Craig's Constitutive Metamodel
In 1999 Craig pointed out how surveys revealed 249 "distinct" theories working in a "productive fragmentation." Because of this theoretical mass, Craig created a framework to bring theories into better dialogue with each other. In his view, theory is a is
Rhetorical Tradition
It conceptualizes communication as an art of discourse, all of the ways humans use symbols to affect those around them and to construct the worlds in which they live. Rhetoric involves a rhetor, or symbol user, who creates a text or for a particular audie
Critical Tradition
Investigates how power, oppression, and privilege are the products of certain forms of communication throughout society. 1. Seeks to understand the taken-for granted systems, power structures, and beliefs-or ideologies-that dominate society. 2. Uncovers o
Phenomenological Tradition
Conceptualizes communication as dialogue or the experience of otherness. Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) conceived phenomenology as a method for analyzing conscious experience. It involves "bracketing" the contents of an experienced order to reveal the essenti
Semiotic Tradition
Semiotics foregrounds understanding rather than persuasion as the essential problem of communication, thinking and talking about communication with metadiscursive concepts such as sign, meaning, cognition, code, medium, and discourse. John Locke (1632-170
Socio-Cultural Tradition
Communication is a process essentially involved with concepts such as social structures, identities, norms, rituals, and collective belief systems. Society would be impossible without communication. Has both macro and micro social theories. focus on inter
Socio-Psychological
Communication is conceptualized as a process of social interaction, and has helped correct naive assumptions about the psychological processes involved in communication. The study of the individual as a social being. Theories share a common concern for be
Cybernetic
Conceptualizes communication as information processing. Scholars talk and think about concepts such as systems, processing, information, messages, senders, receivers, probability, entropy, self-organization, autopoiesis, and feedback; theorizing is often
Muted Group Theory
Creator(s): Edwin & Shirley Ardener
Date: 1975-1978
Main Idea: "The language of a particular culture does not serve all its speakers equally, for not all speakers contribute in an equal fashion to its formulation." (Kramarae, 1981). It deals with the powe
Media Agenda Setting Theory
Creator(s): Maxwell McCombs & Donald Shaw
Date: 1972 (thought others expressed media concerns earlier than this, such as Lippmann).
Main Idea: The mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of issues on their news agenda to the public agenda.
Ke
Dramatism Theory
Creator: Kenneth Burke
Date: 1945 in "A Grammar of Motives" (book)
Main Idea: Compares life to a play and states that life requires an actor, a scene, an action, some means for the action ti take place, and a purpose. The theory allows a rhetorical critic
Symbolic Interactionism
Creator: George Herbert Mead
Date: 1934
Main Idea: People are motivated to act based on the meaning they assign to people, things, and events. These meanings are create in the language people use both in communicating with others and in self-talk. Languag
Social Penetration Theory (also "Stage Theory")
Creator(s): Irwin Taylor and Dalmas Taylor
Date: 1973
Main Idea: Interpersonal Relationships evolve in gradual and predictable fashion. Social Penetration Theory believes that self-disclosure is primary way that relationships progress. It can also leave o
Bakhtin's Theory of Dialogics
Creator: Mikhail Bakhtin
Date: Published as a whole in 1975 "The Dialogic Imagination: Chronotope and Heteroglossia"
Main Idea: A dialogic is communication presented in the form of dialogue. The dialogic work carries on a continual dialogue with other wor
Identity Management Theory
Creator(s): William R. Cupach and Tadasu Todd Imahori
Date: On the basis of Erving Goffman's Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior (1967) and formalized in the 1990s
Main Idea: Presenting one's face shows facets of an individual's identity.
Relational Dialectics Theory
Creator(s):Leslie Baxter and W. K. Rawlins
Date: 1988
Main Idea: When making decisions, desires and viewpoints that often contradict one another are brought up and lead to dialectical tensions.
