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10th Edition

Annotated list of scholars and terms, from the Instructors Manual and margin notes in the text

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Chapter  1—Launching Your Study of Communication Theory

  • Judee Burgoon
    • University of Arizona communication theorist whose theory is the subject of chapter 7. She suggested that if we care about theory, we must “do theory.”
  • Ernest Bormann
    • Late communication theorist from University of Minnesota who posited the broad definition of communication theory listed below. His theory of symbolic convergence is featured in Chapter Nineteen.
  • Theory
    • A set of systematic, informed hunches about the way things work.
  • Communication
    • The relational process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a response.
  • Text
    • A record of a message that can be analyzed by others; for example a book, film, photograph, or any transcript or recording of a speech or broadcast.
  • Polysemic
    • A quality of symbols that means they are open to multiple interpretations.

 


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Chapter  2—Talk About Theory

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  • Behavioral scientist
    • A scholar who applies the scientific method to describe, predict, and explain recurring forms         of human behavior.
  • Rhetorician
    • A scholar who studies the ways in which symbolic forms can be used to identify with people, or to persuade them toward a certain point of view.
  • Objective approach
    • The assumption that truth is singular and is accessible through unbiased sensory      observation; committed to uncovering cause-and-effect relationships.
  • Resonance principle of communication
    • Tony Schwatz’s idea that successful persuasion messages evoke past experiences that resonate with a person’s thoughts or feelings.
  • Birth-death-rebirth cycle
    • One of the archetypes or mini-dramas that Carl Jung claimed is deep within the mental makeup of all humans; the collective unconscious.
  • Humanistic scholarship
    • Study of what it’s like to be another person, in a specific time and place; assumes there are few important panhuman similarities.
  • Epistemology
    • The study of the origin, nature, method, and limits of knowledge.
  • Determinism
    • The assumption that behavior is caused by heredity and environment.
  • Empirical evidence
    • Data collected through direct observation.
  • Stanley Deetz
    • Communication scholar from the University of Colorado who believes that every general communication theory has two priorities—effectiveness and participation.  His theory of organizational communication is featured in Chapter 21.
  • Emancipation
    • Liberation from any form of political, economic, racial, religious, or sexual oppression; empowerment.
  • Metatheory
    • Theory about theory; the stated or inherent assumptions made when creating a theory.

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Chapter  3—Weighing the Words

  • Rule of parsimony (Occam’s razor)
    • Given two plausible explanations for the same event, we should accept the simpler version.
  • Falsifiability
    • The requirement that a scientific theory must be stated in a way that it can be tested and disproved if it is indeed wrong.
  • Experiment
    • A research method that manipulates a variable in a tightly controlled situation in order to find out if it has the predicted effect.
  • Survey
    • A research method that uses questionnaires and structured interviews to collect self-reported data that reflects what respondents think, feel, or intend to do.
  • Self-referential imperative
    • Include yourself as a constituent of your own construction.
  • Ethical imperative
    • Grant others that occur in your construction the same autonomy you practice constructing them. 
  • Critical theorists
    • Scholars who use theory to reveal unjust communication practices that create or perpetuate an imbalance of power.
  • Textual analysis
    • A research method that describes and interprets the characteristics of any text.
  • Ethnography
    • A method of participant observation designed to help a researcher experience a culture’s complex web of meaning.

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Chapter  4—Mapping the Territory

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  • Robert Craig
    • A communication scholar from the University of Colorado who has defined seven traditions of communication theory.
  • Cybernetics
    • The study of information processing, feedback, and control in communication systems.
  • Rhetoric
    • The art of using all available means of persuasion, focusing upon lines of argument, organizations of ideas, language use, and delivery in public speaking.
  • Semiotics
    • The study of verbal and nonverbal signs that can stand for something else, and how their interpretation impacts society.
  • Symbols
    • Arbitrary words and non-verbal signs that bear no natural connection with the things they describe; their meaning is learned within a given culture.
  • Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity
    • The claim that the structure of a language shapes what people think and do; the social      construction of reality.
  • Culture industries
    • Entertainment businesses that reproduce the dominant ideology of a culture and distract people from recognizing unjust distribution of power within society; e.g., film, television, music, and advertising.            
  • Phenomenology
    • Intentional analysis of everyday experience from the standpoint of the person who is living it; explores the possibility of understanding the experience of self and others.
  • Pragmatism
    • An applied approach to knowledge; the philosophy that true understanding of an idea or situation has practical implications for action.

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Chapter  5—Symbolic Interactionism

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  • George Herbert Mead
    • The University of Chicago philosophy professor whose teachings were synthesized into the theory called symbolic interactionism.
  • Symbolic Interaction
    • The ongoing use of language and gestures in anticipation of how the other will react; a conversation.
  • Minding
    • An inner dialogue used to test alternatives, rehearse action, and anticipate reactions before responding; self-talk.
  • Taking the role of the other
    • The process of mentally imagining that you are someone else who is viewing you.
  • Looking-Glass Self
    • The mental image that results from taking the role of the other; the objective self; me.
  • I
    • The spontaneous driving force that fosters all that is novel, unpredictable, and unorganized in the self.
  • Me
    • The objective self; the image of self seen when one takes the role of the other.
  • Generalized other
    • The composite mental image a person has of his or her self based on community expectations and responses.
  • Participant observation
    • A method of adopting the stance of an ignorant yet interested visitor who carefully notes what people say and do in order to discover how they interpret their world.
  • Self-fulfilling prophecy
    • The tendency for our expectations to evoke responses that confirm what we originally anticipated.
  • Herbert Blumer
    • Mead's chief disciple, this University of California, Berkeley, professor coined the term symbolic interactionism.
  • Erving Goffman
    • University of California, Berkeley, sociologist who developed the metaphor of social interaction as a dramaturgical performance.
  • Emmanuel Levinas
    • European Jewish philosopher who is developed the idea of the responsive “I” and the ethical echo.
  • Responsive “I”
    • The self created by the way we respond to others.
  • Ethical echo
    • The reminder that we are responsible to take care of each other; I am my brother’s keeper.
  • Face of the “Other”
    • A human signpost that points to our ethical obligation to care for the other before we care for self.

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Chapter  6—Coordinated Management of Meaning

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  • Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen
    • Communication scholars from the Fielding Institute and the University of Massachusetts, respectively, who co-created the theory of coordinated management of meaning.
  • Transmission model
    • Picturing communication as a transfer of meaning by a source sending a message through a channel to a receiver.
  • Communication perspective  
    • An ongoing focus on how communication makes our social worlds.
  • Social constructionists
    • Curious, participants in a pluralistic world who believe that persons-in-conversation co-      construct their own social realities and are simultaneously shaped by the worlds they create.
  • Bond of Union
    • A lithograph by M.C. Escher that illustrates several key concepts about persons-in-conversation, particularly their interrelatedness.
  • Logical force
    • The moral pressure or sense of obligation a person feels to respond in a given way to what someone else has just said or done—“I had no choice.”
  • Coordination
    • People collaborating in an attempt to bring into being their vision of what is necessary, noble, and good and to preclude the enactment of what they fear, hate, or despise.
  • Bifurcation point
    • A critical point in a conversation where what one says next will affect the unfolding pattern of interaction and potentially take it in a different direction.
  • Mindfulness
    • The presence or awareness of what participants are making in the midst of their own conversation.
  • Dialogic communication
    • Conversation in which parties remain in the tension between holding their own perspective while being profoundly open to the other.
  • Martin Buber
    • German Jewish philosopher who developed the concept of dialogic communication.
  • Narrow ridge
    • A metaphor of I-Thou living in the dialogic tension between ethical relativism and rigid absolutism.

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Chapter  7—Expectancy Violations Theory

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  • Judee Burgoon
    • A theorist from the University of Arizona who developed expectancy violations theory.
  • Personal Space
    • The invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines that individual’s preferred distance from others.
  • Edward Hall
    • An anthropologist from the Illinois Institute of Technology who coined the term proxemics.
  • Proxemics
    • The study of people’s use of space as a special elaboration of culture.
  • Intimate Distance
    • The American proxemic zone of 0 to 18 inches.
  • Personal Distance
    • The American proxemic zone of 18 inches to 4 feet.
  • Social Distance
    • The American proxemic zone of 4 to 10 feet.
  • Public Distance
    • The American proxemic zone of 10 feet to infinity.
  • Threat Threshold
    • The hypothetical outer boundary of intimate space; a breach by an uninvited other occasions fight or flight.
  • Arousal, relational
    • A heightened state of awareness, orienting response, or mental alertness that stimulates review of the relationship.
  • Expectancy
    • What people predict will happen, rather than what they necessarily desire.
  • Violation Valence
    • The perceived positive or negative value assigned to a breach of expectations, regardless of who the violator is.
  • Communicator Reward Valence
    • The sum of the positive and negative attributes that the person brings to the encounter plus the potential he or she has to reward or punish in the future.
  • Paul Mongeau
    • A communication researcher from Arizona State University whose research on dating demonstrates expectancy violations theory’s increased predictive power.
  • Interactional Adaptation Theory
    • A systematic approach to how people adjust their approach when another’s behavior doesn’t mesh with what’s needed, anticipated, or preferred.
  • Interaction Position
    • A person’s initial stance towards an interaction as determined by a blend of personal requirements, expectations, and desires (RED).
  • Reciprocity
    • A strong human tendency to respond to another’s action with similar behavior.

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Chapter  8—Social Penetration Theory

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  • Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor
    • Social psychologists who created social penetration theory.  Altman is a researcher at University of Utah; Taylor, now deceased, was affiliated with Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. 
  • Social Penetration
    • The process of developing deeper intimacy with another person through mutual self-disclosure and other forms of vulnerability.
  • Personality Structure
    • Onion-like layers of beliefs and feelings about self, others, and the world; deeper levels are more vulnerable, protected, and central to self-image.
  • Self-disclosure
    • The voluntary sharing of personal history, preferences, attitudes, feelings, values, secrets, etc., with another person; transparency.
  • Depth of penetration
    • The degree of disclosure in a specific area of an individual’s life.
  • Law of reciprocity
    • A paced and ordered process in which openness in one person leads to openness in the other.
  • Breadth of penetration
    • The range of areas in an individual’s life over which disclosure takes place.
  • Social exchange
    • Relationship behavior and status regulated by both parties’ evaluations of perceived rewards and costs of interaction with each other.
  • John Thibaut and Harold Kelley
    • Psychologists who developed social exchange theory or the attempt to quantify the value of different outcomes for an individual.  Thibaut, now deceased, was affiliated with the University of North Carolina; Kelley is a researcher at UCLA.
  • Outcome
    • The perceived rewards minus the costs of interpersonal interaction.
  • Minimax priniciple of human behavior
    • People seek to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs.
  • Comparison level (CL)
    • The threshold above which an interpersonal outcome seems attractive; a standard for relationship satisfaction.
  • Comparison level of alternatives (CLalt)
    • The best outcomes available in other relationships; a standard for relationship stability.
  • Ethical egoism
    • The belief that individuals should live their lives so as to maximize their own pleasure and minimize their own pain.
  • Dialectical model
    • The assumption that people want both privacy and intimacy in their social relationships; they experience a tension between disclosure and withdrawal.
  • Territoriality
    • The tendency to claim a physical location or object as our own.
  • Sandra Petronio
    • Communication theorist from the Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis who developed communication privacy management theory about the intricate ways people handle conflicting desires for privacy and openness.
  • Paul Wright
    • Professor emeritus from University of North Dakota who believes that friendships often reach a point of such closeness that self-centered concerns are no longer salient.

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Chapter  9—Uncertainty Reduction Theory

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  • Charles Berger
    • A communication theorist at the University of California, Davis, who developed uncertainty reduction theory.
  • Fritz Heider
    • As the founder of attribution theory, this psychologist argued that we constantly draw inferences about why people do what they do.
  • Attribution theory
    • A systematic explanation of how people draw inferences about the character of others based on observed behavior.
  • Uncertainty reduction
    • Increased knowledge of what kind of person another is that provides an improved forecast of how a future interaction will turn out.
  • Axiom
    • A self-evident truth that requires no additional proof.
  • Malcolm Parks and Mara Adelman
    • Communication researchers from University of Washington and Seattle University, respectively, who have demonstrated that there is a relationship between shared communication networks and uncertainty reduction.
  • Theorem
    • A proposition that logically and necessarily follows from two axioms.
  • Message plans
    • Mental representations of action sequences that may be used to achieve goals.
  • Passive strategy
    • Impression formation by observing a person interact with others.
  • Active strategy
    • Impression formation by asking a third party about a person.
  • Interactive strategy
    • Impression formation through face-to-face discussion with a person.
  • Extractive strategy
    • Impression formation by searching the Internet for information about a person.
  • Plan complexity
    • A characteristic of message plan based on the level of detail it provides and the number of contingencies it covers.
  • Hedging
    • Use of strategic ambiguity and humor to provide a way for both parties to save face when a message fails to achieve its goals.
  • Hierarchy hypothesis
    • The prediction that when people are thwarted in their attempts to achieve goals, their first tendency is to alter lower-level elements of their message.
  • Leanne Knobloch
    • Communication scholar at the University of Illinois who explores uncertainty in ongoing relationships and the resulting relational turbulence.
  • Relational uncertainty
    • Doubts about our own thoughts, the thoughts of the other person, or the future of the relationship.
  • Partner interference
    • Occurs when a relational partner hinders goals, plans, and activities.
  • Relational turbulence
    • Negative emotions arising from perceived problems in a close relationship.
  • Kathy Kellermann and Rodney Reynolds
    • Communication scholars who have questioned the motivational assumption of Berger's axiom 3 and the claim that motivation to search for information is increased by anticipation of future interaction, incentive value, and deviance.
  • Michael Sunnafrank
    • A communication scholar from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, who believes that predicted outcome value more accurately explains communication in early encounters than does Berger's account of uncertainty reduction.
  • Predicted outcome value
    • A forecast of future benefits and costs of interaction based on limited experience with the other.
  • Walid Afifi
    • A communication scholar from the University of California at Santa Barbara who proposed the theory of motivated information management.

