The Communication Theory Index: A Brief Review

 

Timothy Stephen, a professor at The University at Albany and long-time director of the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (CIOS), a pioneering digital service he co-founded with Teresa Harrison in 1986, has announced (see the screenshot above) a free online tool for exploring communication theories and models. 

The Communication Theory Index presents an ever-growing alphabetical list of "named theories" mentioned in the recent academic communication literature and links each one to a Google search that leads off with an AI overview of the theory and its key concepts. If you have studied communication theory at all, you have probably heard that there are "a lot" of theories in the field. The Index confirms that observation with an actual count of theories: 756 as of this writing. 

The alphabetical list of theories may be kind of overwhelming but if you know the general sort of theory you are looking for you can filter the list by writing something in the search box at the top. Begin to type "interpersonal" in the search box and you'll soon see a short list of theories with "interpersonal" in the name. 

When you click on the name of a theory, you enter a Google search with the prompt: "what is [Name of Theory] in communication theory and what are its key constructs and concepts" and voilà! there you have a brief AI Overview followed by a bullet point list of Key Concepts and Constructs and then some web links.

Of course, if you know the name of a theory, you can use the same prompt to search Google by yourself and will get much the same results, so you don't really need to use the Communication Theory Index. I confirmed this by using the prompt to search Google for a couple of theories and did get the same results as using the Index. I also used those same prompts on the Microsoft Bing search engine with, again, very similar results. 

It's important to know this because you may want to look up a theory that is not in the Index. Yes, it's true, even with 756 theories and still counting, the Communication Theory Index does not include all of them! For an example close to my own heart, the Index does not currently include the Constitutive Metamodel, but you can still search Google with the prompt "what is the Constitutive Metamodel in communication theory and what are its key constructs and concepts" and get a quick, not-too-bad overview. 

The results are not always ideal. I filtered the Index with "metadiscourse" (because, well, it's my thing) and found just one theory called the Metadiscourse Model. The Google AI overview and search results are almost entirely about Ken Hyland's systemic functional linguistic theory of metadiscourse, which is oriented to English composition studies and refers to certain linguistic devices used in writing. It's a fine theory for its purpose but it misses the broader and more significant role of metadiscourse in communication that I have tried to address in my work (and that inspires this blog). The result is not surprising because the Google overview is based on a general web search and there is a lot about Hyland's theory on the web.

If these critiques seem overly self-centered, here's another example that is not about me. Click on Field Theory in the Index, and what you get is a misleading mash-up of two theories, by Kurt Lewin and Pierre Bourdieu, that in reality have nothing to do with each other. I don't know if this would count as a case of AI hallucination.

What I draw from these examples is a reminder of the limitations of web searching as a way of doing research. If you want to learn about communication theories, you can find some quick starters of variable quality by clicking links in the Communication Theory Index. It's a useful tool and a nice resource to have. However, if you really want to learn about communication theories, a better place to start might be with a textbook that would give you an organized introduction to the subject, grounded in the communication literature. It would also be helpful if the Index were to link theories to the applications in the communication literature that were the basis for including them in the Index, but you can do those searches on your own using ComAbstracts or another database.

Any reactions or further thoughts about the Communication Theory Index? Please post a comment here! 

Review of "Justice in the Making: Relating, Participating, Communicating" by Robyn Penman (CMM Institute Press, 2025)

 

Image source: https://cmminstitute.org/cmmi-press/

What kind of problem is the problem of justice? If that seems like a strange question to ask, consider how many different ways it can be answered. We can think of justice as a moral problem (you should treat people fairly, and people should get what they individually deserve), a political problem (respect for rights, fair treatment for all, equitable distribution of resources), or a legal problem (impartial application of the laws—but laws can be unjust). Justice can be, among other things, a question of good judgment (doing justice to someone's ideas), of policy (anti-discrimination or affirmative action), or of personal character (a just leader). Robyn Penman, in her book, Justice in the Making: Relating, Participating, and Communicating, describes these and other ways of talking about justice and injustice as different "stories" that we tell to make sense of our social world. Justice in all its varied senses is a socially constructed concept, Penman argues, and the quality of justice depends on the quality of the process of communicating that produces it for the participants or fails to do so in each situation. For Penman, justice is a communication problem. 

The argument for this new "story" of justice unfolds through eight chapters. Chapter 1 presents a critical overview of existing theories of justice, which disagree about the meaning of justice as they define it from different disciplinary standpoints in political, moral or legal philosophy, but which nevertheless all tend to regard justice as an abstract ideal such as distributional equity. And while some theories acknowledge that justice also involves human relationships, Penman proposes, in Chapter 2, a radically different story in which human relationships are primary and the meaning of justice is not an abstract theoretical ideal but a shared relational practice—"something we do vis-a-vis each other" (p. 26)—that people co-create in a process of communicating. Chapters 3 and 4 apply this alternative approach to problems of social justice, especially racial justice, while chapters 5-7 address problems of legal justice in the dominant adversarial justice system and in innovative non-adversarial processes such as procedural, problem-solving, and restorative justice. Chapter 8 wraps up the argument. 