Key Concepts: Relational dialectics assumes that (1.) relatio
Communication Privacy Management
Creator: Sandra Petronio
Date: 1991
Main Idea: A systematic research theory designed to develop an evidence-based understanding of the way people make decisions about revealing and concealing private information. "Privacy boundaries" is a metaphor for how
Bona Fide Group Theory
Creator(s): Linda Putnam and Cynthia Stohl
Date: 1990
Main Idea: Emphasized that naturally occurring (bona fide) groups have stable but permeable boundaries, are interdependent with the immediate context, and have links between the boundaries and context.
Structuration Theory/Adaptive Structuration Theory
Creator(s): Anthony Giddens
Date: 1984
Main Idea: Organizations create structures, which cane interpreted as an organizations rules and resources. these structures, in turn, create social systems in an organization. Organizations achieve a life of their o
Groupthink Theory
Creator(s): Irving Janis
Date: 1972 book "Victims of Groupthink"
Main Idea: Highly cohesive groups frequently fail to consider alternatives to their course of action. When group members think similarly and do not entertain contrary views, they are also un
Rhetorical Situation
Creator(s): Lloyd Bitzer
Date: 1968
Main Idea: The rhetorical situation gives res to rhetorical discourse: discourse comes into being in response to a situtionand is given significance by th situation.
Key Concepts: Four major aspects: exigence (imperfect
Narrative Logic Paradigm
Creator(s): Walter Fisher
Date: 1978 introduced concept of "good reasons" and then intro'd narrative paradigm in 1984.
Main idea: Symbolic actions�words and/or deeds�that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them. Paradigm is
Spiral of Silence
Creator(s): Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
Date: Early 1970s (from research on media's influence on public opinion in 30s-40s)
Main Idea: Because of their enormous power, media have a lasting and profound effect on public opinion. Mass media work simultaneously
Reader-Response Theory
Creator(s): Stanley Fish
Date: Late 60s/Mid70s.
Main Idea: Denies that any meaning ca be fund in text. Meaning lies strictly in the reader. Asks "What does the text do?" not "What does he text mean?" Assigning meaning not individual matter, readers are me
Burke's Pentad
Creator(s): Kenneth Burke
Date: 1945 "Grammar of Motives"
Main Idea: In addition to devising the theory of Dramatism, Burke (1945) created a method for applying his theory toward an understanding of symbolic activi- ties. He called his method the pentad b
Trait Theory
Creator(s): (various Allport, Cattell, Eysenck 40s-50s) but James McCroskey and Michael Beatty created a "communibiological approach" to understanding communication traits.
Date: 40s-50s; mid-70s, early 80s.
Main Idea: Similar to the role of biology in ps
Distanciation Theory
Creator(s): Paul Ricouer
Date:
Main Ideas: The text is more important than speech. Once speech is recorded it becomes divorced from the actual speaker and situation in which it was devoured. Texts cannot be interpreted the same way as live discourse. This
Meaning of Meanings Theory
Creator(s): Charles Kay Ogden and Ivor Armstrong Richards
Date: 1923
Main Idea: Understanding comes from within the people rather than from the words they just interpret. They set a model called "The Triangle of Meaning" for better understanding how langu
Problematic Integration Theory
Creator(s):Andrew Babrow
Date: 1992
Main Idea: An attempt to illuminate the process of sense-making in situations that defy easy understanding. All meaning is associational: Human beings make sense of, find meaning in, or understand the world of things, p
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Creator(s): Leon Festinger
Date: Mid-1950s
Main Idea: Cognitive dissonance theory is concerned with how perception and cognition influence and are influenced by motivation and emotion. When an individual holds two or more elements of knowledge that are re
Identity Negotiation Theory
Creator(s): Various, but Stella Ting-Toomey
Date: 1986
General Idea: Identity is defined as the cultural, societal, rela- tional, and individual images of self-conception, and this composite identity has group member- ship, interpersonal, and individual s
Critical Standpoint Theory
Creator(s): Nancy Harstock
Date: 1807 with Hegel's discussion of master-slave relationship; 1983 (essay) and 1998 (book) by Harstock
Main Idea: People's experiences, knowledge, and communication behaviors are shared in large part by the social groups to w
Queer Theory
Creator(s): Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Adrienne Rich and Diana Fuss (following Foucault's work)
Date: 70s [critical standpoint theory] and then 1990s "Queer Theory"
Main Idea: Queer theory is grounded in gender and sexuality. Essentially applie
Genderlects Theory
Creator(s): Deborah Tannen, though influenced by C. Kramarae (1981).
