Traditions of Communication Theory

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Traditions of Communication Theory

• Multiple theories and perspectives will always
  characterize the field of communication studies.
• Lacking a unifying theory, the field can be
  divided into seven traditions
• We will omit one of them , the cybernetic

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The Semiotic Tradition

• focuses on signs and symbols. Communication is
  the application of signs to bridge the worlds of
  individuals
• The basic concept unifying this tradition is the
  sign, sometimes referred to as symbol, defined as
  a stimulus for designating something other than
  itself.
• Semiotics, exploring the importance of signs and
  symbols as they are used, is the focus of many
  communication theories.

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Semiotics is often divided into three areas

• Semantics addresses what a sign stands for.
  Dictionaries are semantic reference books they
  tell us what a sign means.
• Syntactics is the relationships among signs.
• Signs rarely stand alone. They are almost always
  part of a larger sign system referred to as
  codes.
• Codes are organized rules that designate what
  different signs stand for.
• Pragmatics studies the practical use and effects
  of signs.

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The Phenomenological Tradition

• is the process of knowing through direct
  experience. It is the way in which humans come to
  understand the world.
• Phenomenon refers to the appearance of an object,
  event or condition in ones perception.
• Makes actual lived experience the basic data of
  reality.
• Stanley Deetz summarizes three basic principles

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Stanley Deetz

• Knowledge is conscious.
• How one relates to a thing determines its meaning
  for that person.
• Language is the vehicle for meaning

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The process of interpretation is central to most
phenomenological thought.

• Unlike the semiotic tradition, where
  interpretation is separate from reality, in the
  phenomenological tradition interpretation forms
  what is real for the person.
• Interpretation emerges from a hermeneutic circle
  in which interpreters constantly go back and
  forth between experience and assigning meaning.

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Three general schools of thought make up the
phenomenological tradition

• Classical phenomenology, associated with Edward
  Husserl the founder of modern phenomenology, is
  highly objective and claims the world can be
  experienced, through bracketing, the putting
  aside of bias without the knower bringing his or
  her own categories to bear.

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Most contemporary phenomenology rejects the
objectivist view

• and subscribes to the teachings of Maurice
  Merleau-Ponty. The phenomenology of perception
  posits that we can only know things through our
  personal, subjective relationship to these
  things.
• Hermeneutic phenomenology, the interpretation of
  being, extends the subjective tradition even
  further by incorporating communication
  Communication is the vehicle by which you assign
  meaning to your experience.

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The Cybernetic Tradition

• El skippo

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The Cybernetic Tradition

• is a very common approach in the study of
  communication, the behavioral sciences, and all
  social sciences at large. It focuses on the
  individual in social interaction with others as
  the definition of the communicator.
• This tradition emphasizes psychological
  variables, individual effects, personalities,
  perception, and cognition.

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Most of the current work in this tradition

• dominated by persuasion and attitude change in
  communication, accentuating message processing,
  strategies, reception and effects.
• Most theories in this tradition are cognitive in
  orientation, providing insights into the way
  human beings process information.

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The sociopsychological tradition can be divided
into three large branches.

• Behavioral, associated with a stimulus-response
  approach, concentrates on how people actually
  behave in communication situations.
• Cognitive, the mental operations used in managing
  information that leads to behavioral outputs, is
  much more in vogue today because many see the
  behavioral as too simplistic.
• Communibiology is the study of communication from
  a biological perspective.

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The Sociocultural Tradition

• addresses the ways our understandings, meanings,
  norms, roles, and rules are worked interactively
  in communication.
• This tradition holds that reality is not an
  objective set of arrangements outside us but is
  constructed through a process of communicating in
  groups, society, and cultures.
• Sociocultural focuses on patterns of interactions
  rather than individual characteristics or mental
  modes.
• Knowledge is highly interpretive and constructed

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There are a number of contributing lines of work
within this tradition.

• Symbolic interactionism from the work of George
  Mead, emphasizes the idea that social structures
  and meaning is created and maintained within
  social interactions.
• Social constructionism, or the social
  construction of reality investigates how human
  knowledge is constructed through social
  interaction and argues that the nature of the
  world is less important than the language used to
  name and discuss it.
• Sociolinguistics is the study of language and
  culture.

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Closely related to sociolinguistics

• is the work of Luddwig Wittgenstein and his
  philosophy of language which suggests the meaning
  of language depends on its actual use.
• Language as used in ordinary life is a language
  game because people follow rules to do things
  with language.
• John Austin refers to the practical use of
  language as speech acts, the idea that when we
  speak we are actually performing an act.

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Ethnography,

• the observation of how actual social groups come
  to build meaning through their linguistic and
  non-linguistic behaviors, is another perspective
  within the sociocultural tradition.

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The Critical Tradition

• examines how power, privilege and oppression are
  the products of certain forms of communication.
• While there are several varieties of critical
  social science, they are all normative and share
  three essential features

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three essential features.

• They seek to understand 1)the taken-for-granted
  systems, 2)power structures and 3)beliefs- or
  ideologies that dominate society.
• They are interested in uncovering oppressive
  social conditions and power arrangements in order
  to promote emancipation.
• They attempt to fuse theory and action

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While critical theory falls within the modernist
paradigm, there are three additional branches
that break with modernity in various ways.

• Postmodernism came about as the information age
  emerged from the industrial society, as the
  production of commodities gave way to the
  manipulation of knowledge.
• Today this line of work is most associated with
  cultural studies
• Cultural studies theorists share an interest in
  the ideologies that dominate a culture and focus
  on social change and how it is inhibited by group
  and class relations.
• Cultural studies places great value on the
  marginalized and the ordinary

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Poststructuralism, another postmodernist impulse,
is centered on the study of signs and symbols.

• Unlike structuralism, poststructuralism seeks to
  deconstruct the study of signs rather than
  generate a unified theory.
• It favors a plurality of methodologies and
  focuses on the instability of meaning in texts.

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Postcolonial theory refers to the study of all
cultures affected by the imperial process.

• Feminist studies is another influential area
  within the critical tradition. It examines,
  critiques, and challenges the assumptions about
  and experiences of gender that pervade all
  aspects of life.