Penman's new approach to the problem of justice is informed by pragmatist philosophy, social constructionism, and the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) theory of communication developed by W. Barnett Pearce, Vernon Cronin and others beginning in the 1970s. She defines communication as "a process of joint action between active agents who, in their engagement, generate new understandings and knowledge" (p. 33). It is in this constitutive process of communicating that we jointly construct a social world, whether justly or unjustly. Penman's practical theory of communication centers on the interrelated concepts of relating, participating, and communicating. The primary focus is on relationships, rather than individuals, because human existence is essentially relational. But relationships are not static entities. They are better understood as "relating," an active process of participating with others, which is a process of communicating or joint action. The relationships that emerge in this process can be experienced as just or unjust, and so it is important for a practical communication theory to illuminate the better ways of communicating that constitute just relationships. Those better ways of communicating can be described by terms such as relational responsiveness and responsibility, genuine dialogue, civility, and mutual respect.

Penman is critical of the usual ways of talking about social justice in terms of structural inequities in society that require structural changes brought about by governmental policies to enforce equal rights, redistribute resources, etc. Those remedies by themselves will never achieve social justice, she argues, if the patterns of domination and oppression in our ways of communicating do not also change: 

"When we begin with communicating as the site of change itself for issues of injustice, the need for changing our patterns of communicating in relationships takes on priority over politico-economic distributive concerns.... [If] we cannot change our form of relating with others, especially those disenfranchised in various ways, then any attempt at making structural changes in the marketplace or by the state will always be limited." (p. 73)

This relational-communication approach to justice is applied to the problem of racial justice in chapter 4. In Penman's analysis, unjust relationships emerge from patterns of communicating that reproduce historically and culturally prevalent meanings that sustain oppressive racial hierarchies. Penman uses the concept of multiple levels of meaning from CMM theory to show how the "downward" contextual force of "higher" levels of meaning (cultural, organizational, or life script) might shape interpretations and actions in two specific cases: an encounter between a White male police officer and a Black male youth, and an exchange between a Black presenter and a White progressive audience member in a diversity training session. Even the presumably well-intentioned White progressive unwittingly reproduces racist cultural assumptions injurious to the Black presenter. To achieve more just interracial relationships requires that White people in particular actively resist the force of such assumptions through relational reflexivity and dialogic listening, and in general, by being respectful toward all others. Penman emphasizes that efforts to communicate in these ways can promote positive change but cannot guarantee that better and more just relationships will emerge. 

I have no doubt that the better ways of communicating between individuals that Penman recommends are genuinely better and, if widely adopted, would promote more positive interracial interactions; however, I am unpersuaded by Penman's dismissal of "politico-economic distributive concerns" and "structural changes in the marketplace or by the state." For one thing, her argument for prioritizing change at the level of personal relationships over political-economic structural change implies a double standard: The structural change approach is rejected because it fails to produce ideal social justice as conceived by normative theories, while the relational-communication approach is recommended even though it admittedly cannot guarantee that better and more just relationships will emerge. And while it may be true that the effectiveness of political-economic reforms in the absence of change at the level of everyday human relationships "will always be limited," it is, I think, equally true that the effectiveness of efforts to persuade individuals to communicate better in the absence of supportive laws and institutional policies will always be limited. Moreover, those laws and policies (such as banning racial discrimination and mandating affirmative action) must not only exist but must be enforced as necessary by the coercive power of states and institutions. If this is true, then the pursuit of social justice must rely in some part on the legal systems of justice that Penman critiques in the following three chapters. 

Those chapters are richly informative and thought-provoking. Chapter 5 develops an excellent critique of the adversarial justice system from a communication point of view. Judicial processes depend on judgments of truth as the outcome of a communication process. The adversarial system assumes that truth will emerge from an adversarial process in which testimony and evidence are presented in direct examination and tested under the challenge of cross-examination by opposing attorneys. Penman argues that this adversarial process is inherently incapable of producing truth because the communication process prevents the negotiation of meaning in a relationally responsible manner. For example, witnesses under cross-examination are not allowed to speak except to respond directly to the cross-examining attorney's questions, which are often designed to force apparently damaging admissions or in general to undermine the witness's credibility. 

"Viewed relationally, then, the adversarial system of justice can be construed as an oppressive form of communicating that treats all witnesses as worthy of contempt by denying them the capacity to freely negotiate their presentation of self and, in broader terms, their meanings on which the legal case presumably rests" (p. 141). 

Not only is this frustrating and often humiliating to witnesses, it fails to serve the interest in negotiating truth in the service of justice, however defined. 

It's worth emphasizing here that fundamental source of the problem Penman describes is not that participants in the justice system are personally unable or unwilling to communicate in a relationally responsible manner, it is that the system literally forbids them to do so, which means that better judicial processes will not emerge from personal efforts to communicate in better ways without structural reform of the system. On the other hand, a justice system designed to rely on better ways of communicating would seem to depend on participants skilled and morally committed to communicate in those ways, and it's reasonable to doubt how well that condition would be satisfied in proceedings to adjudicate high-stakes disputes or accusations of crime, considering the typical range of human motivation.  