Date: 1990
Main Idea: A sociolinguistic theory that suggests male-female conversation is cross-cultural communication. Departs from much of feminist scholarship that claims conversations
Speech Act Theory
Creator(s): John Searle
Date:
Main Idea: Theorizes how people accomplish things with their words. Draws on J.L. Austin and L. Wittgenstein. Our words embody/accomplish actions. Propositions, in this theory, designate some quality or association of a thing
Action-Assembly Theory
Creator(s): John Greene
Date: 1984
Main Idea: Examines the way we organize knowledge within the mind and then form messages. People form messages by using content knowledge and procedural knowledge--you know about things, and you know how to do things. In
Who-Whom Theory
Origin/Creator(s): Unknown as it could be related to the Bolshevik phrase ascribed to Lennin asking, or it is from Harold Laswell's model of communication (1948). I found it used in a conversion article by Benson Ohihon Igboin.
Date: 1948 or 2013
Main Ide
Cross-Cultural Adaptation Theory
Creator(s): Young Yun Kim
Date: 1988
Main Idea: Individuals are open systems that must adapt to larger environments, and they do so by a cybernetic process in which inputs from the larger system are transformed into actions that lead to change. Change hap
Invitational Rhetoric
Creator(s): Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin
Date: 1995
Main Idea: Patriarchal bias undergirds most systems of rhetoric, defining it as persuasion. This means an embedded ideology of domination and control. But a more feminist approach defines an invita
Actor-Network Theory & Co-Orientation
Creator(s): James R. Taylor (drawing on science and tech scholars like Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law).
Date: 1980s
Main Idea: [From science] A performative view of the production of science, a view that takes into account not only what scienti
Social Judgment Theory
Creator(s): Muzafer Sherif
Date:
Main Idea: We hear a message and immediately judge where it should be placed on the attitude scale in our minds. This subconscious sorting out of ideas occurs at the instant of perception. We weigh every new idea by compar
Fantasy Theme Analysis
Creator: Robert Bales (original work) adapted by Earnest Bormann
Date: 1985
Main Idea: Bales discovered that dramatizing was a signi cant type of communication that often fostered group cohesiveness. Propelled by Symbolic Convergence Theory, FTA is a form
Interpersonal Deception Theory
Creator(s): David Buller and Judee K. Burgoon
Date: Mid-1990s (1996?)
