This chapter introduces you to the study of communication theory. It describes what theories are and what they do, offers metaphors for theory, and considers how to define communication. The chapter concludes with an introduction to the structure of the rest of the book.

This chapter describes objective and interpretive as two different worldviews that lead to distinct ways of studying communication theory. It considers how these worldviews differ in their ways of knowing, beliefs about human nature, assumptions of value, and purposes for developing and using theory.

This chapter further elaborates the difference between objective and interpretive approaches to communication theory. It offers six standards for evaluating objective theories and six standards for evaluating interpretive theories. The chapter concludes by considering possibilities for common ground between interpretive and objective theorists.

Craig's metamodel identifies seven traditions of communication theory. This chapter describes each tradition and considers how each would approach the study of friendship. The chapter concludes by mapping the traditions onto the objective/interpretive continuum and considering whether an ethical tradition should be added to the list.

Humans act toward people, things, and events on the basis of the meanings they assign to them. Once people define a situation as real, it has very real consequences. Without language there would be no thought, no sense of self, and no socializing presence of society within the individual. (Socio-cultural tradition)

Violating another person’s interpersonal expectations can be a superior strategy to conformity. When the meaning of a violation is ambiguous, communicators with a high reward valence can enhance their attractiveness, credibility, and persuasiveness by doing the unexpected. When the violation valence or reward valence is negative, they should act in a socially appropriate way. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Families’ repeated communication patterns orient family members toward a shared social reality. Conversation creates this shared reality through open discussion, whereas conformity orientation creates it through parental authority. The communication patterns experienced in childhood shape how people think, feel, and communicate throughout their lives. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Interpersonal closeness proceeds in a gradual and orderly fashion from superficial to intimate levels of exchange as a function of anticipated present and future outcomes. Lasting intimacy requires continual and mutual vulnerability through breadth and depth of self-disclosure. (Socio-psychological tradition)

When people meet, their primary concern is to reduce uncertainty about each other and their relationship. As verbal output, nonverbal warmth, self-disclosure, similarity, and shared communication networks increase, uncertainty decreases—and vice versa. Information seeking and reciprocity are positively correlated with uncertainty. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Based solely on the information available via online communication, parties who meet online can develop relationships that are just as close as those formed face-to-face—though it takes longer. Because online senders select, receivers magnify, channels promote, and feedback enhances favorable impressions, online communication may create hyperpersonal relationships. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Interpersonal relationships are created through the interplay of discourses. These discourses occur within the relationship and outside of it. Often, discourses struggle with each other—at the same time or at different times. Common discursive struggles include integration–separation, stability–change, and expression–nonexpression. (Socio-cultural and phenomenological traditions)

People believe they own and have a right to control their private information; they do so by using personal privacy rules. When others are told, they become co-owners of the information. If co-owners don’t effectively negotiate mutually agreeable privacy rules about telling third parties, boundary turbulence is the likely result. (Socio-cultural and cybernetic traditions)

Strong ties use more media to communicate with each other than do weak ties. Communication content differs by tie strength rather than by medium. Which media we use for which ties depends, in part, on group norms. Changes in media availability most strongly influence the quality of weak ties. (Cybernetic and socio-psychological traditions)

The larger the discrepancy between a speaker’s position and a listener’s point of view, the greater the change in attitude—as long as the message doesn’t fall within the hearer’s latitude of rejection. High ego- involvement usually indicates a wide latitude of rejection. Messages that fall there may have a boomerang effect. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Message elaboration is the central route of persuasion that produces major positive attitude change. It occurs when unbiased listeners are motivated and able to scrutinize arguments they consider strong. Message-irrelevant factors like source credibility hold sway on the peripheral path, a more common route that produces fragile shifts in attitude. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Cognitive dissonance is an aversive drive that causes people to (1) avoid opposing viewpoints, (2) seek reassurance after making a tough decision, and (3) change private beliefs to match public behavior when there is minimal justification for an action. Self-consistency, a sense of personal responsibility, or self-affirmation can explain dissonance reduction. (Socio- psychological tradition)

Rhetoric is the art of discovering all available means of persuasion. A speaker supports the probability of a message by logical, ethical, and emotional proofs. Accurate audience analysis results in effective invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and, presumably, memory. (Rhetorical tradition)

Words are symbolic action, and rhetoric is the search for a scapegoat to take our guilt. Unless we identify with the drama portrayed by a speaker, persuasion won’t occur. The dramatistic pentad of act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose is the critic’s tool for discovering how a speaker builds such identification. (Rhetorical tradition)

People are storytelling animals; almost all forms of human communication are fundamentally narrative. Listeners judge a story by whether it hangs together and rings true with the values of an ideal audience. Thus, narrative rationality is a matter of coherence and fidelity. (Rhetorical tradition)