However, in discussing various approaches to structural reform of the justice system in chapters 6 and 7, Penman argues that a system designed in accord with relational-communication principles such as dialogic civility would be more likely to produce truth than the adversarial system, despite the predictably bad intentions of some participants:

"This different sense of truth that emerges from the moral quality of our relations is not necessarily predicated on the requirement that all parties to the emergent truth are acting honorably, or in good faith. Indeed, as one could well expect in a court of law, there will be persons acting in bad faith, especially in their attempts to cover up their less than honorable intentions, behavior and the like. Nevertheless, an open, more narrative, form of story construction is far more likely to expose such deception than an adversarial approach that mitigates against the possibility of being able to show good faith or otherwise." (p. 170)

This optimistic expectation seems to be based more on theoretical faith than empirical evidence, but Penman does review the available evidence regarding the effectiveness of several communication-oriented approaches to judicial reform, including therapeutic jurisprudence and procedural justice (chapter 6) and restorative justice (chapter 7). There is some supportive evidence for each approach, suggesting positive relations to outcome variables such as participant satisfaction or even recidivism rates, but Penman criticizes the lack of research on the quality of the communication process itself. A more fundamental problem with all of the existing reform approaches is that they must function in the context of an adversarial system of justice, which, for Penman, is what must be set aside to achieve genuine reform. 

For me, the principal shortcomings of this book are: (1) that it provides few concrete examples, and no example in depth or detail, to illustrate the better ways of communicating that it advocates, and (2) that it doesn't consider the need for systematic research to investigate specific communication practices, the barriers and dilemmas that will inevitably confront those practices, and ways of managing those problems (see Craig & Tracy, 2021). Despite its practical orientation, the discussion of a relational-communication approach to the problem of justice remains at a fairly high level of abstraction. 

The bottom line, however, is that I highly recommend Justice in the Making: Relating, Participating, Communicating. Read it for its insightful survey of current theories of justice across disciplines. Read it for its trenchant critique of the adversarial system of justice and its careful assessment of judicial reform movements. Above all, read it for its provocative new approach to the problem of justice as a communication problem, a sterling contribution to social constructionist thought that challenges common assumptions about justice and about communication.

To learn more about Penman's current thinking, read her Substack newsletter, "What if...? ideas for a better social world."  And for more on CMM theory and practice in general, visit the website of the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution. 

Reference

Craig, R. T., & Tracy, K. (2021). Grounded practical theory: Investigating communication problems. Cognella. 

The Relevance of Communication Theory (Preface to the Finnish translation of "Communication Theory as a Field")

The following is the English source text of my preface to the Finnish translation, by Saila Poutiainen and Mats Bergman, of my 1999 article, "Communication Theory as a Field." The translated article, including the preface, appears in the Finnish open-access journal, Media & Viestintä. Full citation: Poutiainen, S., & Bergman, M. (2025). Viestinnän teorian kenttä [Communication Theory as a Field]. Media & viestintä, 48(4), 167-216. https://doi.org/10.23983/mv.177427 

With the welcome appearance of a Finnish translation of “Communication Theory as a Field” (CTF), I would like to take this opportunity to offer brief comments on the article’s current relevance and how my own thinking about it has changed through more than 25 years since it first appeared in English (Craig, 1999). 

Although its seven traditions are often said to map the field of communication theory, the central claim of CTF was not to propose a definitive map but rather a “constitutive metamodel,” a framework for representing and building theory for a practical discipline of communication, illustrated by a tentative scheme of seven traditions. The essential purpose of a practical discipline would be to cultivate communication as a social practice, and a field of theory for a practical discipline would serve that purpose by cultivating inquiry, dialogue, and debate regarding alternative conceptual models of and for the practice of communication (Craig, 2018). 

The constitutive metamodel renders the multidisciplinary diversity of communication theory as an open set of intellectual traditions, each characterized by a distinct fundamental conception of communication, vocabulary for framing problems, and points of intersection (agreement or disagreement) with ordinary practical beliefs about communication. CTF announced this scheme not as a static map of the field but as a dynamic intervention to “jump start” a conversation through which the field itself would evolve in unforeseeable ways to produce new and redefined theoretical traditions and new ways of representing and applying them. This “theoretical metadiscourse” would contribute to society by enriching the “practical metadiscourse,” that shapes the understanding and practice of communication in everyday life. 

In the event, CTF may have failed to “jump start” quite the energetic, field-constituting dialogue and debate across traditions that it idealistically envisioned, but it has been influential, and I believe it continues to be relevant. While textbook summaries indeed often reduce the constitutive metamodel to a map, grid, or list of communication theory’s seven traditions, scholars have also commented critically on the matrix of traditions, defined traditions beyond the original seven, and creatively adapted and applied the scheme in various ways (see: Craig, 2015; Rich & Robles, 2021). CTF is still widely cited, and scholars in other disciplines often cite the article to document any mention of communication theory. 

Thus, CTF not only mapped the field of communication theory but has, in a sense, put the field of communication theory “on the map” with a citable location among the disciplines. Even so, the pragmatist philosophy of practical discipline that underlies the constitutive metamodel has received relatively little attention. What has had more uptake is the idea that communication theory is, for better or worse, a diverse, fragmented field of thought that has developed in multiple traditions. Without consideration of its underlying philosophy, however, the purpose of a pluralistic metamodel (“dialogical-dialectical coherence”) and its relevance to contemporary communication and media studies may not be apparent. 

Here we should emphasize an important distinction. If CTF maps the field, what it maps is not subfields of communication and media studies but rather fundamental conceptions of the practice of communication that apply across subfields: communication as a practical art (rhetoric), communication as mediation by signs (semiotics), communication as information processing (cybernetics), and so on. The metamodel includes no media studies tradition, no communication technology tradition, no organizational communication tradition, nor others of the like, because such categories refer to fields of study, but not to distinct fundamental conceptions of communication. Communication can be, and historically has been, theorized rhetorically, semiotically, cybernetically, and otherwise in each of those fields of study. Hence, it is not a defect of the constitutive metamodel that the traditions fail to represent the disciplinary substructure of communication and media studies. The metamodel is intended to be relevant to all areas of communication research and practice but in a different way: as a device for focusing attention on alternative fundamental conceptions of communication and their practical implications. 