Main Idea: Deception refers to behavior intentionally enacted to mislead another. Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) is one contemporary communication theory intended to predict and e
Coordinated Management of Meaning
Creator(s): W. Barnett Pearce
Date:
Main Idea: Comprehensive approach to social interaction that addresses the ays in which complex meanings and actions are coordinated in communication--from micro-interaction to cultural and societal interactions. We ass
Co-Cultural Theory
Creator(s): Mark Orbe
Date: 1996
Main Idea: Grew out of muted group and standpoint theory. A framework designed to provide insight into the communication behaviors of individuals with little societal power. Focuses on various segments of society that have
Face-Negotiation Theory
Creator: Stella Ting-Toomey
Date:
Main Idea: A model of negotiation that maximizes the chance of people's reaching a mutually acceptable agreement. It helps explain cultural differences in responses to conflict. Assumes that people of every culture are al
Symbolic Convergence Theory
Creator(s): Ernest Borman
Date:
Main Idea: Group members often dramatized events happening outside the group. Sometimes group members respond enthusiastically by adding on to the story or chiming in with their own matching narratives. When the drama was e
Uncertainty Reduction Theory
Creator(s): Charles Berger and Richard Calabrese
Date: 1975
Main Idea: When strangers meet, their primary focus is on reducing their level of uncertainty in the situation because uncertainty is uncomfortable. People can be uncertain on two different level
Expectancy Violations Theory
Creator(s): Judee Burgoon
Date: 1978
Main Idea: Expectancy Violations Theory is concerned primarily with the structure of nonverbal messages. It asserts that when communicative norms are violated, the violation may be perceived either favorably or unfavor
Social Exchange Theory
Creator(s): John Thibaut and Harold Kelley
Date: 1959
Main Idea: Social Exchange Theory posits that the major force in interpersonal relationships is the satisfaction of both people's self-interest. Self-interest is not considered nec- essarily bad and ca
Uses and Gratification Theory
Creator(s): Elihu Katz, Jay G. Blumler, Michael Gurevitch (numerous variations prior).
Date: Uses and Gratifications Theory is an extension of needs and motivation theory (Maslow, 1970), but can go back to Herta Herzog's research in 1944.
Main Idea: Peopl
Communication Accommodation/Adaptation Theory
Creator(s): Howard Giles
Date: 1980s
Main Idea: Speakers frequently adjust their behavior to each other. This theory seeks to explain how and why we adjust our communication behaviors to the actions of others.
Key Concepts: Convergence, divergence, mutual
Elaboration Likelihood Model
Creator(s): Richard Petty & John Cacioppo
Date:
Main Idea: deals with the ways in which communicators process persuasive mes- sages. The theory describes two cognitive levels through which communicators process issue- related arguments and explains how th
Speech Codes Theory
Creator(s): Dell Hymes
Date:
Main idea: Building on the idea that culture and communication are inextricably linked, SCT is designed to describe, explain, and predict cultural communication within the context of speech communities�that is, the theory is c
Media Ecology
Creator(s): Marshall McLuhan & Neil Postman (who coined the term). Walter Ong also contributed much.
Date: 1964, 1968
Main Idea: The forms of media, not just their content, impacts consciousness. There are various ecologies such as oral, print/literary, e
Chicago School
Though not yet named as such, media studies' roots are in the Chicago School and thinkers such as John Dewey, Charles Cooley and George Mead. These authors saw American society on the cusp of positive social change toward pure democracy. Mead argued that
Iowa School
The department of Sociology at Iowa played a key role after World War II in the development of the symbolic interactionism paradigm. Manford Kuhn, a leading symbolic interactionist of his time, taught at Iowa from 1946 until his death in 1963. He develope
Metatheory
How we theorize about theory itself. Four Different Types of Metatheoretical Assumptions: (1) Ontology: assumptions about existence (2) Epistemology: assumptions about knowledge (3) Praxeology: assumptions about the practice of theory such as how it shoul
Definition of Theory
Any organized set of concepts, explanations, and principles that depicts some aspect of human experience; or a unified, or coherent, body of propositions that provide a philosophically consistent picture of a subject (Littlejohn).
COM705 W1Q1 "What is a theory? How many different definitions can you identify?
Creswell (2014) suggests that theory provides an "orienting lens" that "shapes the types of questions asked, who participates in the study, how data are collected..." etc. (249). West & Turner (2010) suggest a theory is "a formalized extension of everyday
COM705 W1Q2 "What is the difference between these two scholarly terms: theory and model?
Models are "simplified representations of complex interrelationships among element in the communication process, which allow us to visually understand a sometimes complex process." Most textbooks, not only on communication, but on other disciplines as wel
COM705 W2Q1 "Why is it important to examine theories through the lens of ontology, epistemology, and axiology?