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Chapter 10—Social Information Processing Theory

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  • Joe Walther
    • Communication professor at University of California at Santa Barbara, who argues that given the opportunity for sufficient exchange of social messages and subsequent relational growth, face-to-face and online channels are equally useful mediums for developing close relationships.
  • Impression formation
    • The composite mental image one person forms of another; often associated with affinity.
  • Cues filtered out
    • Interpretation of CMC that regards the lack of nonverbal cues as a fatal flaw for using the medium for relationship development. 
  • Flaming
    • Hostile online language that creates a toxic climate for relationship development and growth.
  • Inconsistent messages
    • Messages where the verbal and nonverbal content don’t match..
  • Anticipated future interaction
    • A way of extending psychological time; the likelihood of future interaction motivates online communicators to develop a relationship.
  • Chronemics
    • The study of people’s systemic handling of time in their interaction with others.
  • Hyperpersonal perspective
    • The claim that online relationships are often more intimate than those developed when partners are physically together.
  • Selective self-presentation
    • An online positive portrayal without fear of contradiction, which enables people to create an overwhelmingly favorable impression.
  • Attribution
    • A perceptual process whereby we observe what people do and then try to figure out what they’re really like.
  • Asynchronous channel
    • A nonsimultaneous medium of communication that each individual can use when he or she desires.
  • Self-fulfilling prophecy
    • The tendency for a person’s expectation of others to evoke a response from them that confirms what was originally anticipated.
  • Warranting value
    • Reason to believe that information is accurate, typically because the target of the information cannot manipulate it.

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Chapter 11—Relational Dialectics THeory

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  • Leslie Baxter
    • Communication professor emeritus from the University of Iowa who champions the relational dialectics approach to close relationships.
  • Mikhail Bakhtin
    • A Russian intellectual who saw dialectical tension as the deep structure of all human experience.  Baxter draws heavily on his work.
  • Relational Dialectics
    • The dynamic and unceasing struggle between discourses about interpersonal relationships.
  • Discourse
    • A set of propositions that cohere around a given object of meaning.
  • Monologue
    • Dominant talk that silences competing voices.
  • Utterance chain
    • The central building blocks of meaning-making, where utterances are linked to competing discourses near and far away, already spoken and not.
  • Superaddressee
    • An utterance’s future audience, whose moral authority is beyond question.
  • Discursive struggles
    • Two or more discourses compete for dominance over meaning.
  • Internal dialectics
    • Discursive struggles played out within a relationship.
  • External dialectics
    • Discursive struggles played out between a couple and their community.
  • Integration/separation
    • A set of discursive struggles regarding independence versus interdependence; freedom versus intimacy.
  • Stability/change
    • A set of discursive struggles regarding routine versus spontaneity; traditional versus novel.
  • Expression/nonexpression
    • A set of discursive struggles regarding transparency versus secrecy; privacy versus disclosure.
  • Dominant discourse
    • Talk that is central and prominent, with power to define meaning.
  • Marginalized discourse
    • Talk that is peripheral, lacking power to define meaning.
  • Dialectical flux
    • The unpredictable, unfinalizable, indeterminate nature of personal relationships.
  • Diachronic separation
    • Voicing different discourses at different times.
  • Synchronic interplay
    • Voicing different discourses at the same time.
  • Spiraling inversion
    • Switching back and forth between two discursive struggles, voicing one and then the other.
  • Segmentation
    • A compartmentalization tactic by which different discourses speak to different aspects of the relationship.
  • Negating
    • Mentioning a marginalized discourse in order to dismiss it as unimportant.
  • Countering
    • Replacing an expected discourse with an alternative discourse.
  • Entertaining
    • Recognizing that every discourse has alternatives.
  • Transforming
    • Combining two or more discourses, changing them into something new.
  • Aesthetic moment
    • A fleeting sense of unity through a profound respect for disparate voices in dialogue.
  • Constitutive approach
    • Social construction; the belief that communication creates, sustains, and alters relationships and the social world; social construction.
  • Dialectical flux
    • The unpredictable, unfinalizable, indeterminate nature of personal relationships.
  • Sissela Bok
    • A Swedish-born philosopher and ethicist who developed the principle of veracity.
  • Critical sensibility
    • An obligation to critique dominant voices, especially those that suppress opposing discourses; a responsibility to advocate for those who are muted.
  • Consequentialist ethics
    • Judging actions solely on the basis of their beneficial or harmful outcomes.
  • Principle of veracity
    • Truthful statements are preferable to lies in the absence of special circumstances that overcome the negative weight.

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Chapter 12—Communication Privacy Management Theory

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  • Sandra Petronio
    • Communication scholar from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis who advocates for a rules-based approach to management of privacy and the disclosure of private information.
  • Privacy boundaries
    • A metaphor to show how people think of the borders between private and public information.
  • Private information
    • The content of potential disclosures; information that can be owned.
  • Privacy
    • The feeling that one has the right to own private information.
  • Rule-based theory
    • A theory that assumes we can best understand people’s freely chosen actions if we study the system of rules they use to interpret and manage their lives.
  • Collective privacy boundary
    • An intersection of personal privacy boundaries of co-owners of private information, all of whom are responsible for the information.
  • Mutual privacy boundary
    • A synchronized collective privacy boundary that co-owners share because they have negotiated common privacy rules.
  • Boundary ownership
    • The rights and responsibilities that co-owners of private information have to control its spread.
  • Shareholder
    • A confidant fully committed to handling private information according to the original owner’s privacy rules.
  • Stakeholder
    • A confidant who deserves access and control regrading private information and the rules for sharing it.
  • Deliberate confidant
    • A recipient who sought out private information.
  • Reluctant confidant
    • A co-owner of private information who did not seek it nor want it.
  • Boundary linkage
    • An alliance formed by co-owners of private information as to who else should be able to know.
  • Boundary permeability
    • The extent to which a boundary permits private information to flow to third parties.
  • Boundary turbulence
    • Disruption of privacy management and relational trust that occurs when collective privacy boundaries aren’t synchronized.
  • Confidentiality dilemma
    • The tragic moral choice confidants face when they must breach a collective privacy boundary in order to promote the original owner’s welfare.

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Chapter 13—Media Multiplexity Theory

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  • Caroline Haythornthwaite
    • Syracuse University professor who takes a cybernetic approach to understanding how and why we use different communication channels.
  • Weak tie
    • A relationship involving a small investment of time and emotional energy, such as an acquaintance.
  • Strong tie
    • A relationship involving a large investment of time and emotional energy, such as a very close friend.
  • Tie strength
    • The degree of connection between people, determined by amount of time spent together, emotional intensity and intimacy, and willingness to exchange resources.
  • Bridging ties
    • Weak tie relationships that enable information and resources to pass between groups of people.
  • Media multiplexity
    • Strongly tied pairs use more media to sustain their relationships than do weakly tied pairs.
  • Art Ramirez
    • Interpersonal communication scholar at University of South Florida who explored how people reconnect with old friends via Facebook.
  • Hierarchy of media use expectations
    • Group norms that guide which media are used with all ties and which are reserved for strong ties.
  • Latent tie
    • The technical possibility of connection between two people who don’t currently have a relationship.
  • Andrew Ledbetter
    • Communication scholar at Texas Christian University who investigated mitigating influences on media use, including medium enjoyment (also co-author of A First Look).
  • Medium enjoyment
    • A preference for a specific medium, driven by the belief that it is fun and convenient.

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Chapter 14—Social Judgment Theory

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  • Muzafer Sherif
    • A social psychologist associated with the University of Oklahoma who developed social judgment theory.
  • Social judgment-involvement
    • Perception and evaluation of an idea by comparing it with current attitudes.
  • Latitude of acceptance
    • The range of ideas and statements that strike a person as reasonable or worthy of consideration.
  • Latitude of rejection
    • The range of ideas and statements that a person sees as unreasonable or objectionable.
  • Latitude of noncommitment
    • The range of ideas and statements that a person sees as neither objectionable nor acceptable.
  • Ego-involvement
    • The importance or centrality of an issue to a person’s life; often demonstrated by membership in a group win a known stance.
  • Contrast
    • A perceptual error whereby people judge messages that fall within their latitude of rejection as further from their anchor than they really are.
  • Assimilation
    • A perceptual error whereby people judge messages that fall within their latitude of acceptance as less discrepant from their anchor than they really are.
  • Boomerang effect
    • Attitude change in the opposite direction of what the message advocated; listeners driven away from rather than drawn to an idea.
  • Reference groups
    • Associations that members use to define their identities, these groups can bring about the most dramatic, widespread, and enduring changes in attitude.
  • Pluralistic ignorance
    • The mistaken idea that everyone else is doing or thinking something that they are not.

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Chapter 15—Elaboration Likelihood Model

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  • Richard Petty and John Cacioppo
    • Psychologists from Ohio State University and the University of Chicago respectively, who created the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion.
  • Central route
    • Message elaboration; the path of cognitive processing that involves scrutiny of message content.
  • Peripheral route
    • A mental shortcut process that accepts or rejects a message based on irrelevant cues as opposed to actively thinking about the issue.
  • Robert Cialdini
    • Arizona State University researcher who has identified six peripheral cues that trigger automatic responses.
  • Message elaboration
    • The extent to which a person carefully thinks about the issue-relevant arguments contained in a persuasive communication.
  • Need for cognition
    • Desire for cognitive clarity; an enjoyment of thinking through ideas even when they aren’t personally relevant.
  • Biased elaboration
    • Top-down thinking, in which predetermined conclusions color the supporting data.
  • Objective elaboration 
    • Bottom-up thinking, in which the facts are scrutinized without bias; seeking truth wherever it might lead.
  • Strong arguments
    • Claims that generate favorable thoughts when examined.
  • Source credibility
    • Audience perception of the message source’s expertise, character, and dynamism; typically a peripheral cue.
  • Paul Mongeau and James Stiff
    • An Arizona State University researcher and a communication consultant who charge that ELM’s descriptions are imprecise and ambiguous and thus cannot be adequately tested. 
  • Louis Penner and Barbara Fritzsche
    • University of South Florida psychologists whose study of Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement suggests that the effect of even powerful peripheral cues is short-lived.
  • Thomas Nilsen
    • A professor emeritus from the University of Washington who proposes that persuasive speech is ethical to the extent that it maximizes people’s ability to exercise free choice.

