2.1: The Communications Field(s)

The Academic Field of Communication Studies

The field of Communication Studies originated in the study of rhetoric, as discussed in Module 1. However, the field today contains a variety of areas of study and investigation, and involves approaches from a number of different academic and philosophical perspectives. For this reason, Communication Studies as a field is considered to be both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, meaning it is applicable to various fields of study and incorporates theories and concepts used in multiple fields. Significantly, the historical roots of the field also situate it at the core of many of these fields, meaning that communication studies were the root of a variety of contemporary academic fields and professions. One key way of understanding this is to look at the Trivium of Rhetoric (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric) originally seen as encompassing fully one half (all of the non-measurement based) of all fields of study within classical education.

Communication Studies are primarily focused on messages and how messages travel between producers and consumers, how they impact relationships, how they impact culture and society, how they influence human behavior, and how they can vary in perception between various individuals. They also look at how messages become the core of all known and understood social realities. Communication scholars, therefore, examine a variety of types of communication and messaging processes, including:

• verbal (using words or symbols to communicate) and nonverbal (using gestures, facial expressions, body language, and cultural suppositions to communicate) messages
• synchronous (all parties communicating at the same time) and asynchronous (parties communicating at different times or with gaps between messages) messages
• public (messages sent between producers and wide audiences and consumer groups) and relational (messages sent between individuals or groups of people in defined institutional, communal, familial, and intimate relationships) messages.

The primary way communication is studied is through the application of scholarly research methodologies. The earliest research method that we have a record of is rhetorical criticism, the study of rhetoric in practice. Rhetoricians use rhetorical criticism to study texts and speech acts to determine what deeper meanings and ideologies are conveyed by the symbols (words and imagery) revealed through communication acts. Eventually, rhetoric came to be a way of understanding how people can establish their ways of thinking, or epistemologies, using symbol systems such as language. This, in turn, introduced the need for acknowledging and studying meta-communication, which refers to the many layers involved in the communication process, and the impact of communication upon communication. We now apply rhetorical criticism as a means of understanding how social realities are built, by analyzing the rhetorical construction of reality as discussed in module 1. In other words, we look at how social institutions were literally built through rhetorical processes such as naming or labeling, assignment of meaning to social or cultural symbols, and the justification of that meaning association through persuasive techniques. For example, think for a moment, about a bank—the financial kind. What is a bank, really? It’s a place where we store money. Why do we store it there? Why do we believe that the money and the bank both have value? What is the value of a dollar, anyway? What we understand about these topics is cultural knowledge that “someone” has convinced us is true—“someone” who used rhetoric and persuasion.

Rhetoric does tell us a lot about who we are and why we are the way we are, but it is by no means the only communication research method we commonly use in the field.

Communication Research Paradigms

Communication Studies can be sub-divided into different fields, perspectives, and methodological styles in a number of different ways. Some academic programs focus on quantitative and qualitative studies in communication. However, when students study communication a more common means of categorizing the diverse nature of our field is a "research paradigms" approach. Research paradigms are sets of “common beliefs and agreements shared between [researchers] about how problems should be understood and addressed” (Kuhn, 1962). There are several characteristics that motivate scholars using a paradigm approach. Among these are (Guba, 1990):

• Ontology: What people perceive as reality
• Epistemology: How we know and understand the world around us, and how that is reflected in our perception of reality and sense of self
• Methodology: How we investigate the world and the various ontological and epistemological perceptions of reality

One of the more common research paradigms approaches to communication studies is a three paradigms approach that explains how communications scholars research the field from three different methodologically, epistemologically, and ontolotically-driven perspectives (Merrigan & Huston, 2015). This three paradigm approach uses the following research paradigms to categorize communication studies research:

• Behavioral studies: Grounded in texture-based studies, these approaches look for generalizable patterns in messages, as well as in message production and consumption. The composition and individual components of a message can be compared to other messages. The goal from within this paradigm approach is to determine predictions about behaviors and attitudes of audiences and producers and to use these predictions to control and analyze audience responses.
• Interpretive studies: Grounded in text-based and rhetorical studies, these approaches look at how producers construct texts to convey particular messages to particular audiences. The goal from within this paradigm approach is to understand and explain the text or message in its own right as well as to understand and explain the authorial intent of the message and audience reception of the message.
• Critical studies: Grounded in dialectic and context-based studies, these approaches are focused on the implications and inherent biases of a message also referred to as meta-communication. Understanding the context of a message helps us understand what impact the message may have, whether the message is harmful or helpful, and how well suited a message is to the audience. The goal from within this paradigm is to evaluate and deconstruct the cultural impacts, consequences, and influences of messages and potentially change or emancipate historical and culturally situated institutions and stronghold.