Groups make high-quality decisions when members fulfill four requisite functions: (1) problem analysis, (2) goal setting, (3) identification of alternatives, and (4) evaluation of positive and negative consequences. Much group communication disrupts progress toward accomplishing these functional tasks, but counteractive communication can bring people back to rational inquiry. (Socio-psychological and cybernetic traditions)

Dramatizing messages are group members’ expressed interpretations of events other than those in the here-and-now. Message content becomes a group fantasy theme when it spontaneously chains out among members. The sharing of group fantasies creates symbolic convergence—group consciousness and often cohesiveness. Fantasy theme analysis across groups can reveal a rhetorical vision. (Rhetorical and socio-psychological traditions)

Humans are animals suspended in webs of significance that they themselves have spun. An organization doesn’t have a culture, it is a culture—a unique system of shared meanings. A nonintrusive ethnographic approach interprets stories, rites, metaphors, and other symbolism to make sense of corporate culture. (Socio-cultural and semiotic tradition)

Communication calls organization into being. Such constitutive communication is patterned into four flows: membership negotiation, self-structuring, activity coordination, and institutional positioning. All four flows are necessary for organization to occur, although time and space often separate where each flow appears. (Socio-cultural tradition)

The naive notion that communication is merely the transmission of information perpetuates managerialism, discursive closure, and the corporate colonization of everyday life. Language is the principal medium through which social reality is produced and reproduced. Managers can further a company’s health and democratic values by coordinating stakeholder participation in corporate decisions. (Critical and phenomenological traditions)

People in intercultural encounters who see themselves as unique individuals will adjust their speech style and content to mesh with others whose approval they seek. People who want to reinforce a strong group identification will interact with those outside the group in a way that accentuates their differences. (Socio-psychological tradition)

People who have an interdependent self-image in a collectivistic culture are concerned with giving other-face or mutual-face, so they adopt a conflict style of avoiding or integrating. People who have an independent self-image in an individualistic culture are concerned with protecting self-face, so they adopt a conflict style of dominating. (Socio-psychological tradition)

 African American men, the LGBTQ community, and people with physical disabilities are at a distinct disadvantage when they interact with people in the dominant culture. Phenomenological research reveals they adopt a communication orientation based on their preferred outcome (assimilation, accommodation, or separation) and their communication approach (nonassertive, assertive, or aggressive). (Phenomenological tradition) 

Afrocentricity rejects Eurocentrism’s dominance in communication theory. Communication phenomena should be studied using theories that share the cultural values of the phenomena being studied. Therefore, African communication phenomena should be analyzed using theories grounded in the beliefs, values, and assumptions of African culture. (Critical and rhetorical traditions)

Different locations within the social hierarchy affect what is seen. The standpoints of marginalized people provide less false views of the world than do the privileged perspectives of the powerful. Strong objectivity requires that scientific research start from the lives of women, the poor, the LGBTQ community, and people of color. (Critical tradition)

Man-made language aids in defining, depreciating, and excluding women. Because men have primarily shaped language, women frequently struggle to make their voices heard in the public sphere. As women cease to be muted, men will no longer maintain their position of dominance in society. (Critical and phenomenological traditions)

Communication media must be understood ecologically. Changes in communication technology alter the symbolic environment—the socially constructed, sensory world of meanings. We shaped our tools—the phonetic alphabet, printing press, and telegraph—and they shape our perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and behavior. Thus, the medium is the message. (Socio-cultural tradition)

The affordances of technology flatten multiple audiences into one. This makes it difficult to perform identities in an acceptable way. Sometimes, people manage context collapse by tailoring performances to please audiences, such as through self-censorship. At other times, they seek to segment audiences, such as through the use of privacy settings. (Socio-cultural tradition)

The significant visual sign systems of a culture affirm the status quo by suggesting that the world as it is today is natural, inevitable, and eternal. Mythmakers do this by co-opting neutral denotative signs to become signifiers without historical grounding in second-order connotative semiotic systems. (Semiotic tradition)

The mass media function to maintain the ideology of those who already have power. Producers encode the dominant ideology into media news that is decoded by consumers who (1) operate within the dominant–hegemonic code, (2) apply a negotiable code, or (3) substitute an oppositional code. (Critical tradition)

The media-effects tradition focuses on what media do to people. Uses & grats focuses on what people do with media. Media consumption is a deliberate choice designed to satisfy particular needs. Media don’t have uniform effects on the audience; effects vary according to the individual reasons for media use. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Television is society’s storyteller. Heavy television viewers see a vast quantity of dramatic violence, which cultivates an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world. Mainstreaming and resonance are two of the processes that create a homogeneous and fearful populace. (Socio-psychological and socio-cultural traditions)

The media tell us (1) what to think about, (2) how to think about it, and (3) what issues go together. We especially pay attention to the media agenda when issues are relevant and uncertain. Agendamelding is the social process where we combine multiple agendas to fit our experiences and communities. (Socio-psychological tradition) 

This chapter considers ten different threads that tie together the theories covered in the book. It offers one way of connecting the theories in the book together and provides a foundation for studying for the final exam.