Each of these three categories relates directly to communication activity. Ontology, the study of being, fits squarely within communication studies since Berger & Lockman (1967) point out that, "reality is socially constructed" (p. 1). Axiology concerns i
COM705W2Q2 "What is the difference between a field and a discipline? Follow up question: How should one describe communication theories as existing in a field or discipline?
A field is a much broader and general division, containing potentially more than one discipline within itself.A discipline has "a certain degree of coherence in its objects, plus a certain degree of coherence in its theories." A discipline should have a c
COM705 W3Q1 "What is the most important rhetorical theory you found in chapter five and why?
Bitzer's rhetorical situation, a concept I became familiar with in Graves' class on rhetorical criticism. Littlejohn (2011) states that, "the rhetorical situation gives rise to the rhetorical discourse: discourse comes into being in response to a situatio
COM705 W3 "What does Speech Act Theory and Symbolic Interactionism tell us about communication? What was your favorite rhetorical theory From ch. 5?
[See definitions]
COM705 W4Q1 "What is Martin Buber's contribution to communication theory? In responding to this question discuss how Buber's ideas of "dialogue" and "I-Thou" and how they challenge some of our Christian values and beliefs.
Martin Buber challenges the "Sender-Message-Receiver" model of communication. In this schema, the sender is the active party and the receiver is the passive party. Buber would call this the "I-It" relationship. In an "I-It" relationship there is intermedi
COM705 W4Q2 "Choose your favorite group theory and explain why it's useful. Then identity strengths and weaknesses.
Structuration Theory
Littlejohn (2011) unpacks this idea well stating, "as communicators act strategically to achieve their goals, they do not realize that they are simultaneously creating forces that return to affect future actions" (p. 275). Giddens (19
COM705 W5Q1 "Are McLuhan's theories still relevant for media studies today? If so, how so? If not, why not?
McCluhan's most famous work, The Medium is the Massage, was released in 1967. In this work, and elsewhere, McCluhan, wrote about the influences of technologies such as clocks, televisions, radios, movies, telephones, and even roads and games" and the "soc
COM705 W5Q2 "What does the Critical Tradition contribute to your understanding of media studies? Stated another way one might ask: Are these theories really useful for our understanding of media use and effects? What are the strengths and weaknesses of th
Littlejohn (2011) notes five major branches within the tradition including Marxism, political-economic media theory, Frankfurt School (media constructing culture), hegemonic theory, and cultural studies (p. 361). The author states that media "are players
COM705 W5Q3 "In response to the article I placed in the Course Content section: What do you think of the incarnational alternative to the integration model? Please explain your answer!
Kevin D. Miller (2014) suggests that "if scholarship is the pursuit of truth...then scholarship should not be seen as foreign to faith but as a natural part of it" (p. 131). Lamenting the dichotomy implied in terms such as "Christian Education" and tasks
COM705 W6Q1 "What theories, that you have studies in this text, have the most value and meaning for you? Also, why do they have meaning for you? Finally, have any of the theories made a dramatic change in your life? Have they changed your perspective or a
I have enjoyed immensely are agenda-setting theory, the rhetorical situation, and the entire critical theory tradition. Each of these theories has changed my approach to communication. Agenda setting makes me wary of news media, and I am more reluctant to
COM705 W6Q2 "Please discuss modernism and postmodernism. In doing so compare the strengths and weaknesses of each critical tradition.
Modernism is a philosophy that arose around the Enlightment that placed human reason and progress due to that reason's ability to master the world, at the center of life (Greez, p. 57, 1996). As various industrial revolutions and advances in technology to
COM705 W6Q3
...
COM705 W7Q1 "Please discuss if your view of the field has changed since the start of the class. If so how? If not why not?
My views on the field of communication have definitely been influenced by the readings and discussions thus far. Perhaps the largest influence involves just how deeply our communication goes into shaping reality. Craig & Muller (2007) note that advanced c
COM705 W8Q1 "Please describe and discuss the cultural approach to communication. Next, what are its strengths and weaknesses? Finally, how does it compare to other approaches to communication?
