Mathew notes,
He took a vivid, perhaps rather sporting, interest in the numbers who came to him, and he was depressed when he failed to repeat his Oxford triumphs at Cambridge. At times he lectured from skeleton notes, at times from a written text; on occasion he improvised; it was hard to tell which method he was following. But always he forged a personal link with those who heard him.72
Lewis liked a good-sized audience. He was a popular lecturer who often had standing-room