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Chapter 16—Cognitive Dissonance

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  • Leon Festinger
    • A former Stanford University social psychologist and creator of the theory of cognitive dissonance.
  • Cognitive dissonance
    • The distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs or a belief and an action.
  • Selective exposure
    • The tendency people have to avoid information that would create cognitive dissonance because it’s incompatible with their current beliefs.
  • Dieter Frey
    • A German psychologist who concluded that selective exposure exists only when information is known to be a threat.
  • Postdecision Dissonance
    • Strong doubts experienced after making an important, close-call decision that is difficult to reverse.
  • Minimal justification hypothesis
    • A claim that the best way to stimulate an attitude change in others is to offer just enough incentive to elicit counterattitudinal behavior.
  • Compliance
    • Public conformity to another’s expectation without necessarily having a private conviction that matches the behavior.
  • Counterattitudinal advocacy
    • Publicly urging others to believe or do something that is opposed to what the advocate actually believes.
  • Dissonance thermometer
    • A hypothetical, reliable gauge of the dissonance a person feels as a result of inconsistency.
  • Self-perception theory
    • The claim that we determine our attitudes the same way that outside observers do—by observing our behavior; an alternative to cognitive dissonance theory.
  • Elliot Aronson
    • A University of California social psychologist who argues that cognitive dissonance is caused by psychological—rather than logical—inconsistency.
  • Joel Cooper
    • A Princeton University psychologist who argues that dissonance is caused by the knowledge that one's actions have unnecessarily hurt another person.
  • Claude Steele
    • A Stanford University psychologist who argues that high self-esteem is a resource for dissonance reduction.
  • Patricia Devine
    • A University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist who believes that dissonance needs to be measured more accurately, particularly by a self-report measure of affect.
  • Daryl Bem
    • A Cornell University psychologist who argues that self-perception is a much simpler explanation of attitude change than is cognitive dissonance

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Chapter 17—Functional Perspective on Group Decision Making

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  • Randy Hirokawa and Dennis Gouran
    • Communication researchers at the University of Hawaii and Pennsylvania State University respectively, who developed the functional perspective of group decision making. 
  • Functional perspective
    • A prescriptive approach that describes and predicts task-group performance when four communication functions are fulfilled.
  • Requisite functions
    • Requirements for positive group outcome; problem analysis, goal setting, identification of alternatives, and evaluation of pluses and minuses for each.
  • Problem analysis
    • Determining the nature, extent, and cause(s) of the problem facing the group.
  • Goal setting
    • Establishing criteria by which to judge proposed solutions.
  • Identification of alternatives
    • Generation of options to sufficiently solve the problem.
  • Evaluation of positive and negative characteristics
    • Testing the relative merits of each option against the criteria selected; weighing the benefits and costs.
  • John Dewey
    • Early twentieth-century American pragmatist philosopher developed the six-step process of reflective thinking.
  • Reflective thinking
    • Thinking that favors rational consideration over intuitive hunches or pressure from those with clout.
  • Jürgen Habermas
    • A German philosopher and social theorist who suggests a rational process through which people can determine right from wrong.
  • Discourse ethics
    • Jürgen Habermas’ vision of the ideal speech situation in which diverse participants could rationally reach a consensus on universal ethical standards.
  • Ideal speech situation
    • A discourse on ethical accountability in which discussants represent all who will be affected by the decision, pursue discourse in a spirit of seeking the common good, and are committed to finding universal standards. 
  • Cynthia Stohl and Michael Holmes
    • Critiquing the functional perspective, these communication researchers, from University of California, Santa Barbara and Ball State respectively, advocate adding historical and institutional functions to the process.
  • Bona fide groups
    • Real-life groups; intact groups with stable yet permeable boundaries and interdependent within their immediate context. 

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Chapter 18—Symbolic Convergence Theory

  • Dramatizing message
    • Imaginative language by a group member describing past, future, or outside events; creative interpretations of the there-and-then.
  • Fantasy chain
    • A symbolic explosion of lively agreement within a group in response to a member’s dramatizing message.
  • Fantasy
    • The creative and imaginative shared interpretation of events that fulfills a group’s psychological or rhetorical needs.
  • Fantasy theme
    • Content of the fantasy that has chained out within a group; SCT’s basic unit of analysis.
  • Symbolic cue
    • An agreed-upon trigger that sets off group members to respond as they did when they first shared the fantasy.
  • Fantasy type
    • A cluster of related fantasy themes; greater abstractions incorporating several concrete fantasy themes that exist when shared meaning is taken for granted.
  • Symbolic convergence
    • Two or more private symbol worlds incline toward each other, come more closely together, or even overlap; group consciousness, cohesiveness.
  • Rhetorical vision
    • A composite drama that catches up large groups of people into a common symbolic reality.
  • Fantasy theme analysis
    • A type of rhetorical criticism used to detect fantasy themes and rhetorical visions; the interpretive methodology of SCT.

 


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Chapter 19—Cultural Approach to Organizations

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  • Clifford Geertz
    • Princeton University anthropologist who pioneered the ethnographic study of culture. 
  • Culture
    • Webs of significance; systems of shared meaning.
  • Cultural performance
    • Actions by which members constitute and reveal their culture to themselves and others; an ensemble of texts.
  • Ethnography
    • Mapping out social discourse; discovering who people within a culture think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they are doing it.
  • Thick description
    • A record of the intertwined layers of common meaning that underlie what a particular        people say and do.
  • Metaphor
    • Clarifies what is unknown or confusing by equating it with an image that’s more familiar or vivid.
  • Corporate stories
    • Tales that carry management ideology and reinforce company policy.
  • Personal stories
    • Tales told by employees that put them in a favorable light.
  • Collegial stories
    • Positive or negative anecdotes about others in the organization; descriptions of how things really work.
  • Ritual
    • Texts that articulate multiple aspects of cultural life, often marking rites of passage or life transitions.
  • Michael Pacanowsky
    • A communication researcher, formerly at University of Colorado and now a consultant at W. L. Gore & Associates, who has applied Geertz's methodology to organizational communication.
  • Linda Smircich
    • A University of Massachusetts management professor who draws on parallels to anthropological ethnography to raise ethical qualms about communication consulting.

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Chapter 20—Communicative Constitutions of Organizations

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  • Robert McPhee
    • Organizational communication scholar from Arizona State University behind Communicative Constitution of Organizations [CCO].
  • Constitution
    • Communication that calls organization into being.
  • Sensemaking
    • Communication behavior that reduces complexity.
  • Flows
    • Circulating fields of messages that constitute organizations.
  • Membership negotiation
    • Communication that regulates the extent to which a person is an organizational member.
  • Self-structuring
    • Communication that shapes the relationships among an organization’s members.
  • Closure
    • A sense of shared understanding that emerges in back-and-forth interaction.
  • Activity coordination
    • Communication that accomplishes the organization’s work toward goals.
  • Institutional positioning
    • Communication between an organization and external entities.
  • Co-orientation
    • Communication wherein two or more people focus on a common object.
  • Sufficient conditions
    • Conditions under which something will occur.
  • Necessary conditions
    • Conditions under which something can occur.
  • James Taylor
    • University of Montreal scholar who argues that McPhee’s top-down approach to organizations is too simplistic and it misses the everyday conversation that can structure an organization.

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Chapter 21—Critical Theory of Communication in Organizations

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  • Stanley Deetz
    • University of Colorado communication professor and proponent of a critical theory of organizational communication.
  • Corporate colonization
    • Encroachment of modern corporations into every area of life outside the workplace.
  • Information model
    • A view that communication is merely a conduit for the transmission of information about the real world.
  • Communication model
    • A view that language is the principal medium through which social reality is created and sustained.
  • Codetermination
    • Collaborative decision making; participatory democracy in the workplace.
  • Managerialism
    • A systematic logic, set of routine practices, and ideology that values control over all other concerns.
  • Consent
    • The process by which employees actively, though unknowingly, accomplish managerial interests in a faulty attempt to fulfill their own.
  • Systematically distorted communication
    • Operating outside of employees’ awareness, this form of discourse restricts what can be said or even considered.
  • Discursive closure
    • Suppression of conflict without employees’ realization that they are complicit in their own censorship.
  • Involvement
    • Organizational stakeholders’ free expression of ideas that may or may not affect managerial decisions. 
  • Participation
    • Stakeholder democracy; the process by which all stakeholders in an organization negotiate power and openly reach collaborative decisions.
  • PARC model
    • Politically attentive relational constructivism; a collaborative view of communication based in stakeholder conflict.

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Chapter 22—The Rhetoric

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  • Aristotle
    • A Student of Plato, ancient Greek teacher and scholar whose Rhetoric represents the first systematic study of public speaking and audience analysis.
  • Rhetoric
    • Discovering in each case all possible means of persuasion
  • Inartistic proofs
    • External evidence that the speaker doesn’t create.
  • Artistic proofs
    • Internal proofs that contain logos, pathos, and ethos appeals.
  • Logos
    • Proofs that appeal to listeners’ rationality; lines of argument that seem reasonable; enthymemes and examples.
  • Enthymeme
    • An incomplete version of a formal deductive syllogism that is created by leaving out a premise that is already accepted by the audience or by leaving an obvious conclusion unstated; a reasonable argument.
  • Lloyd Bitzer
    • Late rhetorician from the University of Wisconsin who argued that the audience helps construct an enthymematic proof by supplying the missing premise.
  • Pathos
    • Proofs consisting of feelings and emotions elicited by the speech. 
  • Ethos
    • Perceived credibility consisting of auditors’ judgment of the speaker’s intelligence, character, and goodwill toward the audience, as these personal characteristics are revealed throughout the speech.
  • Canons of rhetoric
    • The principal divisions of the art of persuasion established by ancient rhetoricians:  invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and memory.
  • Invention
    • The speaker’s “hunt” for arguments that will be effective in a particular speech.
  • Golden mean
    • The virtue of moderation; the virtuous person develops habits that avoids extremes.  

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Chapter 23—Dramatism

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  • Kenneth Burke
    • Perhaps the most important twentieth-century rhetorician, this critic is the founder of dramatism.
  • Marie Hochmuth Nichols
    • A University of Illinois rhetorician who popularized Burke’s dramatistic methodology within the speech communication field.
  • Critic
    • Rhetorical scholar who carefully analyzes the language of speakers and authors.
  • Realm of motion
    • Things moving according to cause/effect laws without purpose.
  • Symbolic action
    • Words as intentional action, giving life to particular motives and goals.
  • Dramatism
    • A technique of analysis of language and thought as modes of action rather than as means of conveying information.
  • Guilt
    • Burke’s catch-all term for tension, anxiety, embarrassment, shame, disgust, and other noxious feelings inherent in human symbol-using activity.
  • Perspective by incongruity
    • Providing shocking insight by linking two dissonant words.
  • Scapegoat
    • Someone or something blamed for guilt.
  • God term
    • The word a speaker uses to which all other positive words are subservient.
  • Devil term
    • The word a speaker uses that sums up all that is regarded as bad, wrong, or evil.
  • Mortification
    • Confession of guilt and request for forgiveness
  • Victimage
    • Naming an external enemy as the source of all personal or public ills.
  • Identification
    • The common ground between speaker and audience; consubstantiation.
  • Dramatistic pentad
    • A tool critics can use to discern the motives of a speaker by labeling five key elements of the drama—act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.
  • Act
    • The dramatistic term for what was done.  Texts that emphasize act suggest realism.
  • Scene
    • The dramatistic term for the context for the act.  Texts that emphasize scene downplay free will and reflect an attitude of situational determinism.
  • Agent
    • The dramatistic term for the person or kind of person who performs the act.  Texts that emphasize agent feature idealism.
  • Agency
    • The dramatistic term for the means the agent used to do the deed.  Texts that emphasize agency demonstrate pragmatism.
  • Purpose
    • The dramatistic term for the stated or implied goal of an act.  Texts that emphasize purpose suggest the concerns of mysticism.
  • Ratio
    • The relative importance of any two terms of the pentad as determined by their relationship.

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Chapter 24—Narrative Paradigm

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  • Walter Fisher
    • A professor emeritus at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California who developed the narrative paradigm of communication.
  • Phatic communication
    • Communication aimed at maintaining relationship rather than passing information or saying something new.
  • Narration
    • Symbolic actions—words and/or deeds—that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, and interpret them.
  • Paradigm
    • A conceptual framework or worldview; a universal model that calls for people to view events through a common interpretive lens.
  • Rational-world paradigm
    • A scientific or philosophical approach to knowledge that assumes people are logical, making decisions on the basis of evidence and lines of argument.
  • Narrative paradigm
    • A theoretical framework that views narrative as the basis of all human communication.
  • Narrative rationality
    • A way of evaluating the worth of stories based on the twin standards of narrative coherence and narrative fidelity.
  • Narrative coherence
    • Internal consistency with characters acting in a reliable fashion; the story hangs together.
  • Narrative fidelity
    • Congruency between values embedded in a message and what listeners regard as truthful and humane; the story strikes a responsive chord.
  • Ideal audience
    • An actual community existing over time that believes in the values of truth, the good, beauty, health, wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, harmony, order, communion, friendship, and oneness with the cosmos.

 


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Chapter 25—Media Ecology

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  • Symbolic environment
    • The socially-constructed, sensory world of meanings.
  • Marshall McLuhan
    • The former director of the Center for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto who championed an ecological view as the key to understanding media.
  • Media
    • Generic term for all human-invented technology that extends the range, speed, or channels of communication.
  • Medium
    • A specific type of media; book, newspaper, radio, television, film, website, email, etc.
  • Media ecology
    • The study of different personal and social environments created by the use of different communication technology.
  • Technology
    • According to McLuhan, human inventions that enhance communication.
  • Tribal Age
    • An acoustic era; a time of community because the ear is the dominant sense organ.
  • Literate Age
    • A visual era; a time of private detachment because the eye is dominant sense organ.
  • Print Age
    • A visual era; mass produced books usher in the industrial revolution and nationalism, yet individuals are isolated.
  • Electronic Age
    • An era of instant communication; a return of the global village with the all-at-once environment of sound and touch.
  • Global village
    • A worldwide electronic community where everyone knows everyone’s business and all are somewhat testy.
  • Digital Age
    • A possible fifth era of specialized electronic tribes, contentious over diverse beliefs and values.
  • Neil Postman
    • The founder of the media ecology program at New York University who was widely regarded as McLuhan’s heir apparent and argued that technology always presents a Faustian bargain.
  • Faustian bargain
    • A deal with the Devil; selling your soul for temporary earthly gain.

