Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions » (1st Edition)

Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions is the first collection of primary-source readings built around seven traditions of communication theory- rhetorical, semiotic, phenomenological, cybernetic, sociopsychological, sociocultural, and critical.. The selected readings illustrate the history of each tradition and current trends. Enhancing the readings are introductory essays and sets of projects for theorizing through which the editors highlight contemporary interpretations, new directions, and/or hybrid approaches to studying communication theory.

Key Features:

• Includes key primary source readings that have helped to define the field of Communication Theory: This collection of readings is not available elsewhere and frees instructors from having to design their own course packs.
• Offers a comprehensive view of communication theory by not limiting content to a single approach: This book is the first collection of readings on communication theory based on Robert T. Craig's seven traditions of communication theory.
• Provides much more than just readings: Original introductions help to explain, locate, and explore complexities surrounding each of the readings. The concluding chapter suggests future directions for the field.
• Allows students to engage and interact with each tradition: Each unit ends with suggested future readings as well as projects to help students apply and extend the unit's key ideas.

Intended Audience:

This volume is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Communication Theory. It can be used as a stand-alone text or in conjunctionwith other books.

Introduction - Heidi L. Muller and Robert T. Craig
Unit I. Historical and Cultural Sources of Communication Theory
Introduction to Unit I
1. Metaphors Concerning Speech in Homer - Rob Wiseman
2. The Spiritualist Tradition - John Durham Peters
3. The Invention of Communication - Armand Mattelart
4. A Cultural Approach to Communication - James W. Carey
Projects for Theorizing the Historical and Cultural Sources of Communication Theory
Unit II. Metatheory: Communication Theory as a Field
Introduction to Unit II
5. Communication Theory as a Field - Robert T. Craig
Projects for Metatheorizing
Unit III. The Rhetorical Tradition
Introduction to Unit III
6. Gorgias - Plato
7. Rhetoric - Aristotle
8. A Rhetoric of Motives - Kenneth Burke
9. Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an Invitational Rhetoric - Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin
Projects for Rhetorical Theorizing
Unit IV. The Semiotic Tradition
Introduction to Unit IV
10. The Abuse of Words - John Locke
11. What Is a Sign? - Charles Sanders Peirce
12. The Object of Linguistics - Ferdinand de Saussure
13. The Photographic Message - Roland Barthes
14. Communication With Aliens - John Durham Peters
Projects for Semiotic Theorizing
Unit V. The Phenomenological Tradition
Introduction to Unit V
15. The Problem of Experiencing Someone Else - Edmund Husserl
16. Dialogue - Martin Buber
17. The Hermeneutical Experience - Hans-Georg Gadamer
18. Deconstructing Communication - Briankle G. Chang
Projects for Phenomenological Theorizing
Unit VI. The Cybernetic Tradition
Introduction to Unit VI
19. Cybernetics in History - NorbertWiener
20. Some Tentative Axioms of Communication - Paul Watzlawick, Janet Helmick Beavin, and Don D. Jackson
21. The Limited Capacity Model of Mediated Message Processing - Annie Lang
22. What Is Communication? - Niklas Luhmann
Projects for Cybernetic Theorizing
Unit VII. The Sociopsychological Tradition
Introduction to Unit VII
23. Social Communication - Carl Hovland
24. Some Explorations in Initial Interaction and Beyond - Charles R. Berger and Richard J. Calabrese
25. Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication - Albert Bandura
26. The Small Group Should Be the Fundamental Unit of Communication Research - Marshall Scott Poole
Projects for Sociopsychological Theorizing
Unit VIII. The Sociocultural Tradition
Introduction to Unit VIII
27. The Social Foundations and Functions of Thought and Communication - George Herbert Mead
28. The Mode of Information and Postmodernity - Mark Poster
29. Communication as the Modality of Structuration - James R. Taylor, Carole Groleau, Lorna Heaton, and Elizabeth Van Every
30. Good to Talk? - Deborah Cameron
Projects for Sociocultural Theorizing
Unit IX. The Critical Tradition
Introduction to Unit IX
31. The German Ideology - Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
32. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception - Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno
33. Truth and Society: The Discursive Redemption of Factual Claims to Validity - Jürgen Habermas
34. Systematically Distorted Communication and Discursive Closure - Stanley A. Deetz
35. Paris Iis Always More Than Paris - Sue Curry Jansen
Projects for Critical Theorizing
Concluding Reflections - Robert T. Craig and Heidi L. Muller
Index