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A stance on “communication as a practice” serves communication theory by transforming our understanding of the theory-practice rela-tionship. Before elaborating this point, I will first define the term practice and defend the theoretical claim that communication is a practice. In one common usage, practice is what basketball teams do between games, or what public speakers do when they rehearse a speech in front of a mirror before delivering it. That is not, however, the sense of practice I am primarily using in this chapter. In the sense I am using, the entire sport of bas-ketball is a practice—a coherent set of activities that are commonly engaged in, and meaningful in particular ways, among people familiar with a certain culture. Public speaking is also a practice in that sense. There are many kinds of practices—dietary practices, marital practices, scholarly practices, political practices, religious practices, business practices, and so on—and practices can be described at different levels of specificity. We can talk about “the practice of sports” or “sports practices”—either way meaning the whole, broad set of activities that come under the general heading of sports in our culture. At a more specific level, we can talk about the practice of club soccer, spectator practices at professional sporting events (such as booing), and collegiate ath-letic recruiting practices. Returning to the basketball example, I should point out that “basketball practice practices”—the things basketball teams do at practice sessions—are also practices. Basketball practice is a practice. 1