 


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Chapter 26—Semiotics

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  • Roland Barthes
    • A French semiologist who held the Chair of Literary Semiology at the College of France and whose theorizing focused on the cultural meaning of signs.
  • Ferdinand de Saussure
    • A Swiss linguist who coined the term semiology.
  • Semiotics (Semiology)
    • The study of the social production of meaning from sign systems; the analysis of anything that can stand for something else.
  • Myth
    • The connotative meaning that signs carry wherever they go; myth makes what is cultural seem natural.
  • Sign
    • The inseparable combination of the signifier and the signified.
  • Signifier
    • The physical form of the sign as we perceive it through our senses; an image.
  • Signified
    • The meaning we associate with the sign.
  • Denotative sign system
    • A descriptive sign without ideological content.
  • Connotative sign system
    • A mythic sign that has lost its historical referent; form without substance.
  • Deconstruction
    • The process of unmasking contradictions within a text; debunking.
  • Ideology
    • Knowledge presented as common sense or “natural,” especially when its social construction is ignored or suppressed.
  • Kyong Kim
    • A communication scholar and author of a book that applies semiotics to media theory.
  • Anne Norton and Douglas Kellner
    • University of Pennsylvania political scientist and UCLA media scholar (formerly from the University of Texas at Austin), respectively, who expand Barthes’ semiotic approach to account for how signs may subvert the status quo.

 


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Chapter 27—Cultural Studies

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  • Stuart Hall
    • Late professor emeritus of sociology at Open University, Milton Keynes, England; during his life, a leading proponent of cultural studies.
  • Cultural Studies
    • Neo-Marxist critique that sets forth the position that mass media manufacture consent for dominant ideologies. 
  • Ideology
    • The mental frameworks which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of the way society works.
  • Democratic pluralism
    • The myth that society is held together by common norms such as equal opportunity, respect for diversity, one person-one vote, individual rights, and rule of law.
  • Articulate
    • The process of speaking out on oppression and linking that subjugation with media representations; the work of cultural studies.
  • Economic determinism
    • The belief that human behavior and relationships are ultimately caused by a difference in financial resources and the disparity in power that those gaps create.
  • Cultural industries
    • The producers of culture; television, radio, music, film, fashion, magazines, newspapers, etc.
  • Hegemony
    • The subtle sway of society’s haves over its have-nots.
  • Michel Foucault
    • A leading twentieth-century French philosopher who believed signs and symbols are inextricably linked to mass media messages and that the frameworks people use to interpret them are provided through the dominant discourse of the day.
  • Discursive formation
    • The process by which unquestioned and seemingly natural ways of interpreting the world becomes ideologies.
  • Larry Frey
    • Communication scholar from the University of Colorado who advocated for action to address wrongs with social justice sensibility—the ethical conviction that none of us are truly free while others of us are oppressed.  

 


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Chapter 28—Uses and Gratifications

  • Elihu Katz
    • Hebrew University Professor emeritus who proposed that studying the media choices was important enough to save the field of communication.
  • Uniform Effects Model
    • The view that exposure to a media message affects everyone in the audience in the same way; often referred to as the “magic-bullet” or “hypodermic-needle” model of mass communication.
  • Straight-line effect of media
    • A specific effect on behavior that is predicted from media content alone – with little consideration of the differences in people who consume that content.
  • Typology
    • A classification scheme that attempts to place a large number of specific instances into a more manageable set of categories.
  • Parasocial relationship
    • A sense of friendship or emotional attachment that develops between TV viewers and media personalities.

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Chapter 29—Cultivation Theory

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  • George Gerbner
    • Late Dean Emeritus of The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, founder of the Cultural Environment Movement, and champion of cultivation theory.
  • Institutional process analysis
    • Scholarship that penetrates behind-the-scenes of media organizations in an effort to understand what policies or practices might be lurking there.
  • Message system analysis
    • Scholarship that involves careful, systematic study of TV content, usually employing content analysis as a research method.
  • Dramatic violence
    • The overt expression or threat of physical force as part of the plot.
  • Cultivation analysis
    • Research designed to find support for the notion that those who spend more time watching TV are more likely to see the real world through TV’s lens.
  • Accessibility principle
    • When people make judgments about the world around them, they rely on the smallest bits of information that come to mind most quickly.           
  • Mainstreaming
    • The blurring, blending, and bending process by which heavy TV viewers from disparate groups develop a common outlook through constant exposure to the same images and labels.
  • Resonance
    • The condition that exists when viewers’ real-life environment is like the world of TV; these viewers are especially susceptible to TV’s cultivating power.
  • Light viewers
    • TV viewers who report that they watch no more than two hours per day.
  • Heavy viewers
    • TV viewers who report that they watch at least four hours per day; television types.
  • Cultivation differential
    • The difference in the percentage giving the “television answer” within comparable groups of light and heavy TV viewers.
  • Meta-analysis
    • A statistical procedure that blends the results of multiple empirical and independent research studies exploring the same relationship between two variables (e.g., television viewing and fear of violence).
  • Mean world syndrome
    • The cynical mindset of general mistrust of others that’s subscribed to by heavy TV viewers.

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Chapter 31—Genderlect Styles

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  • Deborah Tannen
    • A linguist at Georgetown University who has pioneered research in genderlect styles.
  • Genderlect
    • A term that suggests that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects and not inferior or superior ways of speaking.
  • You Just Don’t Understand
    • Tannen’s best-selling book, which presents genderlect styles to a popular audience.
  • Rapport Talk
    • The typical conversational style of women, which seeks to establish connection with others.
  • Report Talk
    • The typical monologic style of men, which seeks to command attention, convey information, and win arguments.
  • Cooperative overlap
    • A supportive interruption often meant to show agreement and solidarity with the speaker.
  • Tag question
    • A short question at the end of a declarative statement, often used by women to soften the sting of potential disagreement or invite open, friendly dialogue.
  • Speech community
    • A community of people who share understandings about goals of communication, strategies for enacting those goals, and ways of interpreting communication.
  • Louise Cherry Wilkinson and Michael Lewis
    • Professors of Education, Psychology, and Communication at Syracuse who examined the speech communities of mothers and children, concluded that parents speak differently to their children and, in doing so, socialize boys and girls differently when it comes to communication.
  • Carol Gilligan
    • New York University education professor who presented a theory of moral development claiming that women tend to think and speak in an ethical voice different from that of men.
  • Aha factor
    • A subjective standard ascribing validity to an idea when it resonates with one’s personal experience.
  • Adrianne Kunkel and Brant Burleson
    • Communication scholars from the University of Kansas and (late) Purdue University, respectively, who challenge the different cultures perspective based on results from their research on comforting.
  • Senta Troemel-Ploetz
    • A German linguist and feminist who accuses Tannen of ignoring issues of male dominance, control, power, sexism, discrimination, sexual harassment, and verbal insults.

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Chapter 32—Standpoint Theory

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  • Sandra Harding
    • A philosopher of science at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has most advanced standpoint theory among feminist scholars.
  • Julia Wood
    • Professor emeritus of communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has championed and applied standpoint theory within the field of communication.
  • Social location
    • Our group memberships that shape our experience of the world and our ways of understanding it.
  • Standpoint
    • A perspective achieved through critical reflection on power relations and their consequences that opposes the status quo.
  • Georg Hegel
    • German philosopher whose 1807 analysis of the master-slave relationship revealed that what people “know” depends upon which group they are in and that the powerful control received knowledge.
  • Jean-Francois Lyotard
    • Previously introduced in the Media and Culture introduction, a postmodernist who favors a stance of “incredulity toward metanarratives,” including Enlightenment rationality and Western science.
  • Local knowledge
    • Knowledge situated in time, place, experience, and relative power; as opposed to knowledge from nowhere that’s supposedly value free.
  • Strong objectivity
    • The strategy of starting research from the lives of women and other marginalized groups; thus providing a less false view of reality.
  • Patricia Hill Collins
    • African American sociologist at University of Maryland who claims the patterns of “intersecting oppressions” means that black women are in a different marginalized place in society than white women or black men.
  • Seyla Benhabib
    • Professor of political science and philosophy at Yale University who maintains that a universal ethical standard is a viable possibility.
  • Intersectionality
    • All aspects of a person’s identity are intertwined, mutually constituting each other.

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Chapter 33—Muted Group Theory

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  • Cheris Kramarae
    • Professor emeritus from the University of Illinois and research associate at the Center for the Study of Women at the University of Oregon; leader in the study of muted group theory.
  • Muted group
    • People belonging to low-power groups who must change their language when communicating publicly and, thus, their ideas are often overlooked; e.g., women.
  • Edwin Ardener
    • A social anthropologist at Oxford University who first proposed the idea that women are a muted group.
  • Shirley Ardener
    • An Oxford University researcher who collaborated with Edwin Ardener on the development of muted group theory.
  • Virginia Woolf
    • A British novelist who protested women’s absence in recorded history.
  • Dorothy Smith
    • A feminist writer who claimed that women’s absence in history is a result of male control of scholarship.
  • Malestream expression
    • Traditional mainstream mass media, controlled by men.
  • Gatekeepers
    • Editors and other arbiters of cultures who determine which books, essays, poetry, plays, film scripts, etc. will appear in the mass media.
  • Dale Spender
    • A British author who hypothesizes that men realize that listening to women would involve a renunciation of their privileged position.
  • Paula Treichler
    • Kramarae’s collaborator on a feminist dictionary.
  • Sexual harassment
    • An unwanted imposition of sexual requirements in the context of a relationship of unequal power.
  • Date rape
    • Unwanted sexual activity with an acquaintance, friend, or romantic partner.

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Chapter 34—Communication Accommodation Theory

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  • Howard Giles
    • Welsh social psychologist, now a professor of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who champions communication accommodation.
  • Accommodation
    • Adjustments to communication that decrease social distance
  • Nonaccommodation
    • Communication behavior that maintains or increases social distance.
  • Social distance
    • How similar or different we are from another person.
  • Convergence
    • A strategy through which you adapt your communication behavior is such a way as to become more similar to another person.
  • Divergence
    • A communication strategy of accentuating the difference between yourself and another person.
  • Counteraccommodation
    • Direct, intentional, and even hostile ways of maximizing social distance.
  • Self-handicapping
    • For the elderly, a face-saving strategy that invokes age as a reason for not performing well.
  • Maintenance
    • Persisting in your original communication style regardless of the communication behavior of the other; similar to divergence.
  • Overaccommodation
    • Demeaning or patronizing talk; excessive concern paid to vocal clarity or amplitude, message simplification, or repetition; similar to divergence.
  • Intergroup contact
    • When communicators are aware of group affiliations that distinguish them.
  • Social identity
    • Group memberships and social categories that we use to define who we are.
  • Initial orientation
    • Communicators’ predisposition to focus on either their individual identity or group identity during a conversation.
  • Norms
    • Expectations about behavior that members of a community feel should (or should not) occur in particular situations.
  • Attribution
    • The perceptual process by which we observe what people do and then try to figure out their intent or disposition.

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Chapter 35—Face-Negotiation Theory

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  • Stella Ting-Toomey
    • California State University, Fullerton professor who created face-negotiation theory.
  • Face
    • The projected image of one’s self in a relational situation
  • Facework
    • Specific verbal and nonverbal messages that help to maintain and restore face loss, and to uphold and honor face gain.
  • Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson
    • Cambridge University linguists who define face as the public self-image that every member of society wants to claim for himself/herself.
  • Harry Triandis
    • University of Illinois psychologist who distinguishes between collectivism and individualism.
  • Lin Yutang
    • Taiwanese scholar who calls face a psychological image that can be granted and lost, and fought for and presented as a gift.
  • Individualistic culture
    • Wherein people look out for themselves and their immediate families; I-identity; a low-context culture.
  • Collectivistic Culture
    • Wherein people identify with a larger group that is responsible for providing care in exchange for group loyalty; we-identity; a high-context culture.
  • Face-concern
    • Regard for self-face, other face, or mutual face.
  • Face-restoration
    • The self-concerned facework strategy used to preserve autonomy and defend against loss of personal freedom.
  • Face-giving
    • The other-concerned facework strategy used to defend and support another person’s need for inclusion.
  • Avoiding
    • Responding to conflict by withdrawing from open discussion.
  • Obliging
    • Accommodating or giving into the wishes of the other in a conflict situation.
  • Compromising
    • Conflict management by negotiation or bargaining; seeking a middle way.
  • Dominating
    • Competing to win when people’s interests conflict.
  • Integrating
    • Problem solving through open discussion; collaboration; a win-win resolution of conflict.
  • Self-construal
    • Self-image; the degree to which people conceive of themselves as relatively autonomous from, or connected to, others.
  • Mindfulness
    • A recognition that things are not always what they seem, and therefore seeking multiple perspectives in conflict situations. 
  • John Oetzel
    • A researcher from the University of Waikato in New Zealand who has worked with Ting-Toomey to test, critique, and expand face-negotiation theory.

