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Summary Craig

This document discusses the origins and current state of communication theory as a field of study. It argues that communication theory has emerged independently across many academic disciplines but is not yet a coherent field. However, it can and should become a coherent field through engaging important questions that cut across the different traditions and perspectives. The goal should be a dialogical and dialectical coherence where theorists understand their shared importance in discussing communication problems, even if they do not agree on everything or pursue a single unified theory.

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Adhwa Aqilla
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73 views

Summary Craig

This document discusses the origins and current state of communication theory as a field of study. It argues that communication theory has emerged independently across many academic disciplines but is not yet a coherent field. However, it can and should become a coherent field through engaging important questions that cut across the different traditions and perspectives. The goal should be a dialogical and dialectical coherence where theorists understand their shared importance in discussing communication problems, even if they do not agree on everything or pursue a single unified theory.

Uploaded by

Adhwa Aqilla
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The essay argues that all communication theories are mutually relevant when addressed to a

practical lifeworld in which «communication» is already a richly meaningful term. Each tradition
of communication theory derives from and appeals rhetorically to certain commonplace beliefs
about communication while challenging other beliefs. In a tentative scheme of the field,
rhetorical, semiotic, phenomenological, cybernetic, sociopsychological, sociocultural, and critical
traditions of communication theory are distinguished by characteristic ways of defining
communication and problems of communication, metadiscursive vocabularies, and
metadiscursive commonplaces that they appeal to and challenge. Rather than addressing a field
of theory, we appear to be operating primarily in separate domains.

Books and articles on communication theory seldom mention other works on communication
theory except within narrow disciplinary specialties and schools of thought. Except within these
little groups, communication theorists apparently neither agree nor disagree about much of
anything. There is no canon of general theory to which they all refer. The conclusion that
communication theory is not yet a coherent field of study seems inescapable.

Although communication theory is not yet a coherent field, I believe it can and should become
one. A field will emerge to the extent that we increasingly engage as communication theorists
with socially important goals, questions, and controversies that cut across the various
disciplinary traditions, substantive specialties, methodologies, and schools of thought that
presently divide us. In this essay I argue that all communication theories are relevant to a
common practical lifeworld in which commtinication is already a richly meaningful term.
Communication theory, in this view, is a coherent field of metadiscursive practice, a field of
discourse about discourse with implications for the practice of communication.

The various traditions of communication theory each offer distinct ways of conceptualizing and
discussing communication problems and practices. These ways derive from and appeal to
certain commonplace beliefs about communication while problematizing other beliefs. It is in the
dialogue among these traditions that communication theory can fully engage with the ongoing
practical discourse about communication in society.

Multidisciplinary Origins

One of the most interesting facts about communication theory is that it has cropped up more or
less independently in so many different academic disciplines. Littlejohn ,in what may be still the
closest thing we have to a comprehensive schematic overview, traced contributions to
communication theory from disciplines as diverse as literature, mathematics and engineering,
sociology, and psychology. 6 Budd and Ruben’s anthology of communication theory included
chapters representing 24 disciplinary approaches in alphabetical order from anthropology to
zoology. The communication discipline initially tried to set itself up as a kind of interdisciplinary
clearinghouse for all of these disciplinary approaches.

’ He concluded that the definitions differed in so many ways that communication might better
be theorized as a «family» of related concepts rather than a unitary concept in order to avoid
«dissension, academic sniping, and theoretical divisiveness» .

The Goal: Dialogical-Dialectical Coherence

The goal should not be a state in which we have nothing to argue about, but one in which we
better understand that we all have something very important to argue about. If, however, we
should not chase after the chimera of a unified theory, neither should we be distracted from the
path of inquiry by the red herring of antidisciplinarity. Productive theoretical arguments most
readily occur within an interpretive community sustained by a disciplinary matrix, a background
of assumptions shared in common. A discipline in this sense is nothing more nor less than «a
conversational community with a tradition of argumentation» .

My purpose here is to explore how communication theory might be reconstructed within a


practical discipline to reveal such complementarities and tensions and thereby constitute a
coherent field. For this purpose, I will propose a tentative theoretical matrix constructed on the
basis of two principles.

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