Communication theory as a dialogical and dialectical field

• Rhetorical tradition


  Practical Art of Discourse - there is art in effective speaking and writing
• Rhetorical tradition


  Participation in discourse is important
• Semiotic tradition 


  Intersubjective mediation of signs - signs represent something
• Semiotic tradition


  Words are symbols that mean nothing, meaning is in people's intentions
• Phenomenological tradition


  Experience of otherness - relationships and interactions with people with different identities help create communication processes that maintain / strengthen those relationships
• Phenomenological tradition


  Communication as the experience of self and others through dialogue
• Phenomenological tradition


  Two individuals cannot have the same experience
• Cybernetic tradition


  INFORMATION PROCESSING - complex systems that consist of elements that interact and influence one another
• Cybernetic tradition


  How systems function or malfunction (Example: Communication model and how noise can stop information from being delivered)
• Sociopsychological Tradition


  Communication as EXPRESSION, INTERACTION, AND INFLUENCE
• Sociopsychological tradition


  Causes and effects of social behavior and practices that attempt to control those cause and effects
• (Re)Production of social order
• Sociocultural tradition 


  Symbolic processes that produce and reproduces shared sociocultural patterns
• Sociocultural tradition


  The understanding of reality / sociocultural patterns are obtained through communication (Example: Wearing red as a sign of beauty and love in INDIA)
• Critical tradition


  Communication as Discursive Reflection
• Critical tradition 


  Social injustices are caused by distorted ideologies
• Critical tradition


  Through critical reflection and consciousness-raising communication processes, we are able to restore social justice
• Critical tradition


  Power imbalances are caused by language control (Example: Feminists argue that women don't speak in full voice because men control the language.)
• Robert T. Craig 


  Proponent
• University of Colorado, Boulder


  Where the proponent is a retired professor
• Michigan State University 


  Where the proponent got his MA and PHD
• University of Wisconsin-Madison


  Where the proponent got his BA in speech
• May 1999


  Year proposed
• Reconstructed traditions of Communication Theory 


  Rhetorical, Semiotic, Phenomenological, Cybernetic, Sociopsychological, sociocultural, and critical tradition
• Multidisciplinary origins (Historical context)


  Too many disciplinary approaches in comm, making it incoherent
• Sterile eclecticism to productive fragmentation 


  Theories are developed but no field
• Sterile eclecticism to productive fragmentation

  Communication research is fragmented with no coherent focus
• Sterile Eclecticism to Productive Fragmentation

  More and more theories are made but they cannot self-sustain as a whole
• Dialogical-dialectical coherence


  The key to achieve coherence in communication theory as a field
• Common awareness of how theories complement and have tension with other comm theories 


  The goal of dialogical-dialectical coherence
• Constitutive Model of Communication as a Metamodel


  1 of two principles as the basis of the theoretical matrix
• Constitutive Model of Communication as a Metamodel


  Theoretical models can interact
• Communication is theorized into many perspectives > field of theory becomes a forum to discuss other alternative practical theories 


  Theoretical metadiscourse - discussion about alternative theories (Communication theory as a metadiscourse)
• (Re)Production of social order


  Sociocultural tradition
• Goal of dialogical-dialectical coherence

  To produce a static field where communication is endlessly evolving in a surrounding of contingency and conflict
• Multidisciplinary origins

  It states that various disciplines neither agree nor disagree with each other
• Communication theory as a field has no consensus or general agreement
• [Dialogical-dialectical field] Reconstructing communication theory within a practical discipline > revealing how they complement each other and their tensions > coherence of communication as a field