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Chapter 36—Co-Cultural Theory

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  • Dominant culture
    • In the US, the empowered group of relatively well-off, white, European American, nondisabled, heterosexual men.
  • Co-cultural group
    • In the US, marginalized groups such as women, people of color, the economically disadvantaged, people with physical disabilities, the LGBTQ community, the very old and very young, and religious minorities.
  • Co-cultural communication
    • Communication between dominant group and co-cultural group members from the perspective of co-cultural group members.
  • Communication orientation
    • The combination of a co-cultural group member’s preferred outcome and the communication approach he or she chooses to achieve that goal.
  • Communicative practices
    • Recurring verbal and nonverbal actions that co-cultural group members take during their interaction with dominant group members.
  • Nonassertive approach
    • Communication practices that seem inhibited and nonconfrontational; putting the needs of others before your own.
  • Aggressive approach
    • Communication practices that are seen as hurtfully expressive, self-promoting, and assuming control over the choices of others.
  • Assertive approach
    • Communication practices that include self-enhancing, expressive behavior that takes the needs of self and others into account.
  • Assimilation
    • The co-cultural process of fitting into the dominant culture while shedding the speech and nonverbal markers of the co-cultural group.
  • Accommodation
    • The co-cultural process of working to change dominant culture rules to take the life experiences of co-cultural members into account.
  • Separation
    • The co-cultural process of working to create and maintain an identity distinct from the dominant culture and promote in-group solidarity.
  • Phenomenology
    • A qualitative research method committed to focusing on the conscious experience of a person as she or he relates to the lived world.

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Chapter 37—Common Threads in Comm Theories

  • Motivation
    • Needs and desires that drive or draw us to think, feel, and act as we do.
  • Self-image
    • Identity; a mental picture of who I see myself to be—greatly influenced by the ways others respond to me.
  • Credibility
    • The intelligence, character, and goodwill that audience members perceive in a message source.
  • Expectation
    • In human interaction, our anticipation of how others will act or react toward us.
  • Audience adaptation
    • The strategic creation or adjustment of a message in light of the audience characteristics and specific setting.
  • Social construction
    • The communal creation of the social world in which we live.
  • Shared meaning
    • People’s common interpretation or mutual understanding of what verbal or nonverbal messages signify.
  • Narrative
    • Story; words, and deeds that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them.
  • Conflict
    • The struggle between people who are contesting over scarce resources or who perceive that they have incompatible values and goals.
  • Dialogue
    • Transparent conversation that often creates unanticipated relational outcomes due to parties’ profound respect for disparate voices.

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Theory Key Names
10th Edition

Annotated list of scholars and terms, from the Instructors Manual and margin notes in the text

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Chapter  1—Launching Your Study of Communication Theory

  • Judee Burgoon
    • University of Arizona communication theorist whose theory is the subject of chapter 7. She suggested that if we care about theory, we must “do theory.”
  • Ernest Bormann
    • Late communication theorist from University of Minnesota who posited the broad definition of communication theory listed below. His theory of symbolic convergence is featured in Chapter Nineteen.
  • Theory
    • A set of systematic, informed hunches about the way things work.
  • Communication
    • The relational process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a response.
  • Text
    • A record of a message that can be analyzed by others; for example a book, film, photograph, or any transcript or recording of a speech or broadcast.
  • Polysemic
    • A quality of symbols that means they are open to multiple interpretations.

 


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Chapter  2—Talk About Theory

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  • Behavioral scientist
    • A scholar who applies the scientific method to describe, predict, and explain recurring forms         of human behavior.
  • Rhetorician
    • A scholar who studies the ways in which symbolic forms can be used to identify with people, or to persuade them toward a certain point of view.
  • Objective approach
    • The assumption that truth is singular and is accessible through unbiased sensory      observation; committed to uncovering cause-and-effect relationships.
  • Resonance principle of communication
    • Tony Schwatz’s idea that successful persuasion messages evoke past experiences that resonate with a person’s thoughts or feelings.
  • Birth-death-rebirth cycle
    • One of the archetypes or mini-dramas that Carl Jung claimed is deep within the mental makeup of all humans; the collective unconscious.
  • Humanistic scholarship
    • Study of what it’s like to be another person, in a specific time and place; assumes there are few important panhuman similarities.
  • Epistemology
    • The study of the origin, nature, method, and limits of knowledge.
  • Determinism
    • The assumption that behavior is caused by heredity and environment.
  • Empirical evidence
    • Data collected through direct observation.
  • Stanley Deetz
    • Communication scholar from the University of Colorado who believes that every general communication theory has two priorities—effectiveness and participation.  His theory of organizational communication is featured in Chapter 21.
  • Emancipation
    • Liberation from any form of political, economic, racial, religious, or sexual oppression; empowerment.
  • Metatheory
    • Theory about theory; the stated or inherent assumptions made when creating a theory.

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Chapter  3—Weighing the Words

  • Rule of parsimony (Occam’s razor)
    • Given two plausible explanations for the same event, we should accept the simpler version.
  • Falsifiability
    • The requirement that a scientific theory must be stated in a way that it can be tested and disproved if it is indeed wrong.
  • Experiment
    • A research method that manipulates a variable in a tightly controlled situation in order to find out if it has the predicted effect.
  • Survey
    • A research method that uses questionnaires and structured interviews to collect self-reported data that reflects what respondents think, feel, or intend to do.
  • Self-referential imperative
    • Include yourself as a constituent of your own construction.
  • Ethical imperative
    • Grant others that occur in your construction the same autonomy you practice constructing them. 
  • Critical theorists
    • Scholars who use theory to reveal unjust communication practices that create or perpetuate an imbalance of power.
  • Textual analysis
    • A research method that describes and interprets the characteristics of any text.
  • Ethnography
    • A method of participant observation designed to help a researcher experience a culture’s complex web of meaning.

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Chapter  4—Mapping the Territory

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  • Robert Craig
    • A communication scholar from the University of Colorado who has defined seven traditions of communication theory.
  • Cybernetics
    • The study of information processing, feedback, and control in communication systems.
  • Rhetoric
    • The art of using all available means of persuasion, focusing upon lines of argument, organizations of ideas, language use, and delivery in public speaking.
  • Semiotics
    • The study of verbal and nonverbal signs that can stand for something else, and how their interpretation impacts society.
  • Symbols
    • Arbitrary words and non-verbal signs that bear no natural connection with the things they describe; their meaning is learned within a given culture.
  • Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity
    • The claim that the structure of a language shapes what people think and do; the social      construction of reality.
  • Culture industries
    • Entertainment businesses that reproduce the dominant ideology of a culture and distract people from recognizing unjust distribution of power within society; e.g., film, television, music, and advertising.            
  • Phenomenology
    • Intentional analysis of everyday experience from the standpoint of the person who is living it; explores the possibility of understanding the experience of self and others.
  • Pragmatism
    • An applied approach to knowledge; the philosophy that true understanding of an idea or situation has practical implications for action.

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Chapter  5—Symbolic Interactionism

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  • George Herbert Mead
    • The University of Chicago philosophy professor whose teachings were synthesized into the theory called symbolic interactionism.
  • Symbolic Interaction
    • The ongoing use of language and gestures in anticipation of how the other will react; a conversation.
  • Minding
    • An inner dialogue used to test alternatives, rehearse action, and anticipate reactions before responding; self-talk.
  • Taking the role of the other
    • The process of mentally imagining that you are someone else who is viewing you.
  • Looking-Glass Self
    • The mental image that results from taking the role of the other; the objective self; me.
  • I
    • The spontaneous driving force that fosters all that is novel, unpredictable, and unorganized in the self.
  • Me
    • The objective self; the image of self seen when one takes the role of the other.
  • Generalized other
    • The composite mental image a person has of his or her self based on community expectations and responses.
  • Participant observation
    • A method of adopting the stance of an ignorant yet interested visitor who carefully notes what people say and do in order to discover how they interpret their world.
  • Self-fulfilling prophecy
    • The tendency for our expectations to evoke responses that confirm what we originally anticipated.
  • Herbert Blumer
    • Mead's chief disciple, this University of California, Berkeley, professor coined the term symbolic interactionism.
  • Erving Goffman
    • University of California, Berkeley, sociologist who developed the metaphor of social interaction as a dramaturgical performance.
  • Emmanuel Levinas
    • European Jewish philosopher who is developed the idea of the responsive “I” and the ethical echo.
  • Responsive “I”
    • The self created by the way we respond to others.
  • Ethical echo
    • The reminder that we are responsible to take care of each other; I am my brother’s keeper.
  • Face of the “Other”
    • A human signpost that points to our ethical obligation to care for the other before we care for self.

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Chapter  6—Coordinated Management of Meaning

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  • Barnett Pearce and Vernon Cronen
    • Communication scholars from the Fielding Institute and the University of Massachusetts, respectively, who co-created the theory of coordinated management of meaning.
  • Transmission model
    • Picturing communication as a transfer of meaning by a source sending a message through a channel to a receiver.
  • Communication perspective  
    • An ongoing focus on how communication makes our social worlds.
  • Social constructionists
    • Curious, participants in a pluralistic world who believe that persons-in-conversation co-      construct their own social realities and are simultaneously shaped by the worlds they create.
  • Bond of Union
    • A lithograph by M.C. Escher that illustrates several key concepts about persons-in-conversation, particularly their interrelatedness.
  • Logical force
    • The moral pressure or sense of obligation a person feels to respond in a given way to what someone else has just said or done—“I had no choice.”
  • Coordination
    • People collaborating in an attempt to bring into being their vision of what is necessary, noble, and good and to preclude the enactment of what they fear, hate, or despise.
  • Bifurcation point
    • A critical point in a conversation where what one says next will affect the unfolding pattern of interaction and potentially take it in a different direction.
  • Mindfulness
    • The presence or awareness of what participants are making in the midst of their own conversation.
  • Dialogic communication
    • Conversation in which parties remain in the tension between holding their own perspective while being profoundly open to the other.
  • Martin Buber
    • German Jewish philosopher who developed the concept of dialogic communication.
  • Narrow ridge
    • A metaphor of I-Thou living in the dialogic tension between ethical relativism and rigid absolutism.

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Chapter  7—Expectancy Violations Theory

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  • Judee Burgoon
    • A theorist from the University of Arizona who developed expectancy violations theory.
  • Personal Space
    • The invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines that individual’s preferred distance from others.
  • Edward Hall
    • An anthropologist from the Illinois Institute of Technology who coined the term proxemics.
  • Proxemics
    • The study of people’s use of space as a special elaboration of culture.
  • Intimate Distance
    • The American proxemic zone of 0 to 18 inches.
  • Personal Distance
    • The American proxemic zone of 18 inches to 4 feet.
  • Social Distance
    • The American proxemic zone of 4 to 10 feet.
  • Public Distance
    • The American proxemic zone of 10 feet to infinity.
  • Threat Threshold
    • The hypothetical outer boundary of intimate space; a breach by an uninvited other occasions fight or flight.
  • Arousal, relational
    • A heightened state of awareness, orienting response, or mental alertness that stimulates review of the relationship.
  • Expectancy
    • What people predict will happen, rather than what they necessarily desire.
  • Violation Valence
    • The perceived positive or negative value assigned to a breach of expectations, regardless of who the violator is.
  • Communicator Reward Valence
    • The sum of the positive and negative attributes that the person brings to the encounter plus the potential he or she has to reward or punish in the future.
  • Paul Mongeau
    • A communication researcher from Arizona State University whose research on dating demonstrates expectancy violations theory’s increased predictive power.
  • Interactional Adaptation Theory
    • A systematic approach to how people adjust their approach when another’s behavior doesn’t mesh with what’s needed, anticipated, or preferred.
  • Interaction Position
    • A person’s initial stance towards an interaction as determined by a blend of personal requirements, expectations, and desires (RED).
  • Reciprocity
    • A strong human tendency to respond to another’s action with similar behavior.