For example, if we examine media studies through the constitutive metamodel, we can see that media-related theories have ranged across the traditions of communication theory, most prominently sociopsychological, sociocultural, and critical, but also cybernetic, semiotic, and rhetorical. Categorizing theories in this manner may not be of much interest, but reflecting on the problems of media communication as conceived in different traditions can generate interesting questions. From the standpoint of phenomenological conceptions of communication as dialogue, the very mediated-ness of media communication may appear as a problem in contrast to the greater dialogical potential of direct personal interaction, but this view is also highly debatable as shown by Peters’s (1994) provocative argument that the gap between transmission and reception is so fundamental to all communication that mass communication may be considered the most basic form. Every tradition in the metamodel provides a vocabulary for theorizing the gaps of which communication is made (speaker-audience in rhetoric, signifier-signified in semiotics; transmission-reception in cybernetics, and so on), but we could consider also the possible usefulness of parsing out a distinct “mediational” tradition in which communication would be defined as mediation and communication problems would be framed in a vocabulary of gaps, media, and mediated relations. Conceptualizing such a tradition, situating it historically and culturally, putting it in conversation with other traditions in the metamodel, and applying it to problems in the field of media studies would be creative work in communication theory. 

How has my thinking about communication theory changed since 1999? If I were to revise CTF now, I would, of course, tweak it here and there, partly in response to critics, but my case for the constitutive metamodel of communication theory as a field would remain essentially the same, as would my presentation of the seven traditions. The matrix of traditions was always intended to serve as an illustration of how to analyze the field through the constitutive metamodel, not as a definitive representation of the field, and it still serves well as an exemplar. My revision of CTF would emphasize even more strongly the openness and instrumental adaptability of the scheme of traditions, and that we should think of the metamodel, not as a sturdy edifice to be built for the ages, but as a way of thinking to be practiced. Three themes that have grown in my work since 1999 would reinforce that emphasis: (1) the dynamic interaction of theory and practice in the medium of metadiscourse; (2) the cultural basis of theoretical and practical metadiscourse; and (3) the necessity and usefulness of selecting and adapting elements of the metamodel for specific analytical purposes.  

First, CTF regards communication theory as a field of “metadiscursive practice” that “intersects with and potentially informs the ongoing practical metadiscourse of society” (Craig, 1999, p. 119). The social usefulness of communication theory in this view is that it contributes well-considered ways of talking about communication problems and practices that are relevant and informative for ordinary ways of communicating. In the years since CTF, empirical studies of practical metadiscourse have given me a fuller and livelier sense of this potential for dialogue between theory and practice, finding both that ordinary talk about communication is surprisingly rich in concepts that can inform theory, and that the traditions of communication theory can be made relevant and applicable to practical discourse on communication problems (Craig, 2020). This dynamic metadiscursive practice would not be well served by a static metamodel of theoretical traditions. 

Second, CTF holds that theories are relevant to practice insofar as they both appeal rhetorically to certain commonplace beliefs about communication and challenge other beliefs. What I would emphasize more strongly now is that these commonplace beliefs or ordinary ways of talking about communication are culturally based. They are elements of a communication culture that varies with the general culture. This unavoidable fact would obviously pose a problem for a static metamodel that defined theoretical traditions, in part, by their relevance to commonplace beliefs. Theories will be variably relevant in different cultural contexts, and distinct traditions of communication theory can be reconstructed from the practical and intellectual traditions of specific cultures. This issue arises most acutely in the discourse on “de-westernizing” communication theory (Craig & Xiong, 2022), but it is worth considering in any cultural context. Are there distinctly Finnish thought traditions and ways of talking about communication that should inform the constitutive metamodel?  

Third, CTF mentions in an endnote that the number of traditions in the metamodel (seven) may be optimal for representing communication theory because cognitive scientists have found that we can hold about that many “chunks” of information in mind at one time (Craig, 1999, p. 156). However, CTF also points out that the metamodel is not limited in principle to seven or any number of traditions, and, in fact, scholars have already proposed several additional ones since 1999. This poses a problem if you imagine that every newly defined tradition should be incorporated with its own rows and columns in the “official” tabular representation of the metamodel. As traditions are added, the tables threaten to become quite unwieldy, and the task of engaging all the traditions with each other in the discussion of any problem threatens to exceed one’s mental capacity or at least the capacity of an article-length essay. My encounters with this problem have led me to emphasize more strongly that the constitutive metamodel is a way of thinking about communication theory, not a static tabular structure, and that the traditions are best approached as resources to be flexibly adapted and used for specific analytical purposes, as we did, for example, in a recent essay on the Buddhist and Confucian traditions of communication theory (Craig & Xiong, 2022).  

References

Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication Theory, 9(2), 119-161. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1999.tb00355.x 

Craig, R. T. (2015). The constitutive metamodel: A 16-year review. Communication Theory, 25(4), 356-374. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12076 

Craig, R. T. (2018). For a practical discipline. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 289-297. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqx013 

Craig, R. T. (2020). Models of communication in and as metadiscourse. In M. Bergman, K. Kirtiklis, & J. Siebers (Eds.), Models of communication: Theoretical and philosophical approaches (pp. 11-33). Routledge. 

