Are We the Blind Beggars?

1. Are We the Blind Beggars? • The story of the blind beggars ‘seeing’ and elephant. • Communication Scholars are like the blind beggars. • There is no universal, uniform definition or structure of our discipline. • Should there be?

2. History of Comm Studies • Three stages • Antiquity—First Stage • Modernity—Second Stage • 2oth Century—Third Stage • Contexts • Traditions

3. Antiquity—First Stage1 • Rhetoric—name of Comm in the classical times • To Plato Rhetoric=Communicating Truth. • Truth is hard to find, only a few people can find it. • The job of rhetoric is to communicate that truth. • Sophists advocated relativism • Knowledge depends on perception. • Everyone interprets truth differently. • Rhetoric is the basis of what counts as the truth.

4. Antiquity—First Stage2 • Aristotle = Plato + Sophists + moral effectiveness. • He showed how rhetoric works as a function of ethos, pathos and logos. • He established cannons of rhetoric • invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. • He identified three types of rhetoric • Forensic (determining true/false) • Deliberative (policy discourse) • Epideictic (praise/blame)

5. Antiquity—First Stage3 • Plato, Sophists, & Aristotle studied rhetoric by observing speakers • emphasized persuasion. • Sophists demonstrated that anything that can be proved by logic could be disproved by the same logic. • A few hundred years later, Cicero and Quintillion theorized rhetoric. • In the 5th century, Augustine contributed to rhetorical theory.

6. Modernity—Second Stage • The Emergence of the Scientific Method • Began around 1600 • Bacon: The way we discover truth or knowledge is by the scientific method. • Descartes: Complemented Augustine, “I think, there fore I exist.” • Rhetorical/Comm theory at this stage lost its specific identity with the general body of scientific knowledge.

7. 20th Century—Third Stage • Quantum jump to the beginning of 20th century. • Trickles assume the form of river. • Tributaries, currents—stream of events. • Third stage can be categorized as having SEVEN periods or waves.

8. Third Stage: Wave1 (1900-1950) • The re-rise of rhetoric—focus on oral performance. • Speech teachers--“Poor cousins” in English Depts. • NAATPS forms in 1914 & publishes QJS in 1915 • Research was scientifically oriented, though little was done until WWII. • Most teaching was based on Plato, Cicero, and Quintillion. • In 1925 Herbert Wichelns established rhetorical criticism following Aristotle’s categories. • He was interested in effects of public address. • He argued rhetoric was an art, not a science.

9. Third Stage: Wave2 (1930-1960) • Communication emerges as a social science focused on media effects • Main centers: U of Chicago & Harvard • Funded by Rockefeller Foundation and Payne Fund • Influence: George Schimmel (1858-1918) who said, "Society, the core concept of sociology, exists through communication." • Scholars from various Soc. sciences • Used empirical method, theory-driven, objective, value-free and detached from its social implications. • Unified the quantitative research • NAATPS renamed SSA in 1945

10. 3rd Stage: Wave2a (1930-1960) • The Founding fathers • Harold Laswell, pol sc, five components of Comm • “who says what through which channel to whom with what effect” • Kurt Lewin, social psych, studied ways group members make well-thought-out decisions. • Paul Lazarsfeld, sociologist, used survey techniques to answer marketing questions. • Carl Hovland, exp. psych, studied persuasive effects of source-credibility. • Wilbur Schramm, considered real FF, established first doc program at UIL, Chicago, trained PhDs from 1950s thru 1970s.

11. 3rd Stage: Wave3 (1950-1970) • Empirical Revolution. • In rhetoric, Aristotelian criticism continued • Shannon of Weaver's model of communication became popular • Berlo's Source-message-channel receiver model–process • 1969-SAA renamed SCA. • Scientific approach defined Communication theory—distinguished from Rhetoric.