Citing Dewey, Craig (2007) notes, "Society exists...in communication" (p. 38). From here he addresses two prevalent models of communication -transmission and ritual. The former, which grows from the cybernetic tradition, sees communication as merely trans
COM705 W8Q2 "What is Craig's understanding to communication theory as a field? Do you agree? Why or Why not?
Craig (2007) opens up the discussion by citing research that survey seven textbooks that found over 200 communication theories, with only 22% of those theories appearing of those seven books (p. 63). He describes the field of communication as a "productiv
COM705 W10Q1 "On Phenomenology: Identify and discuss what Husserl, Buber and Gadamer contribute to the Phenomenological tradition. Which do you think has made the most important contribution and why? Reference Unit V from Craig.
Husserl takes a scientific approach to phenomenology trying to "bracket" the contents of experience to reveal, "essential structures...that make experience possible" (Craig, 2007, p. 217). For this scholar others must not be experienced as extensions of o
COM705 W11Q1 "Please explain in general the strengths and weaknesses between the sociopsychological and the sociocultural traditions. Now, drawing from the material in Units 7 and 8, take one specific theory examined in each tradition and compare them. In
The sociopsychological tradition, according to Craig and Muller, is the newest tradition within communication theory but is a strong source of theory production. This tradition is ensconced in empirical testing and hypotheses must be grounded in a "cohere
COM705 WK11Q2 "What are the strengths and weaknesses of theories found in the critical tradition?
(see previous responses on critical tradition)
COM705 WK12Q1 "Please comment on something you learned from this weeks readings about our field that you did not know before you began this weeks reading and that you feel is important for a communication scholar to know.
In the second reading the authors point out that, "most communication research is increasingly insular" (Dervin & Shields, 28). They suggest treating communication theories as "theoretical discourses" (29) and making communication studies not more "cohere
Theory Textbook Outline (Littlejohn)
I. Foundations
a. Communication Theory and Scholarship
b. The Idea of Theory
-Dimensions of Theory
-Nomothetic Theory
-Practical Theory
-Evaluating Communication Theory
-What Makes a Good Theory
c. Traditions of Communication Theory
II. Theories (with exa
Theory Textbook Outline (Craig & Muller)
Introduction
*sections are readings from the traditions (source material for theories)
I. Historical and Cultural Sources of Communicating Theory
*samples from history that influence theory
*suggested projects
II. Metatheory
*Theorizing About Theory
*Crai
Theory Textbook Outline (West & Turner; Griffin)
While there is slight different content, each of these texts uses communication context as the organization principle for chapters
I. Setting the Stage
-Thinking about com. definitions/models
-Traditions and Contexts in the Field
-Theory and Research
-Cri
COM705 Syllabus Outline
Mission Statement
Title
Professor Contact Information
Communication Policy
Course Description
Program Outcomes
Relationship to Institution's Mission
Course Requirements
Integration of Faith and Learning
Attendance and Participation
Required Texts: Berger
Sapir-Worf Hypothesis
In the early 1921, Edward Sapir described language as a product of culture. In other words, culture or society was a fixed reality that produced language. This line of thought separated him from social constructionism As Sapir examined the phenomenon of l
Traditions and Select Theories
RHETORICAL
Burke's Dramatist/Pentad
Bitzer's Rhetorical Situation
Fisher's Narrative Paradigm
Foss & Griffin's Invitational Rhetoric
SEMIOTIC
Sapir-Worf Hypothesis
Peirce's Meaning of Meaning Theory
Baudrillard's Simulacra/Semiotics of Media
CYBERNETIC
Gi
Define Communication
Communication is the creation of meaning."
This allows for both the intentional and unintentional sending and receiving aspects, while noting the creation aspect that I believe is reflected in Christian communication theology. Meaning also encompasses a