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Chapter  8—Social Penetration Theory

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  • Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor
    • Social psychologists who created social penetration theory.  Altman is a researcher at University of Utah; Taylor, now deceased, was affiliated with Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. 
  • Social Penetration
    • The process of developing deeper intimacy with another person through mutual self-disclosure and other forms of vulnerability.
  • Personality Structure
    • Onion-like layers of beliefs and feelings about self, others, and the world; deeper levels are more vulnerable, protected, and central to self-image.
  • Self-disclosure
    • The voluntary sharing of personal history, preferences, attitudes, feelings, values, secrets, etc., with another person; transparency.
  • Depth of penetration
    • The degree of disclosure in a specific area of an individual’s life.
  • Law of reciprocity
    • A paced and ordered process in which openness in one person leads to openness in the other.
  • Breadth of penetration
    • The range of areas in an individual’s life over which disclosure takes place.
  • Social exchange
    • Relationship behavior and status regulated by both parties’ evaluations of perceived rewards and costs of interaction with each other.
  • John Thibaut and Harold Kelley
    • Psychologists who developed social exchange theory or the attempt to quantify the value of different outcomes for an individual.  Thibaut, now deceased, was affiliated with the University of North Carolina; Kelley is a researcher at UCLA.
  • Outcome
    • The perceived rewards minus the costs of interpersonal interaction.
  • Minimax priniciple of human behavior
    • People seek to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs.
  • Comparison level (CL)
    • The threshold above which an interpersonal outcome seems attractive; a standard for relationship satisfaction.
  • Comparison level of alternatives (CLalt)
    • The best outcomes available in other relationships; a standard for relationship stability.
  • Ethical egoism
    • The belief that individuals should live their lives so as to maximize their own pleasure and minimize their own pain.
  • Dialectical model
    • The assumption that people want both privacy and intimacy in their social relationships; they experience a tension between disclosure and withdrawal.
  • Territoriality
    • The tendency to claim a physical location or object as our own.
  • Sandra Petronio
    • Communication theorist from the Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis who developed communication privacy management theory about the intricate ways people handle conflicting desires for privacy and openness.
  • Paul Wright
    • Professor emeritus from University of North Dakota who believes that friendships often reach a point of such closeness that self-centered concerns are no longer salient.

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Chapter  9—Uncertainty Reduction Theory

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  • Charles Berger
    • A communication theorist at the University of California, Davis, who developed uncertainty reduction theory.
  • Fritz Heider
    • As the founder of attribution theory, this psychologist argued that we constantly draw inferences about why people do what they do.
  • Attribution theory
    • A systematic explanation of how people draw inferences about the character of others based on observed behavior.
  • Uncertainty reduction
    • Increased knowledge of what kind of person another is that provides an improved forecast of how a future interaction will turn out.
  • Axiom
    • A self-evident truth that requires no additional proof.
  • Malcolm Parks and Mara Adelman
    • Communication researchers from University of Washington and Seattle University, respectively, who have demonstrated that there is a relationship between shared communication networks and uncertainty reduction.
  • Theorem
    • A proposition that logically and necessarily follows from two axioms.
  • Message plans
    • Mental representations of action sequences that may be used to achieve goals.
  • Passive strategy
    • Impression formation by observing a person interact with others.
  • Active strategy
    • Impression formation by asking a third party about a person.
  • Interactive strategy
    • Impression formation through face-to-face discussion with a person.
  • Extractive strategy
    • Impression formation by searching the Internet for information about a person.
  • Plan complexity
    • A characteristic of message plan based on the level of detail it provides and the number of contingencies it covers.
  • Hedging
    • Use of strategic ambiguity and humor to provide a way for both parties to save face when a message fails to achieve its goals.
  • Hierarchy hypothesis
    • The prediction that when people are thwarted in their attempts to achieve goals, their first tendency is to alter lower-level elements of their message.
  • Leanne Knobloch
    • Communication scholar at the University of Illinois who explores uncertainty in ongoing relationships and the resulting relational turbulence.
  • Relational uncertainty
    • Doubts about our own thoughts, the thoughts of the other person, or the future of the relationship.
  • Partner interference
    • Occurs when a relational partner hinders goals, plans, and activities.
  • Relational turbulence
    • Negative emotions arising from perceived problems in a close relationship.
  • Kathy Kellermann and Rodney Reynolds
    • Communication scholars who have questioned the motivational assumption of Berger's axiom 3 and the claim that motivation to search for information is increased by anticipation of future interaction, incentive value, and deviance.
  • Michael Sunnafrank
    • A communication scholar from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, who believes that predicted outcome value more accurately explains communication in early encounters than does Berger's account of uncertainty reduction.
  • Predicted outcome value
    • A forecast of future benefits and costs of interaction based on limited experience with the other.
  • Walid Afifi
    • A communication scholar from the University of California at Santa Barbara who proposed the theory of motivated information management.

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Chapter 10—Social Information Processing Theory

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  • Joe Walther
    • Communication professor at University of California at Santa Barbara, who argues that given the opportunity for sufficient exchange of social messages and subsequent relational growth, face-to-face and online channels are equally useful mediums for developing close relationships.
  • Impression formation
    • The composite mental image one person forms of another; often associated with affinity.
  • Cues filtered out
    • Interpretation of CMC that regards the lack of nonverbal cues as a fatal flaw for using the medium for relationship development. 
  • Flaming
    • Hostile online language that creates a toxic climate for relationship development and growth.
  • Inconsistent messages
    • Messages where the verbal and nonverbal content don’t match..
  • Anticipated future interaction
    • A way of extending psychological time; the likelihood of future interaction motivates online communicators to develop a relationship.
  • Chronemics
    • The study of people’s systemic handling of time in their interaction with others.
  • Hyperpersonal perspective
    • The claim that online relationships are often more intimate than those developed when partners are physically together.
  • Selective self-presentation
    • An online positive portrayal without fear of contradiction, which enables people to create an overwhelmingly favorable impression.
  • Attribution
    • A perceptual process whereby we observe what people do and then try to figure out what they’re really like.
  • Asynchronous channel
    • A nonsimultaneous medium of communication that each individual can use when he or she desires.
  • Self-fulfilling prophecy
    • The tendency for a person’s expectation of others to evoke a response from them that confirms what was originally anticipated.
  • Warranting value
    • Reason to believe that information is accurate, typically because the target of the information cannot manipulate it.

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Chapter 11—Relational Dialectics THeory

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  • Leslie Baxter
    • Communication professor emeritus from the University of Iowa who champions the relational dialectics approach to close relationships.
  • Mikhail Bakhtin
    • A Russian intellectual who saw dialectical tension as the deep structure of all human experience.  Baxter draws heavily on his work.
  • Relational Dialectics
    • The dynamic and unceasing struggle between discourses about interpersonal relationships.
  • Discourse
    • A set of propositions that cohere around a given object of meaning.
  • Monologue
    • Dominant talk that silences competing voices.
  • Utterance chain
    • The central building blocks of meaning-making, where utterances are linked to competing discourses near and far away, already spoken and not.
  • Superaddressee
    • An utterance’s future audience, whose moral authority is beyond question.
  • Discursive struggles
    • Two or more discourses compete for dominance over meaning.
  • Internal dialectics
    • Discursive struggles played out within a relationship.
  • External dialectics
    • Discursive struggles played out between a couple and their community.
  • Integration/separation
    • A set of discursive struggles regarding independence versus interdependence; freedom versus intimacy.
  • Stability/change
    • A set of discursive struggles regarding routine versus spontaneity; traditional versus novel.
  • Expression/nonexpression
    • A set of discursive struggles regarding transparency versus secrecy; privacy versus disclosure.
  • Dominant discourse
    • Talk that is central and prominent, with power to define meaning.
  • Marginalized discourse
    • Talk that is peripheral, lacking power to define meaning.
  • Dialectical flux
    • The unpredictable, unfinalizable, indeterminate nature of personal relationships.
  • Diachronic separation
    • Voicing different discourses at different times.
  • Synchronic interplay
    • Voicing different discourses at the same time.
  • Spiraling inversion
    • Switching back and forth between two discursive struggles, voicing one and then the other.
  • Segmentation
    • A compartmentalization tactic by which different discourses speak to different aspects of the relationship.
  • Negating
    • Mentioning a marginalized discourse in order to dismiss it as unimportant.
  • Countering
    • Replacing an expected discourse with an alternative discourse.
  • Entertaining
    • Recognizing that every discourse has alternatives.
  • Transforming
    • Combining two or more discourses, changing them into something new.
  • Aesthetic moment
    • A fleeting sense of unity through a profound respect for disparate voices in dialogue.
  • Constitutive approach
    • Social construction; the belief that communication creates, sustains, and alters relationships and the social world; social construction.
  • Dialectical flux
    • The unpredictable, unfinalizable, indeterminate nature of personal relationships.
  • Sissela Bok
    • A Swedish-born philosopher and ethicist who developed the principle of veracity.
  • Critical sensibility
    • An obligation to critique dominant voices, especially those that suppress opposing discourses; a responsibility to advocate for those who are muted.
  • Consequentialist ethics
    • Judging actions solely on the basis of their beneficial or harmful outcomes.
  • Principle of veracity
    • Truthful statements are preferable to lies in the absence of special circumstances that overcome the negative weight.

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Chapter 12—Communication Privacy Management Theory

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  • Sandra Petronio
    • Communication scholar from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis who advocates for a rules-based approach to management of privacy and the disclosure of private information.
  • Privacy boundaries
    • A metaphor to show how people think of the borders between private and public information.
  • Private information
    • The content of potential disclosures; information that can be owned.
  • Privacy
    • The feeling that one has the right to own private information.
  • Rule-based theory
    • A theory that assumes we can best understand people’s freely chosen actions if we study the system of rules they use to interpret and manage their lives.
  • Collective privacy boundary
    • An intersection of personal privacy boundaries of co-owners of private information, all of whom are responsible for the information.
  • Mutual privacy boundary
    • A synchronized collective privacy boundary that co-owners share because they have negotiated common privacy rules.
  • Boundary ownership
    • The rights and responsibilities that co-owners of private information have to control its spread.
  • Shareholder
    • A confidant fully committed to handling private information according to the original owner’s privacy rules.
  • Stakeholder
    • A confidant who deserves access and control regrading private information and the rules for sharing it.
  • Deliberate confidant
    • A recipient who sought out private information.
  • Reluctant confidant
    • A co-owner of private information who did not seek it nor want it.
  • Boundary linkage
    • An alliance formed by co-owners of private information as to who else should be able to know.
  • Boundary permeability
    • The extent to which a boundary permits private information to flow to third parties.
  • Boundary turbulence
    • Disruption of privacy management and relational trust that occurs when collective privacy boundaries aren’t synchronized.
  • Confidentiality dilemma
    • The tragic moral choice confidants face when they must breach a collective privacy boundary in order to promote the original owner’s welfare.

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Chapter 13—Media Multiplexity Theory

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  • Caroline Haythornthwaite
    • Syracuse University professor who takes a cybernetic approach to understanding how and why we use different communication channels.
  • Weak tie
    • A relationship involving a small investment of time and emotional energy, such as an acquaintance.
  • Strong tie
    • A relationship involving a large investment of time and emotional energy, such as a very close friend.
  • Tie strength
    • The degree of connection between people, determined by amount of time spent together, emotional intensity and intimacy, and willingness to exchange resources.
  • Bridging ties
    • Weak tie relationships that enable information and resources to pass between groups of people.
  • Media multiplexity
    • Strongly tied pairs use more media to sustain their relationships than do weakly tied pairs.
  • Art Ramirez
    • Interpersonal communication scholar at University of South Florida who explored how people reconnect with old friends via Facebook.
  • Hierarchy of media use expectations
    • Group norms that guide which media are used with all ties and which are reserved for strong ties.
  • Latent tie
    • The technical possibility of connection between two people who don’t currently have a relationship.
  • Andrew Ledbetter
    • Communication scholar at Texas Christian University who investigated mitigating influences on media use, including medium enjoyment (also co-author of A First Look).
  • Medium enjoyment
    • A preference for a specific medium, driven by the belief that it is fun and convenient.

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Chapter 14—Social Judgment Theory

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  • Muzafer Sherif
    • A social psychologist associated with the University of Oklahoma who developed social judgment theory.
  • Social judgment-involvement
    • Perception and evaluation of an idea by comparing it with current attitudes.
  • Latitude of acceptance
    • The range of ideas and statements that strike a person as reasonable or worthy of consideration.
  • Latitude of rejection
    • The range of ideas and statements that a person sees as unreasonable or objectionable.
  • Latitude of noncommitment
    • The range of ideas and statements that a person sees as neither objectionable nor acceptable.
  • Ego-involvement
    • The importance or centrality of an issue to a person’s life; often demonstrated by membership in a group win a known stance.
  • Contrast
    • A perceptual error whereby people judge messages that fall within their latitude of rejection as further from their anchor than they really are.
  • Assimilation
    • A perceptual error whereby people judge messages that fall within their latitude of acceptance as less discrepant from their anchor than they really are.
  • Boomerang effect
    • Attitude change in the opposite direction of what the message advocated; listeners driven away from rather than drawn to an idea.
  • Reference groups
    • Associations that members use to define their identities, these groups can bring about the most dramatic, widespread, and enduring changes in attitude.
  • Pluralistic ignorance
    • The mistaken idea that everyone else is doing or thinking something that they are not.

