This book, uniting the material from numerous lectures on communication theory, is designed to serve as the introduction to a series entitled "Studies in Communication," which will appear during the next few years. It is not intended for the expert in each of the many fields related to human communication, but, rather, it is designed for the general reader interested in the field. The book provides background information, historical data, definitions, concepts, and terms of reference in the area of human communication beginning with a discussion of the social aspects and the historical evolution of theory and of language analysis, including written and spoken language as well as meaning. The physical phenomena of signals, especially speech, are considered, as is the statistical and mathematical study of the information content of signals. The logic of communication is then discussed, including theories of syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. A discussion of human information intake, cognition, and recognition ends the book. A list of references is included. (VM)