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There is a revolution occurring in all of the disciplines that study human behavior and human products, yet so far it has had only minimal effect on the field of interpersonal communication. This revolution goes by several names. Within communication it has most frequently been called the “interpretive” approach; terms such as “cultural studies”(Carey, 1989),“critical theory”(Hardt, 1989; Pryor, 1981),“postmodernism”(Grossberg, Fry, Curthoys & Patton, 1988),“semiotics”(Fiske, 1985; Lanigan, 1979; Lincourt, 1978), and “phenomenology”(Deetz, 1981; Pilotta & Mickunas, 1990) have also been used, these latter having more currency outside the discipline. Additional terms used to describe an innovative approach abound, including structuralism, poststructuralism, hermeneutics, symbolic interactionism, feminism, naturalistic inquiry, ethnography of communication, systems theory, rules theory, ethnomethodology …