Craig, R. T., & Xiong, B. (2022). Traditions of communication theory and the potential for multicultural dialogue. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 17(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2021.2009487 

Peters, J. D. (1994). The gaps of which communication is made. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 11, 117-140. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295039409366891

Rich, M. H., & Robles, J. S. (Eds.). (2021). Practicing communication theory: Exploring, applying, and teaching the constitutive metamodel. Cognella.

How To Talk About Communication Problems (draft, work in progress, part 1)

[Note: This is a preliminary draft of work in progress. Any feedback would be much appreciated. --RTC]

Introduction

The mid-twentieth century pragmatist philosopher Richard McKeon boldly declared, “All problems can be stated as problems of communication” (McKeon, 1957, p. 91). This was not only an analytical claim, and, as such, potentially the foundational premise of a practical discipline of communication; it was also a socio-historical claim that, if true, would support a rationale for the importance of that discipline in a communication-conscious era such as McKeon’s (and ours). 

McKeon observed that his post-World War II society was preoccupied with “communication” (in quotes), which had become a vogue word increasingly used to explain both the nature of problems and the means of their solution. "'Communication,'” he wrote, “does not signify a problem newly discovered in our times, but a fashion of thinking and a method of analyzing which we apply in the statement of all fundamental problems" (p. 89). This heightened awareness of communication was “a result of the invention of instruments of communication and the massive extension of their use" (p. 92)—needless to say, a trend that continues. For McKeon, the importance that was attributed to communication was well warranted by an historical situation in which problems were complex and interrelated but there was no agreed-upon framework of laws or values for resolving them, a world in which the social cooperation necessitated by growing global interdependence was too often impeded by cultural and ideological conflicts. All problems were communication problems insofar as they were best resolved peacefully by the effective use of means of communication to develop tenuous agreements in pluralistic, democratic communities. 

McKeon’s analytical claim was that all problems “can be stated” as communication problems. He was not claiming that all problems inherently are communication problems but that they can be stated as such; nor was he claiming that they must be stated that way but that they can be, which implies, of course, that problems can be stated in other ways. He was talking about how we talk about, or frame, problems in society, and he was claiming that we can always choose to express them as problems of communication. This is so, he explained, because: 

The nature of a problem may be explored by examining what we are talking about or the warrant for asserting anything we propose to say about it; it may also be explored by considering the conditions of stating the problem or saying anything whatsoever about it. A problem is determined not merely by what is the case, or by what is understood to be the case, but also by what is stated and by communication elucidating what is said. (McKeon, 1955, p. 91)

Not only can we choose to talk about any problem in this way; for McKeon, in a pluralistic society, we often should do so. “When problems are broad and complexly interrelated, the initial distinctions” (the starting points for deliberation) are not objectively given in advance but “must be found in communication itself” (p. 91), that is, in a process that considers “what is said and how what is meant might be influenced by communication” (p. 92). 

For a recent example, consider the controversy surrounding public health measures such as masking and social distancing that arose during the Covid-19 pandemic. Such measures were obviously correct as “objectively given” epidemiological means for reducing disease transmission until effective vaccines could be developed, but the complexity of a pluralistic society revealed itself in the myriad conflicting opinions, protests, and cries of pain that emerged in response. Arguably, an essential failure of public health policy was not to have approached the pandemic from the outset as a communication problem, not just an objectively given technical problem in virology, epidemiology, or medicine. 

To frame a problem like the pandemic as a communication problem in McKeon’s sense would require that we avoid reducing communication itself to a technical science of designing messages to produce predicted effects. While we might be tempted by the spectacular ongoing development of the technical means of communication to embrace what McKeon called “the mechanical analogy” (p. 92), doing so would be counterproductive because “[c]ommunication can be controlled only when communication in any true sense has failed" (p. 98). Rather than technical control, communication in a pluralistic society should cultivate the “attitudes and abilities” needed for democratic deliberation to flourish. "Communication is an art, and it must develop powers as well as achieve effects" (p. 97). For McKeon, the practical discipline of communication that was both analytically possible and urgently needed by a modern pluralistic society would be founded upon the classical art of deliberative rhetoric.  

This paper [work in progress] develops McKeon’s theme in the current intellectual and socio-historical context. That communication was becoming a preoccupation of society in the mid-20th century is confirmed by scholarship showing that the idea of communication was both increasingly prominent and dynamically evolving in that period and since. Therapeutic and technical strands in the idea of communication emerged in the post-war period (Peters, 2008). From the 1950s on, “communication” as a category of knowledge (in library catalogs, academic programs, etc.) greatly expanded and differentiated (Craig & Carlone, 1998). By the late 20th century, what Cameron (2000) referred to as a “communication culture”—a cultural trend that emphasizes the importance of good communication in all spheres of life—had progressively deepened and globalized (e.g., Boromisza-Habashi, 2016). By then, the idea of communication had become, indeed, “a registry of modern longings” (Peters, 1999, p. 2). We do still talk a lot about communication problems, and our common ways of doing so are both worthy of cultivation and subject to criticism on various grounds.  