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Chapter 15—Elaboration Likelihood Model

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  • Richard Petty and John Cacioppo
    • Psychologists from Ohio State University and the University of Chicago respectively, who created the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion.
  • Central route
    • Message elaboration; the path of cognitive processing that involves scrutiny of message content.
  • Peripheral route
    • A mental shortcut process that accepts or rejects a message based on irrelevant cues as opposed to actively thinking about the issue.
  • Robert Cialdini
    • Arizona State University researcher who has identified six peripheral cues that trigger automatic responses.
  • Message elaboration
    • The extent to which a person carefully thinks about the issue-relevant arguments contained in a persuasive communication.
  • Need for cognition
    • Desire for cognitive clarity; an enjoyment of thinking through ideas even when they aren’t personally relevant.
  • Biased elaboration
    • Top-down thinking, in which predetermined conclusions color the supporting data.
  • Objective elaboration 
    • Bottom-up thinking, in which the facts are scrutinized without bias; seeking truth wherever it might lead.
  • Strong arguments
    • Claims that generate favorable thoughts when examined.
  • Source credibility
    • Audience perception of the message source’s expertise, character, and dynamism; typically a peripheral cue.
  • Paul Mongeau and James Stiff
    • An Arizona State University researcher and a communication consultant who charge that ELM’s descriptions are imprecise and ambiguous and thus cannot be adequately tested. 
  • Louis Penner and Barbara Fritzsche
    • University of South Florida psychologists whose study of Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement suggests that the effect of even powerful peripheral cues is short-lived.
  • Thomas Nilsen
    • A professor emeritus from the University of Washington who proposes that persuasive speech is ethical to the extent that it maximizes people’s ability to exercise free choice.

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Chapter 16—Cognitive Dissonance

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  • Leon Festinger
    • A former Stanford University social psychologist and creator of the theory of cognitive dissonance.
  • Cognitive dissonance
    • The distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s two beliefs or a belief and an action.
  • Selective exposure
    • The tendency people have to avoid information that would create cognitive dissonance because it’s incompatible with their current beliefs.
  • Dieter Frey
    • A German psychologist who concluded that selective exposure exists only when information is known to be a threat.
  • Postdecision Dissonance
    • Strong doubts experienced after making an important, close-call decision that is difficult to reverse.
  • Minimal justification hypothesis
    • A claim that the best way to stimulate an attitude change in others is to offer just enough incentive to elicit counterattitudinal behavior.
  • Compliance
    • Public conformity to another’s expectation without necessarily having a private conviction that matches the behavior.
  • Counterattitudinal advocacy
    • Publicly urging others to believe or do something that is opposed to what the advocate actually believes.
  • Dissonance thermometer
    • A hypothetical, reliable gauge of the dissonance a person feels as a result of inconsistency.
  • Self-perception theory
    • The claim that we determine our attitudes the same way that outside observers do—by observing our behavior; an alternative to cognitive dissonance theory.
  • Elliot Aronson
    • A University of California social psychologist who argues that cognitive dissonance is caused by psychological—rather than logical—inconsistency.
  • Joel Cooper
    • A Princeton University psychologist who argues that dissonance is caused by the knowledge that one's actions have unnecessarily hurt another person.
  • Claude Steele
    • A Stanford University psychologist who argues that high self-esteem is a resource for dissonance reduction.
  • Patricia Devine
    • A University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist who believes that dissonance needs to be measured more accurately, particularly by a self-report measure of affect.
  • Daryl Bem
    • A Cornell University psychologist who argues that self-perception is a much simpler explanation of attitude change than is cognitive dissonance

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Chapter 17—Functional Perspective on Group Decision Making

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  • Randy Hirokawa and Dennis Gouran
    • Communication researchers at the University of Hawaii and Pennsylvania State University respectively, who developed the functional perspective of group decision making. 
  • Functional perspective
    • A prescriptive approach that describes and predicts task-group performance when four communication functions are fulfilled.
  • Requisite functions
    • Requirements for positive group outcome; problem analysis, goal setting, identification of alternatives, and evaluation of pluses and minuses for each.
  • Problem analysis
    • Determining the nature, extent, and cause(s) of the problem facing the group.
  • Goal setting
    • Establishing criteria by which to judge proposed solutions.
  • Identification of alternatives
    • Generation of options to sufficiently solve the problem.
  • Evaluation of positive and negative characteristics
    • Testing the relative merits of each option against the criteria selected; weighing the benefits and costs.
  • John Dewey
    • Early twentieth-century American pragmatist philosopher developed the six-step process of reflective thinking.
  • Reflective thinking
    • Thinking that favors rational consideration over intuitive hunches or pressure from those with clout.
  • Jürgen Habermas
    • A German philosopher and social theorist who suggests a rational process through which people can determine right from wrong.
  • Discourse ethics
    • Jürgen Habermas’ vision of the ideal speech situation in which diverse participants could rationally reach a consensus on universal ethical standards.
  • Ideal speech situation
    • A discourse on ethical accountability in which discussants represent all who will be affected by the decision, pursue discourse in a spirit of seeking the common good, and are committed to finding universal standards. 
  • Cynthia Stohl and Michael Holmes
    • Critiquing the functional perspective, these communication researchers, from University of California, Santa Barbara and Ball State respectively, advocate adding historical and institutional functions to the process.
  • Bona fide groups
    • Real-life groups; intact groups with stable yet permeable boundaries and interdependent within their immediate context. 

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Chapter 18—Symbolic Convergence Theory

  • Dramatizing message
    • Imaginative language by a group member describing past, future, or outside events; creative interpretations of the there-and-then.
  • Fantasy chain
    • A symbolic explosion of lively agreement within a group in response to a member’s dramatizing message.
  • Fantasy
    • The creative and imaginative shared interpretation of events that fulfills a group’s psychological or rhetorical needs.
  • Fantasy theme
    • Content of the fantasy that has chained out within a group; SCT’s basic unit of analysis.
  • Symbolic cue
    • An agreed-upon trigger that sets off group members to respond as they did when they first shared the fantasy.
  • Fantasy type
    • A cluster of related fantasy themes; greater abstractions incorporating several concrete fantasy themes that exist when shared meaning is taken for granted.
  • Symbolic convergence
    • Two or more private symbol worlds incline toward each other, come more closely together, or even overlap; group consciousness, cohesiveness.
  • Rhetorical vision
    • A composite drama that catches up large groups of people into a common symbolic reality.
  • Fantasy theme analysis
    • A type of rhetorical criticism used to detect fantasy themes and rhetorical visions; the interpretive methodology of SCT.

 


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Chapter 19—Cultural Approach to Organizations

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  • Clifford Geertz
    • Princeton University anthropologist who pioneered the ethnographic study of culture. 
  • Culture
    • Webs of significance; systems of shared meaning.
  • Cultural performance
    • Actions by which members constitute and reveal their culture to themselves and others; an ensemble of texts.
  • Ethnography
    • Mapping out social discourse; discovering who people within a culture think they are, what they think they are doing, and to what end they think they are doing it.
  • Thick description
    • A record of the intertwined layers of common meaning that underlie what a particular        people say and do.
  • Metaphor
    • Clarifies what is unknown or confusing by equating it with an image that’s more familiar or vivid.
  • Corporate stories
    • Tales that carry management ideology and reinforce company policy.
  • Personal stories
    • Tales told by employees that put them in a favorable light.
  • Collegial stories
    • Positive or negative anecdotes about others in the organization; descriptions of how things really work.
  • Ritual
    • Texts that articulate multiple aspects of cultural life, often marking rites of passage or life transitions.
  • Michael Pacanowsky
    • A communication researcher, formerly at University of Colorado and now a consultant at W. L. Gore & Associates, who has applied Geertz's methodology to organizational communication.
  • Linda Smircich
    • A University of Massachusetts management professor who draws on parallels to anthropological ethnography to raise ethical qualms about communication consulting.

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Chapter 20—Communicative Constitutions of Organizations

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  • Robert McPhee
    • Organizational communication scholar from Arizona State University behind Communicative Constitution of Organizations [CCO].
  • Constitution
    • Communication that calls organization into being.
  • Sensemaking
    • Communication behavior that reduces complexity.
  • Flows
    • Circulating fields of messages that constitute organizations.
  • Membership negotiation
    • Communication that regulates the extent to which a person is an organizational member.
  • Self-structuring
    • Communication that shapes the relationships among an organization’s members.
  • Closure
    • A sense of shared understanding that emerges in back-and-forth interaction.
  • Activity coordination
    • Communication that accomplishes the organization’s work toward goals.
  • Institutional positioning
    • Communication between an organization and external entities.
  • Co-orientation
    • Communication wherein two or more people focus on a common object.
  • Sufficient conditions
    • Conditions under which something will occur.
  • Necessary conditions
    • Conditions under which something can occur.
  • James Taylor
    • University of Montreal scholar who argues that McPhee’s top-down approach to organizations is too simplistic and it misses the everyday conversation that can structure an organization.

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Chapter 21—Critical Theory of Communication in Organizations

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  • Stanley Deetz
    • University of Colorado communication professor and proponent of a critical theory of organizational communication.
  • Corporate colonization
    • Encroachment of modern corporations into every area of life outside the workplace.
  • Information model
    • A view that communication is merely a conduit for the transmission of information about the real world.
  • Communication model
    • A view that language is the principal medium through which social reality is created and sustained.
  • Codetermination
    • Collaborative decision making; participatory democracy in the workplace.
  • Managerialism
    • A systematic logic, set of routine practices, and ideology that values control over all other concerns.
  • Consent
    • The process by which employees actively, though unknowingly, accomplish managerial interests in a faulty attempt to fulfill their own.
  • Systematically distorted communication
    • Operating outside of employees’ awareness, this form of discourse restricts what can be said or even considered.
  • Discursive closure
    • Suppression of conflict without employees’ realization that they are complicit in their own censorship.
  • Involvement
    • Organizational stakeholders’ free expression of ideas that may or may not affect managerial decisions. 
  • Participation
    • Stakeholder democracy; the process by which all stakeholders in an organization negotiate power and openly reach collaborative decisions.
  • PARC model
    • Politically attentive relational constructivism; a collaborative view of communication based in stakeholder conflict.

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Chapter 22—The Rhetoric

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  • Aristotle
    • A Student of Plato, ancient Greek teacher and scholar whose Rhetoric represents the first systematic study of public speaking and audience analysis.
  • Rhetoric
    • Discovering in each case all possible means of persuasion
  • Inartistic proofs
    • External evidence that the speaker doesn’t create.
  • Artistic proofs
    • Internal proofs that contain logos, pathos, and ethos appeals.
  • Logos
    • Proofs that appeal to listeners’ rationality; lines of argument that seem reasonable; enthymemes and examples.
  • Enthymeme
    • An incomplete version of a formal deductive syllogism that is created by leaving out a premise that is already accepted by the audience or by leaving an obvious conclusion unstated; a reasonable argument.
  • Lloyd Bitzer
    • Late rhetorician from the University of Wisconsin who argued that the audience helps construct an enthymematic proof by supplying the missing premise.
  • Pathos
    • Proofs consisting of feelings and emotions elicited by the speech. 
  • Ethos
    • Perceived credibility consisting of auditors’ judgment of the speaker’s intelligence, character, and goodwill toward the audience, as these personal characteristics are revealed throughout the speech.
  • Canons of rhetoric
    • The principal divisions of the art of persuasion established by ancient rhetoricians:  invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and memory.
  • Invention
    • The speaker’s “hunt” for arguments that will be effective in a particular speech.
  • Golden mean
    • The virtue of moderation; the virtuous person develops habits that avoids extremes.  

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Chapter 23—Dramatism

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  • Kenneth Burke
    • Perhaps the most important twentieth-century rhetorician, this critic is the founder of dramatism.
  • Marie Hochmuth Nichols
    • A University of Illinois rhetorician who popularized Burke’s dramatistic methodology within the speech communication field.
  • Critic
    • Rhetorical scholar who carefully analyzes the language of speakers and authors.
  • Realm of motion
    • Things moving according to cause/effect laws without purpose.
  • Symbolic action
    • Words as intentional action, giving life to particular motives and goals.
  • Dramatism
    • A technique of analysis of language and thought as modes of action rather than as means of conveying information.
  • Guilt
    • Burke’s catch-all term for tension, anxiety, embarrassment, shame, disgust, and other noxious feelings inherent in human symbol-using activity.
  • Perspective by incongruity
    • Providing shocking insight by linking two dissonant words.
  • Scapegoat
    • Someone or something blamed for guilt.
  • God term
    • The word a speaker uses to which all other positive words are subservient.
  • Devil term
    • The word a speaker uses that sums up all that is regarded as bad, wrong, or evil.
  • Mortification
    • Confession of guilt and request for forgiveness
  • Victimage
    • Naming an external enemy as the source of all personal or public ills.
  • Identification
    • The common ground between speaker and audience; consubstantiation.
  • Dramatistic pentad
    • A tool critics can use to discern the motives of a speaker by labeling five key elements of the drama—act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.
  • Act
    • The dramatistic term for what was done.  Texts that emphasize act suggest realism.
  • Scene
    • The dramatistic term for the context for the act.  Texts that emphasize scene downplay free will and reflect an attitude of situational determinism.
  • Agent
    • The dramatistic term for the person or kind of person who performs the act.  Texts that emphasize agent feature idealism.
  • Agency
    • The dramatistic term for the means the agent used to do the deed.  Texts that emphasize agency demonstrate pragmatism.
  • Purpose
    • The dramatistic term for the stated or implied goal of an act.  Texts that emphasize purpose suggest the concerns of mysticism.
  • Ratio
    • The relative importance of any two terms of the pentad as determined by their relationship.

