Abstract; Experience is the distinctive quality of human consciousness in which ongoing existence makes itself available for meaningful reflection and interpretation. Experience commonly denotes a continuous quality of perception, in which embodied human interaction with the environment generates complex sensory information that is filtered by existing cognitive schemata. “Experience” has subsequently generated four connotations: a baseline stratum of perception consisting of fundamental, preorganized awareness; a portion of registered consciousness that is selected as a candidate for the infusion of greater intelligibility; an accumulation of practical and conceptual knowledge that is generated through lived cycles of human sense‐making and action; and a distinctly internal, private realm of knowledge and agency, possessed by both persons and groups, in which their authentic interests and identities are actively cultivated through ongoing reflection and interaction. Six theoretical traditions in communication that significantly elaborate experience are phenomenology, psychoanalysis, ideology critique, mediation, sense‐making, and ritual.