12. 3rd Stage: Wave4 (1960-1970) • Turbulence in the field. • Shift from public address to INCO • Focus on communication ethics & media effects

13. 3rd Stage: Wave5 (1965-1980) • New Rhetorics • Edwin Black • Publishes Rhetorical criticism: A study of methods. • Gives a death-blow to neo-Aristotelian criticism • Advocates multiple approaches to analyzing speech events • Shift from public address to INCO, comm. ethics & media effects • McLuhan, critical theorists, & postmodernists

14. 3rd Stage: Wave6 (1970-1980) • Search for a new model. • Covering laws. • Interpretive rules • Open systems • “One cannot not communicate”

15. 3rd Stage: Wave7 (1980—today) • Ferment in the Field • Rise of qualitative methods. • Mainstreaming of critical and feminist theories. • Rise of performance studies and multiple subfields. • 1997 SCA renamed.

16. Contexts • Intrapersonal • Interpersonal • Small Group • Organizational • Public Address/Rhetoric • Mass (RTV) • Intercultural, and more . . .

17. Traditions • Recall the blind beggar story. • Communication scholars hold widely divergent views as to what communication is. • Robert Craig suggests that communication should be viewed as a practical discipline. • He identifies seven established traditions of communication theory.

18. 1. The socio-psychological tradition • Communication as interpersonal influence. • This tradition epitomizes the scientific perspective. • Hovland & colleagues at Yale studied the relationships among communication stimuli, audience predisposition, and opinion change. • They explored three separate causes of persuasive variation. • Who (source), What (content), & Whom (audience). • They discovered that source credibility is vital to opinion shift. • Investigated two types of credibility—expertness and character. • Found expertness more important for opinion change but its effect didn’t last.

19. 2. The cybernetic tradition • Communication as information processing in a system. • Norbert Wiener coined ‘cybernetics’ to describe the field of artificial intelligence. • ‘Feedback’ anchored this tradition. • Comm links separate parts of any system. • Shannon defined communication as information processing. • He defined information as the reduction of uncertainty. • Shannon’s model later appeared with Warren Weaver’s essay. • Weaver didn’t include feedback, other cybernetic theorists did.

20. 3. The Rhetorical Tradition • Six features characterize the tradition. • Belief that speech distinguishes humans from other animals. • Confidence in the efficacy of public address. • Setting of one speaker seeking to persuade a large audience. • Oratorical training as central leadership. • Emphasis on power and beauty of language to move people. • Rhetoric was the province of males. • Tension between the relative value of theory and practice in the education of speakers.

21. 4. The Semiotic Tradition • Communication as signification through signs. • Semiotics is the study of signs • Saussure, Peirce, Richards, Barthes. • I. A. Richards was an early scholar of semiotics. • “Proper meaning superstition”. • Ogden & Richards’ Triangle of meaning. • Richards & Saussure theorized language. • But many in this tradition focus on nonverbal communication.

22. 5. Sociocultural Tradition • Communication as the creation and enactment of social reality. • Communication produces and reproduces culture. • Sapir & Whorf pioneered this tradition. • Hypothesis: The structure of a culture’s language shapes what people think and do. • Language is not a neutral conduit of meaning. • Reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed through language.

23. 6. The Critical Tradition • Communication as reflective challenge to unjust discourse. • CT stems from the German Frankfurt School, which • Rejected Marx’s economic determinism but embraced his critical outlook. • Questioned unjust distributions of suffering in history. • Critical theorists challenge: • 1. The control of language to perpetuate power imbalances. • 2. The role of mass media in dulling sensitivity to repression. • 3. Blind reliance on scientific method and empirical findings. • Critical theorists share a common ethical agenda that emphasizes solidarity with suffering human beings.

24. 7. The phenomenological Trad. • Communication as the experience of self and others through dialogue. • Phenomenology is both a philosophy and a methodology. • In this tradition, phenomenology is primarily a method. • It is retrospective sensemaking of lived experiences. • Gurus are Edmund Husserl, Martin Hiddegar, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Paul Sartre • Theorists include Carl Rogers, Richard Lanigan, and Van Maanen.

25. 8. The Ethical Tradition • Griffin adds this tradition, but I think is subsumed in the Critical Tradition. • Communication as moral interaction. • NCA recently adopted a “Credo for Communication Ethics,” which • Advocates truthfulness, accuracy, honesty, and reason. • Accepts responsibility for short-term and long-term consequences of communication. • Strives to understand and respect other communicators before evaluating and responding to their messages. • These traditions reflect diversity of our field.