Authors
Robert T Craig
Publication date
1999/5
Journal
Communication theory
Volume
9
Issue
2
Pages
119-161
Publisher
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Description
This essay reconstructs communication theory as a dialogical‐dialectical field according to two principles: the constitutive model of communication as a metamodel and theory as metadiscursive practice. The essay argues that all communication theories are mutually relevant when addressed to a practical lifeworld in which “communication” is already a richly meaningful term. Each tradition of communication theory derives from and appeals rhetorically to certain commonplace beliefs about communication while challenging other beliefs. The complementarities and tensions among traditions generate a theoretical metadiscourse that intersects with and potentially informs the ongoing practical metadiscourse in society. In a tentative scheme of the field, rhetorical, semiotic, phenomenological, cybernetic, socio‐psychological, sociocultural, and critical traditions of communication theory are distinguished by characteristic …
Total citations
Scholar articles
RT Craig - Communication theory, 1999
RT Craig - Paper at theInternational Communication Associations, 1999