Public Memorializing & Communication Studies

• Michael Butterworth studied public memorializing at major sporting events on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 as an example of public memorializing.
• The ceremonies included US flags, red, white, and blue colors, patriotic songs, and military personnel.
• Shared images, rituals, and practices highlighted themes of "never forget," "support the troops," and "strength and unity."
• Memorializing events that "appear democratic" mask conflicts and divisions within the citizenry.
• Butterworth questions if the ceremonies encourage reflection and identification across differences or simply offer patriotism.
• Sports are a context that interests communication scholars because it intersects with the message, communicator, and mediated form.
• Powers's approach to mapping the communication intellectual field aims to present the discipline as a coherent entity to outsiders.
• This approach reflects the discipline's emergence, central questions, and various approaches to studying communication.
• It serves as a historical referent and a tool for assessing the intellectual progress of the field.

Traditions of Communication Theory

• Robert Craig organizes communication theories into seven traditions.
• The seven traditions are semiotic, phenomenological, cybernetic, sociopsychological, sociocultural, critical, and rhetorical.
• Each tradition provides a different perspective on communication with both oppositions and overlaps among them.
• The traditions provide coherence to examine theories side by side.
• Craig views theory pragmatically, stating that there is no one correct theory, but many theories are useful for specific problems.
• Knowing more theories provides more problem-solving options, but the field's diversity can cause confusion.
• Craig's model simplifies the big picture by showing that theories come from different traditions.

The Semiotic Tradition

• Semiotics is the study of signs and forms.
• The sign is a basic concept that unifies the tradition.
• The symbol usually designates a complex sign with many meanings, including personal ones.
• The semiotic tradition includes theories about using signs and symbols to represent things outside of themselves.
• Semiotics is divided into semiotics (study of signs and symbols), pragmatics (study of the relationships among signs), and syntactics (ways signs are combined).
• The system of relations among signs is a foundation that communication requires shared understanding of grammar, society, and culture.
• Semiotics has impacted communication theory because theorists study how signs and sign systems are used.
• Jean Baudrillard's work exemplifies the semiotic tradition and shows signs once stood for what they represented.
• Signs are separated from what they stand for, and people build lives on symbolicity rather than reality.

The Phenomenological Tradition

• Phenomenology focuses more on the individual as the key component in the communication process, and the way human beings understand the world through direct experience.
• Much of the phenomenological tradition deals with interpreting phenomena, which literally forms what is real for the person.
• Phenomenologists believe experience is subjective and subjectivity is an important kind of knowledge.
• People give meaning to things through personal relationships due to which phenomenological experience is subjective.
• What is real is what is available in language.
• Mark Orbe's co-cultural theory illustrates the phenomenological tradition, and displays how marginalized groups are co-cultural groups that negotiate and manage their positions in society.

The Cybernetic Tradition

• Cybernetics is the tradition of complex systems in which interacting elements influence one another.
• Theories in the cybernetic tradition explain how physical, biological, social, and behavioral processes work.
• A system is a set of interacting parts that form something more than the sum of its parts.
• A system is constrained by its dependence on other parts, and communication is a part or variable in the system.
• Systems take in inputs, process them, and create outputs that are put back into the environment.
• Systems are characterized by self-regulation and control to remain stable and achieve goals.
• Systems are embedded within one another, forming levels of increasing complexity.
• Systems theory has been important because of the ways variables impact one another through various levels of systems.
• Actor network theory illustrates the cybernetic tradition and privileges networks that establish patterns of action.
• Objects, policy statements, regulations, and human actors contribute to responsible networks for actions that emerge.

The Sociopsychological Tradition

• The study of the individual as a social being is the thrust of the sociopsychological tradition.
• The theories of this tradition focus on psychological variables, individual effects, personalities and traits, perception, and cognition.
• The individual human mind is the focus, and is seen as the locus for processing and understanding information.
• Much of the work in communication has focused on persuasion and attitude change and how humans develop, process, and strategize messages and their effects on individuals.
• The sociopsychological tradition is behavioral, cognitive, and biological.
• The behavioral branch concentrates on how people actually behave in communication situations.
• The cognitive branch concentrates on how individuals acquire, store, and process information, leading to behavioral outputs.
• The biological branch became interested in the effects of brain function and structure, neurochemistry, and genetic factors in explaining human behavior.
• Uncertainty reduction theory and expectancy-violation theory are examples of theories because they are centered on cognitive processes that impact human communication.

The Sociocultural Tradition

• Sociocultural approaches to communication theory address the ways understandings, meanings, norms, roles, and rules are worked out interactively.
• These theories explore the interactional worlds constructed through a process of interaction in groups, communities, and cultures.
• The categories used to process information are socially created in communication.
• Many theories focus on how identities are established through interaction in social groups and cultures and how identity is negotiated between situations.
• Identity becomes a fusion of the individual self with social, community, and cultural roles.
• Sociocultural work is holistic, with researchers focusing on a small aspect while recognizing the importance of the larger context.
• Wittgenstein used the metaphor of a language game to discuss following rules with language use, and examples include giving and obeying orders, asking and answering questions, and describing events.
• J. L. Austin focused on the practical use of language as speech act to capture the performative aspects of language use.
• Ethnography observes how social groups build meaning through behaviors.
• Ethnography looks at communication forms, the words used, and the meanings for behavioral, visual, and auditory responses.
• Theories by Mary Jane Collier and Stella Ting-Toomey examine identities constructed in social groups, where it is not an individual process, and is related to others who share a linguistic and cultural group.

The Critical Tradition

• Critical scholars investigate how power, oppression, and privilege are the products of certain forms of communication throughout society.
• Heavily influenced by work in Europe, feminist and queer scholars, and postmodern discourses, the critical tradition understands the dominant systems, power structures, and beliefs or ideologies.
• Critical theorists uncover oppressive social conditions and power arrangements to promote emancipation.
• Marxism is a source of contemporary critical theory.
• Marx taught that the means of production in society determines the nature of society, making the economy the basis of all social structure.
• Capitalistic systems lead to oppressing labor which stems from the tension between creativity and constraints.
• Liberation occurs with free expression, but language is a constraint because dominant language defines and perpetuates oppression.
• Feminist and queer theories critique gender with an eye to transforming gender relationships.
• These scholars describe gender in fluid and evolving terms, offering possibilities for emancipation to previously oppressed social groups.

The Rhetorical Tradition

• The study of rhetoric began in fifth-century BC Greece and evolved to encompass all the ways humans use symbols to affect those around them and construct the worlds in which they live.
• The core consists of invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and memory, which were elements involved in preparing a speech.
• These canons have expanded beyond speech elements and can describe any symbolic construction.
• Invention is now conceptualization, the process through which meaning is assigned to symbols through interpretation, with acknowledgement that humans create it through chosen interpretive categories.
• Arrangement is the process of organizing symbols-arranging information in light of the relationships among the people, symbols, and context involved.
• Style concerns considerations involved in the choice, management, and presentation of those symbols, whether words, clothing, furniture, or dance.
• Delivery has become the embodiment of symbols in some physical form, from nonverbals to talk to writing to mediated messages.
• Memory no longer refers to memorization of speeches but reservoirs of cultural memory and processes of perception.
• Many see rhetoric as synonymous with communication.
• The decision depends on the tradition used.
• Invitational rhetoric suggests that inviting might be as or more effective in certain communication contexts than persuasion.