As communication has grown as a practical category in society, it has grown too as a conceptual category in theory, research, and education.  Communication and media scholars professionally talk and write about communication problems—observing, interpreting, and critiquing ordinary metadiscourse (ways of talking about communication) and contributing new forms of metadiscourse based on systematic research and theorization. This ongoing engagement with the metadiscourse on communication problems and practices in society is, arguably, the essential business of a communication discipline (Craig, 2018). And for conducting that business we have at our disposal a wide range of empirical and theoretical resources.  While McKeon proposed the classical art of deliberative rhetoric as the normative basis for a communication discipline, in the current context rhetoric should be regarded as one of several traditions of communication theory in which problems are framed with different assumptions and vocabularies, each tradition having a specific practical relevance and normative rationale (Craig, 1999). Moreover, the rising global awareness of communication has given voice to many culturally specific communication practices and concepts that further constitute alternative ways of framing problems (Carbaugh, 2017; Craig & Xiong, 2022; Miike & Yin, 2022).  

Thus, although it may be analytically true, as McKeon claimed, that all problems can be stated as problems of communication, there are potentially many ways of doing so. An analysis that begins with “what is said,” as McKeon recommended, often encounters a plethora of competing claims that reveal tensions among different communicative as well as non-communicative accounts of a situation. No real-world problem is uncontestably a problem of communication in whatever version, if only because, as McKeon implied, any problem can also be stated in other ways, and, in a pluralistic society, someone is likely to do so. Even in a communication culture, communication statements of problems compete with other, non-communication problem frames that may have equal or greater cultural authority in some situations. Deliberating on a problem thus often unavoidably requires deliberating among competing problem frames, and communication becomes a meta-frame for deliberation on how to talk about problems that may or may not be framed, in the end, as communication problems. 

The remainder of this essay [work in progress] begins to explore the field of communication and competing problem frames, first by introducing a broad theoretical distinction between communication and non-communication frames as expressions of conflicting cultural and institutional discourses, then by further elaborating the dialectics between communication and each of four competing discourses: economic, biological, agonistic, and dogmatic. The essay concludes with the suggestion that McKeon's art of deliberative rhetoric for a pluralistic society should be expanded to include a meta-level of deliberation on problem framing. How to talk about problems in a pluralistic society is itself a complex communication problem that can be usefully illuminated by a pluralistic field of communication theory.  

(to be continued)

References

Boromisza-Habashi, D. (2016). What We Need Is Good Communication: Vernacular Globalization in Some Hungarian Speech. International Journal of Communication, 10, 4600-4619. https://doi.org/1932–8036/20160005 

Cameron, D. (2000). Good to talk? Living and working in a communication culture. Sage. 

Carbaugh, D. (Ed.). (2017). The Handbook of Communication in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Routledge. 

Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication theory as a field. Communication Theory, 9(2), 119-161. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1999.tb00355.x 

Craig, R. T. (2018). For a practical discipline. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 289-297. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqx013 

Craig, R. T., & Carlone, D. A. (1998). Growth and transformation of communication studies in U.S. higher education: Towards reinterpretation. Communication Education, 47(1), 67-81.  https://doi.org/10.1080/03634529809379111 

Craig, R. T., & Xiong, B. (2022). Traditions of communication theory and the potential for multicultural dialogue. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 17(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2021.2009487 

McKeon, R. (1957). Communication, truth, and society. Ethics, 67, 89-99. https://doi.org/10.1086/291096 

Miike, Y., & Yin, J. (Eds.). (2022). The handbook of global interventions in communication theory. Routledge. 

Peters, J. D. (1999). Speaking into the air: A history of the idea of communication. University of Chicago Press. 

Peters, J. D. (2008). Communication, History of the idea. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Communication (pp. 689-693). Blackwell Publishing.  https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405186407.wbiecc075 

Review of "Communication Theory: Mapping a Diverse Field" by Karsten Pedersen (Ethics International Press, 2025)

 

Image source: https://ethicspress.com/products/communication-theory

Karsten Pedersen, a professor at Roskilde University in Denmark, has written an engaging introduction to communication theory that prominently features, but is not exactly based on, my constitutive metamodel with its scheme of theoretical traditions. Rather, as he puts it, Pedersen uses the metamodel "as a sounding board in large parts of the book" (p. ix). In doing so, he engages deeply not only with the metamodel but with criticisms of it by Myers, Bergman, Cooren, Pablé, and others, and develops his own critical position, based on his own perspectivist "ontology" of communication.  

Pedersen agrees with some essential aspects of the metamodel, especially what I call theoretical pluralism—the pragmatic idea that many different theories of communication, including theories that may contradict each other—can all be valid and useful in different ways without necessarily being "true" or "false" in any absolute sense. Indeed, Pedersen's main criticism of the metamodel is that its pluralism doesn't go far enough. While he sees it as a useful starting point for bringing different perspectives into the discussion of communication theory, he says it necessarily misrepresents those perspectives and privileges some over others by simplifying them and forcing them all into a uniform social constructionist framework (the scheme of theoretical traditions). Since any "meta" model, however structured, is going to have some version of the same problem, the real question for Pedersen is whether we need a metamodel at all to engage with the diverse forms of communication theory. Although he vacillates on this question as he considers it from various angles, his answer in the end is no, we do not need a metamodel. Nevertheless, he finds the constitutive metamodel useful as a "sounding board" and has a lot to say about it and the traditions of communication theory throughout the book. 

While it offers an accessible introduction to communication theory that covers numerous theories and approaches, this is not a standard, systematically organized textbook. Rather, through its ten chapters it ruminates on its central themes—the diversity of communication theory, the importance of being able to see communication in different perspectives, and the subjective, "inside-out" nature of human understanding—through critical discussions of the constitutive metamodel and specific theories ranging from Lasswell's functionalist model to Bitzer's theory of the rhetorical situation to Luhmann's system theory, and many others. As it ruminates, the book returns again and again to certain issues and arguments (for example: Do we need a metamodel?) to consider them from different viewpoints. 

