In this course, you'll learn about the 12 most essential communications systems that everyone should understand.

The idea for this course started when Iwas looking into learning some foreign languages. I thought to myself, what about these other things sometimes called languages, like music or body language or architecture?

Is there a systematic way of looking at these ways of symbolizing or "meaning" that exists at a meta level above languages like French, Chinese or Spanish?

In this course, you'll get the results of my research into this area.

Of course, in a way, everything can mean something. You could say there are infinitely different methods and media for communicating things in various ways. All the different types of art for example could be their own "communication system."

So what I set out to do with this course is come up with a list of the essential communication or "language"(in the broad sense of the word) systems that most people who aren't artist and don't have special skills in some unusual communication system should know.

And there are two reasons to know these systems.

Both to understand what is being communicated to you, and also so that you can communicate with these systems to other people.

These systems also cover the two broad ways of communicating...narrowcasting or broadcasting.

Broadcasting are the methods that communicate to many people at once, often passively. The way you decorate your apartment is a passive way of communicating about you to everyone who comes to your dinner party.

Narrowcasting is when you are, usually actively, communicating with a single person or a small group. This is where things like normal signed, spoken and written language show up the most.

This course is the first part of a series of courses which will each go into more depth on each of these systems. It also includes an exercise at the end of the course that will show you how to start analyzing you communicative strengths and weaknesses in each of the communicative situations you find yourself in the most often.

See you inside the course,

Timothy