Research Models

As discussed in Module 1, these paradigms reflect the history of rhetorical study and approaches to understanding speech communication practices, particularly as developed as part of a classical liberal arts education. From within the paradigms multiple specific research models are applied to the study of communication. For example:

• Behavioral Models:
  • Attribution theory tells us about personality traits by analyzing communication behaviors (Heider, 1944).
  • Conversation analysis can tell us about patterns of communication behaviors and what types of people are likely to communicate in what ways (Sacks, 1974).
  • Media effects looks at the intended and unintended behavioral impacts of a message (Lasswell, 1927)

• Interpretive Models:
  • Narrative theory helps us understand the way that cultural myths inform individual communicators’ actions (Fisher, 1984).
  • Symbolic convegence theory examines how groups of people share common fantasies that reveal how they become a cohesive group (Bormann, 1972).
  • Symbolic interaction theory examines how symbols from different cultures and different communication contexts interact (Blumer, 1969).

• Critical Models:
  • Archaeology of knowledge examines how knowledge, meaning, and power have historically been constructed through rhetorical communication processes (Foucault, 1972).
  • Critical ethnography examines phenomena and cultural events as they reveal power and oppression as a way of understanding cultures (Goodall, 2000).
  • Ritual communication examines how communication constructs a symbolic reality through cultural images and codes, and how this also allows for societal transformations (Carey, 1975).

Because communication is an interdisciplinary field, many of these models are also used in other academic areas. Sociology, psychology, anthropology, literary studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, and cultural studies among others all share some of the basic investigative and epistemological concerns as communication studies.

Other models can fit between or within more than one paradigm. For example performance theory examines how people both consciously and unconsciously pick and choose what identities they use in daily life (Schechner, 1969, 1977/1988) reflecting both interpretive and critical components and utilizing some elements commonly associated with behavioral studies. Similarly the spiral of silence theory bridges all three paradigms as scholars break apart components of messages to study their impacts (behavioral) and decoding practices (interpretive) by groups of oppressed or 'silenced' individuals (critical) (Noelle-Neumann, 1974). Communication Studies is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to provide comprehensive knowledge of the nature of human communication, the symbols and systems by which it functions, the environments in which it occurs, its media, and its effects. Employing critical, interpretive, and empirical approaches, the field shares its resources with multiple disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and fine arts.

A Communication Research Example

The following written example illustrates several different models of communication, and combines more than one paradigm approach.

After a weekend of participating in and observing a Beltaine re-creation (or recreation, as the case may be) by a group of historical anachronists (people who reenact history but take the facts of history only slightly into consideration) I determined that these history enthusiasts are some of the most honest historians I’ve ever known. After all, they communicate their identities and culture by first admitting that all history is a story told by the present, and the goals of the present completely define what is important in a historical narrative or performance.

Because I had been a professional “living historian” (that’s a historian at a museum where history is re-created for the public) I thought it would be interesting to see how some of the re-created historical facts were interpreted and communicated by people who A) do not have a corporation dictating the significance and the bare facts of history to them; B) are not tied to standard history epistemologies; C) have the freedom to interpret history and its “facts” as they see fit; and D) as one of the anachronists I spoke with insists: “When we fight a war, we don’t already know who won.”

My background in communication studies coupled with my experience in historic interpretation let me into their world. They were willing to speak with me about their own practices because they knew I shared, on some level, their focus on re-presenting the past. Anachronists, however, are definitely a different “breed” of historical interpreter than those of us who worked as professional living historians. First of all, living history has an academic presence and significance in the field of history and among museums. Anachronism, on the other hand, is often treated as anathema to academe. Therefore I relied on my interpretive history experience to let them know I would enter this site as a communications scholar without ultimately attempting to speak for them—instead I would let them explain themselves.

Anachronists literally create and communicate their historical narratives by picking and choosing the parts of history they like and ignoring everything else. And when they don’t have the facts or artifacts to back up an interpretive goal, they invent them. I heard this type of criticism of anachronists from my fellow professional historical interpreters, and our trainers. I also heard it from various volunteer reenactors who participated in our museum’s special events. We were all historians. We took history seriously and found “legitimate” information to back our narratives and performances. Because of this, I knew I would have to be cautious in making sure that these anachronists would not be offended by the inevitability of my own biases in the final report.