Chapter 1 introduces the idea that communication "can only be produced and understood from the inside out," that is, from our own individual perspective, and that communication theories can expand our perspective with the ability to approach communication flexibly from different vantage points. In this light, it's a problem that some theories present themselves as the one and only valid way of seeing communication, rather than as one perspective among many, and Pedersen points out how some critics of the constitutive metamodel, such as Myers and Pablé, have committed this error. 

Illustrating the book's non-linear organization, chapter 2 is titled "I Skipped Ahead, Here Is the Real Chapter 1: What Is Communication?" This chapter steps back to consider some of the many different ways that communication has been defined and conceptualized, including ways that focus on the message, signs and codes, thoughts or mental representations, and evolutionary narratives. Pedersen concludes that defining communication is problematic because every definition is incomplete, and a value of the metamodel is that it presents multiple definitions. 

Chapter 3 returns to examine criticisms of the constitutive metamodel in greater depth and detail than before. Pedersen distinguishes three types of critics: those who reject the metamodel entirely, those who supplement it with a different perspective on the traditions, and those who increase the metamodel's "complexity and descriptive power" by including more traditions. The chapter features an extended illustration of how discussion across theoretical traditions is possible when a common theme, such as the communicator, the message, or the channel, is approached from theories in different traditions. 

The next two chapters ruminate on the need for a metamodel. Chapter 4 is titled "We Need a Metamodel" and has two subsections, titled, respectively, "We Don't Need Craig's Metamodel," and "Or Do We?" Chapter 5 is titled "We Don't Need a Metamodel: Communication is Interdisciplinary Already" and includes an extensive discussion of an approach to communication analysis that Pedersen has introduced in an earlier book, which he characterizes as a way of using the traditions of communication theory without using the metamodel. The approach is to center the analysis on one tradition, for example the sociocultural, to focus on some phenomenon theorized in that tradition, such as discourse, and to bring in contrasting perspectives from other traditions in which the same phenomenon is theorized, such as semiotic, rhetorical, and critical theories of discourse. This is a way of pursuing discussions across traditions without reducing the traditions to the definitions given in the metamodel, which in my view is not actually a rejection of the metamodel but rather a good way of using it as a heuristic scheme for a specific purpose. 

Chapter 6 discusses the fields of epistemology (theory of knowledge) and ontology (theory of existence), argues that theories in those fields are all limited perspectives on the world, none exclusively valid, and presents Pedersen's own ontology of communication, which flows from the idea, introduced in chapter 1, that we can only know the world from our own individual perspective. Here he writes:

The main argument of my book is that human communication is an individual activity and even further that the construction and understanding of communication is and can only be individual. (p. 92)

This thesis poses something of a paradox because, having argued that any ontology is only one perspective among others, Pedersen presents his own ontology as "the human condition" or what communication "can only be" and suggests in a couple of places that this is something we can all agree on. Well, I'm not so sure of that. A survey of the traditions of communication theory turns up quite a few theories that question the status of individual perspectives, seeing individuals as existing only in relation to others or as constituted by social practices and discourses, or seeing the mind as something other than private individual consciousness. When it comes to ontologies, Pedersen's radically individualistic perspectivism (he admits somewhere that it could be described as solipsism) is one useful perspective among others. Of course, we are all inclined to privilege our own perspective, but Pedersen's commitment to theoretical pluralism entails what I have described elsewhere as the paradox of pluralism: To embrace pluralism is to take a standpoint that can take no standpoint.  

After introducing Pedersen's ontology of communication, chapter 6 goes on to relate that ontology in some detail to each of the seven traditions of communication theory as defined in the metamodel, highlighting how human individuals are theorized as communicators in each tradition. Then (it's a long chapter!) Pedersen stages a discussion between Harris's and Pablé's theory of integrational semiology and Dervin's sense-making theory as two theories that are both fully consistent with his own ontology yet offer different insights. In discussing integrational semiology, he also brings in criticisms of semiotics from the metamodel's seven traditions. So, a lot goes on in this chapter, but, taken as a whole, we can see it as further illustration of Pedersen's idea that discussions across theoretical traditions can be centered on one theory, which in this case is Pedersen's ontology of communication. I have some problems (which I won't go into here) with the way Pedersen uses the metamodel's seven traditions in this discussion, but reading chapter 6 to learn about some interesting theoretical concepts and issues is worth the long trek nonetheless. 

Taking an applied turn, chapter 7 considers how each of the seven traditions can be used in communication analysis and planning while noting advantages and limitations of each tradition and making a case that it's often best to combine different traditions rather than use them one at a time. Written from the perspective of Pedersen's ontology of the individual communicator as a fixed standpoint, the chapter underplays the fact that each tradition has its own ideas about the individual. Aside from that, however, this chapter gives the reader a good sense of each tradition's approach to practical problems and makes useful suggestions. 

Chapter 8 develops the metatheoretical claim that communication theories, as constructed ways of understanding communication, are not true or false but only helpful or not for some purpose. But Pedersen exempts his own ontology of communication from this claim, arguing that the individual, "inside-out" nature of human understanding is a true description of the human condition, not just a constructed perspective useful for some purposes. The ontology, he says, has nothing specifically to do with communication or communication theory but describes a fact about the human mind that impacts communication and all other human activities. This tricky line of argument takes us to some interesting places, such as the claim that there are no misunderstandings in communication, only different understandings, and, ultimately, that "reception is not part of the communication process in the somewhat startling sense that anything can be understood as anything and that the sender of the message never (as in never ever) controls the individual understanding of any message" (p. 173). Solipsism, indeed. 