The difference between what the anachronists do and what professional historical interpreters, or what historic reenactors do as volunteers during their free time, is simply that the anachronists re-create history for their own purposes intentionally and with full cognizance, while the rest of us re-create history for our own purposes without admitting that we do it. In the case of the group of anachronists I observed, they re-create history as a means of creating a shared heritage that both justifies and unites the anachronists as a community. This is then communicatively shared between them, and communicated as performances to outsiders, such as myself.

The anachronists I observed defined their own social rules and their own traditions, rather than relying on specific historic data. They built their interpretations of history around known facts, but had an interpretive freedom that professional and volunteer reenactors focused on historical fact do not have. Anachronists are knowingly and openly creating a community—they are aware of how they rhetorically construct their reality. Because this is a reality of choice, while the process of community building is the same as that for most communities, anachronists are actively aware of the process. This awareness is a source of empowerment for these anachronists, but it is not acknowledged by other historians or by academics and others outside of the anachronist community.

Anachronists must openly create and communicate their constructed reaility—the constructed “past” to which they ascribe. In some ways we all do this—in any community. Most of us just pretend that that reality is fact rather than acknowledging it to be fiction. Because the anachronists lack a historiographically sound set of roots, they feel free to choose their own. The community shares the experience of connecting to the past, and invents new tradition by creating new, formalized, scripted performances of their own beliefs. The individual members have roles to play in their performances, communicative roles that are both “real” and “play.” They take the re-creation ceremonies very seriously and view them as “real” and meaningful. At the same time, however, this is recreation, an organized escape from their “mundane” existence. This is “play.” As the Beltaine celebration continued each night, it became what several anachronists had indicated it would be in interviews. It was a party. (Newsom, 2003)

The analysis presented above is done using a combination of these approaches. Note the narrative tone to the way the analysis is told. Note how the analysis discusses the everyday performances of the members of this group of anachronists and how they interact with each other--in character and in "Muggle" character. Also note how the symbols they associate with their group cohesiveness play a role in how they communicate with each other, and how they present themselves. Also, the author acknowledges being an outsider in this group when the ethnographic study of these anachronists was performed. Consider how the author's outside view might have an impact on how they interpret who the anachronists are. Also consider the impact it would have on how they interacted with the author, as opposed to each other, or a different outsider. There are always many levels and types of communication happening in any action, going back to the idea of meta-communication, and it's the job of the communication scholar to identify and discuss the significance of these communication processes.

References

Blumer, H. (1969). The methodological position of symbolic interactionism. Sociology. Thought and Action, 2(2), 147-156.

Bormann, E. (1972). Fantasy and rhetorical vision: The rhetorical criticism of social reality. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 58(4), 396-407.

Carey J. (1975). A cultural approach to communication. Communication, 2, 1-22.

Fisher, W.R. (1984). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument. Communication Monographs, 51, 1, 1-22.

Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. (A.M. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Pantheon. Original work published 1969 and 1971.

Goodall, H. (2000). Writing the new ethnography. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

Guba, E.G. (1990). The alternative paradigm dialog. In E.G. Guba, (Ed.). The paradigm dialog, (pp. 17-30). Newbury Park: Sage.

Heider, F. (1944). Social perception and phenomenal causality. Psychological Review, 51(6), 358-374.

Kuhn, T.S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lasswell, H. (1927). Propaganda technique in the world war. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.

Merrigan, G. & Huston, C.L. (2015). Communication research methods (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Noelle-Neumann, E. (1974). The spiral of silence a theory of public opinion. Journal of communication, 24(2), 43-51.

Newsom, V. (August, 2003). Heritage, Performance, and Epistemology: An Ethnographic Encounter with Anachronistic Re-Creation. National Communication Association Annual Doctoral Honors Seminar, Bowling Green, OH.

Sacks, H. (1974). An analysis of the course of a joke's telling in conversation. In R. Bauman and J.F. Sherzer (eds.). Explorations in the ethnography of speaking, (pp. 337–353). Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University Press.

Schechner, R. (1988). Essays on performance theory. New York: Routledge. Original work published 1977.

Schechner, R. (1969). Speculations on Radicalism, Sexuality, & Performance. The Drama Review: TDR, 89-110.