Chapters 9 and 10 conclude the book with further reflections on the constitutive metamodel and metamodels in general. Chapter 9 takes a detailed look at the framework used for defining traditions in the constitutive metamodel, with an emphasis on how the traditions criticize each other (and themselves) within the metamodel, which points toward issues for discussion across traditions. 

Chapter 10 is titled, "Is the Inside-Out View the New Metamodel, but without the Hassle?" It opens with the observation that Pedersen never intended to present a new theory or metamodel of communication in this book, but now he wonders if that is what his ontology of communication has turned out to be: a theory and/or a metamodel. Rumination on this question leads finally to the conclusion that the ontology is neither a theory nor a metamodel, although it does some of the work of a metamodel in provoking theoretical discussion across traditions. Returning to the constitutive metamodel, Pedersen revisits some criticisms mentioned earlier and offers a suggestion about how to use the metamodel that I, for one, can wholeheartedly endorse:

So, if we want to find out how e.g. the sociopsychological and semiotic traditions compare, we can use Craig’s metamodel with that purpose in mind, but if we want to know what semiotics is all about, we will have to find sources that go deeper to make sure that we do not deal with semiotics from [a] general communication theoretical point of view, but from a specialised semiotic point of view.

Thereby, a metamodel can be seen as a navigation tool with which we can steer in the general direction of a tradition (in the case of Craig’s metamodel). But when we get there, we need a more detailed map true to the tradition. (p. 184).

In sum, there's a lot of lively thinking displayed in this book, and I enjoyed reading it, even though I had to read it in the form of an online e-book accessed through my university library, because I was unwilling to pay the $120 that the publisher (named "Ethics") charges for this slim volume. Or, you can purchase the e-book through Google for $118.95, thereby saving a cool $1.05. Or, hopefully, your library has it or will order it. 

Back in Business

This blog has been offline for the last week or so because of a technical glitch, now solved thanks to a suggestion from the blogger.com help community. Thanks!

Review of "Communication Theory as Liberal Education" by Austin S. Babrow (Cognella Academic Publishing, 2025)

 

Image source: https://titles.cognella.com/communication-theory-as-liberal-education-9798823343947

A new college textbook by Austin S. Babrow uses the traditions of communication theory in a unique way to introduce the subject of communication theory as a vital part of liberal education. In contrast to narrow technical or professional training, liberal education fosters personal growth by liberating our minds from dogmatic, unreflective, habitual ideas, cultivating both a broadminded openness to different perspectives and a capacity for critical thinking. This potential for mind expansion has long been at the heart of arguments for the value of a traditional liberal arts education, and this book offers communication theory as a key component of that education for our present era. 

Communication theory is especially valuable now, says Babrow, because communication has become so central to our lives and prospects in a world that is ever more hyperconnected, diverse, contentious, and uncertain. As liberal education, the study of communication theory can free our minds from unreflective, habitual assumptions about communication and cultivate our ability to think critically from various points of view about the communication we experience and practice in our everyday lives.

The opening and closing chapters of Communication Theory as Liberal Education develop the idea of communication theory as liberal education. To introduce multiple perspectives on communication, Babrow structures the remaining chapters according to seven traditions of communication theory as defined in the Constitutive Metamodel: rhetorical, social psychological, phenomenological, cybernetic, semiotic, sociocultural, and critical, with an additional chapter that broadens the subject to include non-Western traditions. The theoretical traditions are useful for Babrow's purposes because they are based on different core conceptions of communication that "offer distinctive ideas about the self, relationships with other people, social institutions of every sort, and our relationship with nature" (p. 14). Learning to approach the world from these different perspectives on communication can expand our possibilities for living and, thus, our freedom. Because theories in each tradition are systematically elaborated and defend points of view that differ from other theories, the study of multiple traditions also fosters critical thinking.

Unlike other theory textbooks that can overwhelm students with numerous concepts and theories, this relatively short text of about 200 pages illustrates each theoretical tradition by presenting one or two representative theories in detail. Interspersed through the text are brief "reflections" that pose questions for application, critical thinking, and discussion, and each chapter concludes with a set of questions for further thought and discussion, making this an ideal text for use in small, discussion-based classes and seminars. The text is engagingly written with many relevant examples, personal anecdotes, and references to recent events and issues.  

This book provides an accessible introduction to the traditions of communication theory while largely avoiding the technical complexities of the Constitutive Metamodel, the metatheoretical scheme in which the traditions were originally defined. Readers learn about the seven traditions and about the general idea of traditions based on different core concepts of communication, but without grappling with notions of communication as a practical discipline, theoretical and practical metadiscourse, matrices of topoi for argumentation across traditions, and so on. This non-technical approach to the traditions is a limitation but also a strength, in that it keeps the focus on the idea of communication in its multiple conceptions and what it all means for how we understand the world and live our lives. 

And, whereas I have often complained that textbook presentations of the metamodel are a little misleading, I find that Babrow gets it right in essence and gives a vivid sense of each tradition's distinct point of view on the world. I am pleased to recommend this book for classes on communication theory as a liberal art.