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Chapter 24—Narrative Paradigm

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  • Walter Fisher
    • A professor emeritus at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California who developed the narrative paradigm of communication.
  • Phatic communication
    • Communication aimed at maintaining relationship rather than passing information or saying something new.
  • Narration
    • Symbolic actions—words and/or deeds—that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, and interpret them.
  • Paradigm
    • A conceptual framework or worldview; a universal model that calls for people to view events through a common interpretive lens.
  • Rational-world paradigm
    • A scientific or philosophical approach to knowledge that assumes people are logical, making decisions on the basis of evidence and lines of argument.
  • Narrative paradigm
    • A theoretical framework that views narrative as the basis of all human communication.
  • Narrative rationality
    • A way of evaluating the worth of stories based on the twin standards of narrative coherence and narrative fidelity.
  • Narrative coherence
    • Internal consistency with characters acting in a reliable fashion; the story hangs together.
  • Narrative fidelity
    • Congruency between values embedded in a message and what listeners regard as truthful and humane; the story strikes a responsive chord.
  • Ideal audience
    • An actual community existing over time that believes in the values of truth, the good, beauty, health, wisdom, courage, temperance, justice, harmony, order, communion, friendship, and oneness with the cosmos.

 


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Chapter 25—Media Ecology

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  • Symbolic environment
    • The socially-constructed, sensory world of meanings.
  • Marshall McLuhan
    • The former director of the Center for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto who championed an ecological view as the key to understanding media.
  • Media
    • Generic term for all human-invented technology that extends the range, speed, or channels of communication.
  • Medium
    • A specific type of media; book, newspaper, radio, television, film, website, email, etc.
  • Media ecology
    • The study of different personal and social environments created by the use of different communication technology.
  • Technology
    • According to McLuhan, human inventions that enhance communication.
  • Tribal Age
    • An acoustic era; a time of community because the ear is the dominant sense organ.
  • Literate Age
    • A visual era; a time of private detachment because the eye is dominant sense organ.
  • Print Age
    • A visual era; mass produced books usher in the industrial revolution and nationalism, yet individuals are isolated.
  • Electronic Age
    • An era of instant communication; a return of the global village with the all-at-once environment of sound and touch.
  • Global village
    • A worldwide electronic community where everyone knows everyone’s business and all are somewhat testy.
  • Digital Age
    • A possible fifth era of specialized electronic tribes, contentious over diverse beliefs and values.
  • Neil Postman
    • The founder of the media ecology program at New York University who was widely regarded as McLuhan’s heir apparent and argued that technology always presents a Faustian bargain.
  • Faustian bargain
    • A deal with the Devil; selling your soul for temporary earthly gain.

 


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Chapter 26—Semiotics

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  • Roland Barthes
    • A French semiologist who held the Chair of Literary Semiology at the College of France and whose theorizing focused on the cultural meaning of signs.
  • Ferdinand de Saussure
    • A Swiss linguist who coined the term semiology.
  • Semiotics (Semiology)
    • The study of the social production of meaning from sign systems; the analysis of anything that can stand for something else.
  • Myth
    • The connotative meaning that signs carry wherever they go; myth makes what is cultural seem natural.
  • Sign
    • The inseparable combination of the signifier and the signified.
  • Signifier
    • The physical form of the sign as we perceive it through our senses; an image.
  • Signified
    • The meaning we associate with the sign.
  • Denotative sign system
    • A descriptive sign without ideological content.
  • Connotative sign system
    • A mythic sign that has lost its historical referent; form without substance.
  • Deconstruction
    • The process of unmasking contradictions within a text; debunking.
  • Ideology
    • Knowledge presented as common sense or “natural,” especially when its social construction is ignored or suppressed.
  • Kyong Kim
    • A communication scholar and author of a book that applies semiotics to media theory.
  • Anne Norton and Douglas Kellner
    • University of Pennsylvania political scientist and UCLA media scholar (formerly from the University of Texas at Austin), respectively, who expand Barthes’ semiotic approach to account for how signs may subvert the status quo.

 


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Chapter 27—Cultural Studies

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  • Stuart Hall
    • Late professor emeritus of sociology at Open University, Milton Keynes, England; during his life, a leading proponent of cultural studies.
  • Cultural Studies
    • Neo-Marxist critique that sets forth the position that mass media manufacture consent for dominant ideologies. 
  • Ideology
    • The mental frameworks which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of the way society works.
  • Democratic pluralism
    • The myth that society is held together by common norms such as equal opportunity, respect for diversity, one person-one vote, individual rights, and rule of law.
  • Articulate
    • The process of speaking out on oppression and linking that subjugation with media representations; the work of cultural studies.
  • Economic determinism
    • The belief that human behavior and relationships are ultimately caused by a difference in financial resources and the disparity in power that those gaps create.
  • Cultural industries
    • The producers of culture; television, radio, music, film, fashion, magazines, newspapers, etc.
  • Hegemony
    • The subtle sway of society’s haves over its have-nots.
  • Michel Foucault
    • A leading twentieth-century French philosopher who believed signs and symbols are inextricably linked to mass media messages and that the frameworks people use to interpret them are provided through the dominant discourse of the day.
  • Discursive formation
    • The process by which unquestioned and seemingly natural ways of interpreting the world becomes ideologies.
  • Larry Frey
    • Communication scholar from the University of Colorado who advocated for action to address wrongs with social justice sensibility—the ethical conviction that none of us are truly free while others of us are oppressed.  

 


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Chapter 28—Uses and Gratifications

  • Elihu Katz
    • Hebrew University Professor emeritus who proposed that studying the media choices was important enough to save the field of communication.
  • Uniform Effects Model
    • The view that exposure to a media message affects everyone in the audience in the same way; often referred to as the “magic-bullet” or “hypodermic-needle” model of mass communication.
  • Straight-line effect of media
    • A specific effect on behavior that is predicted from media content alone – with little consideration of the differences in people who consume that content.
  • Typology
    • A classification scheme that attempts to place a large number of specific instances into a more manageable set of categories.
  • Parasocial relationship
    • A sense of friendship or emotional attachment that develops between TV viewers and media personalities.

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Chapter 29—Cultivation Theory

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  • George Gerbner
    • Late Dean Emeritus of The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, founder of the Cultural Environment Movement, and champion of cultivation theory.
  • Institutional process analysis
    • Scholarship that penetrates behind-the-scenes of media organizations in an effort to understand what policies or practices might be lurking there.
  • Message system analysis
    • Scholarship that involves careful, systematic study of TV content, usually employing content analysis as a research method.
  • Dramatic violence
    • The overt expression or threat of physical force as part of the plot.
  • Cultivation analysis
    • Research designed to find support for the notion that those who spend more time watching TV are more likely to see the real world through TV’s lens.
  • Accessibility principle
    • When people make judgments about the world around them, they rely on the smallest bits of information that come to mind most quickly.           
  • Mainstreaming
    • The blurring, blending, and bending process by which heavy TV viewers from disparate groups develop a common outlook through constant exposure to the same images and labels.
  • Resonance
    • The condition that exists when viewers’ real-life environment is like the world of TV; these viewers are especially susceptible to TV’s cultivating power.
  • Light viewers
    • TV viewers who report that they watch no more than two hours per day.
  • Heavy viewers
    • TV viewers who report that they watch at least four hours per day; television types.
  • Cultivation differential
    • The difference in the percentage giving the “television answer” within comparable groups of light and heavy TV viewers.
  • Meta-analysis
    • A statistical procedure that blends the results of multiple empirical and independent research studies exploring the same relationship between two variables (e.g., television viewing and fear of violence).
  • Mean world syndrome
    • The cynical mindset of general mistrust of others that’s subscribed to by heavy TV viewers.

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Chapter 31—Genderlect Styles

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  • Deborah Tannen
    • A linguist at Georgetown University who has pioneered research in genderlect styles.
  • Genderlect
    • A term that suggests that masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects and not inferior or superior ways of speaking.
  • You Just Don’t Understand
    • Tannen’s best-selling book, which presents genderlect styles to a popular audience.
  • Rapport Talk
    • The typical conversational style of women, which seeks to establish connection with others.
  • Report Talk
    • The typical monologic style of men, which seeks to command attention, convey information, and win arguments.
  • Cooperative overlap
    • A supportive interruption often meant to show agreement and solidarity with the speaker.
  • Tag question
    • A short question at the end of a declarative statement, often used by women to soften the sting of potential disagreement or invite open, friendly dialogue.
  • Speech community
    • A community of people who share understandings about goals of communication, strategies for enacting those goals, and ways of interpreting communication.
  • Louise Cherry Wilkinson and Michael Lewis
    • Professors of Education, Psychology, and Communication at Syracuse who examined the speech communities of mothers and children, concluded that parents speak differently to their children and, in doing so, socialize boys and girls differently when it comes to communication.
  • Carol Gilligan
    • New York University education professor who presented a theory of moral development claiming that women tend to think and speak in an ethical voice different from that of men.
  • Aha factor
    • A subjective standard ascribing validity to an idea when it resonates with one’s personal experience.
  • Adrianne Kunkel and Brant Burleson
    • Communication scholars from the University of Kansas and (late) Purdue University, respectively, who challenge the different cultures perspective based on results from their research on comforting.
  • Senta Troemel-Ploetz
    • A German linguist and feminist who accuses Tannen of ignoring issues of male dominance, control, power, sexism, discrimination, sexual harassment, and verbal insults.

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Chapter 32—Standpoint Theory

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  • Sandra Harding
    • A philosopher of science at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has most advanced standpoint theory among feminist scholars.
  • Julia Wood
    • Professor emeritus of communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has championed and applied standpoint theory within the field of communication.
  • Social location
    • Our group memberships that shape our experience of the world and our ways of understanding it.
  • Standpoint
    • A perspective achieved through critical reflection on power relations and their consequences that opposes the status quo.
  • Georg Hegel
    • German philosopher whose 1807 analysis of the master-slave relationship revealed that what people “know” depends upon which group they are in and that the powerful control received knowledge.
  • Jean-Francois Lyotard
    • Previously introduced in the Media and Culture introduction, a postmodernist who favors a stance of “incredulity toward metanarratives,” including Enlightenment rationality and Western science.
  • Local knowledge
    • Knowledge situated in time, place, experience, and relative power; as opposed to knowledge from nowhere that’s supposedly value free.
  • Strong objectivity
    • The strategy of starting research from the lives of women and other marginalized groups; thus providing a less false view of reality.
  • Patricia Hill Collins
    • African American sociologist at University of Maryland who claims the patterns of “intersecting oppressions” means that black women are in a different marginalized place in society than white women or black men.
  • Seyla Benhabib
    • Professor of political science and philosophy at Yale University who maintains that a universal ethical standard is a viable possibility.
  • Intersectionality
    • All aspects of a person’s identity are intertwined, mutually constituting each other.

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Chapter 33—Muted Group Theory

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  • Cheris Kramarae
    • Professor emeritus from the University of Illinois and research associate at the Center for the Study of Women at the University of Oregon; leader in the study of muted group theory.
  • Muted group
    • People belonging to low-power groups who must change their language when communicating publicly and, thus, their ideas are often overlooked; e.g., women.
  • Edwin Ardener
    • A social anthropologist at Oxford University who first proposed the idea that women are a muted group.
  • Shirley Ardener
    • An Oxford University researcher who collaborated with Edwin Ardener on the development of muted group theory.
  • Virginia Woolf
    • A British novelist who protested women’s absence in recorded history.
  • Dorothy Smith
    • A feminist writer who claimed that women’s absence in history is a result of male control of scholarship.
  • Malestream expression
    • Traditional mainstream mass media, controlled by men.
  • Gatekeepers
    • Editors and other arbiters of cultures who determine which books, essays, poetry, plays, film scripts, etc. will appear in the mass media.
  • Dale Spender
    • A British author who hypothesizes that men realize that listening to women would involve a renunciation of their privileged position.
  • Paula Treichler
    • Kramarae’s collaborator on a feminist dictionary.
  • Sexual harassment
    • An unwanted imposition of sexual requirements in the context of a relationship of unequal power.
  • Date rape
    • Unwanted sexual activity with an acquaintance, friend, or romantic partner.

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Chapter 34—Communication Accommodation Theory

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  • Howard Giles
    • Welsh social psychologist, now a professor of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who champions communication accommodation.
  • Accommodation
    • Adjustments to communication that decrease social distance
  • Nonaccommodation
    • Communication behavior that maintains or increases social distance.
  • Social distance
    • How similar or different we are from another person.
  • Convergence
    • A strategy through which you adapt your communication behavior is such a way as to become more similar to another person.
  • Divergence
    • A communication strategy of accentuating the difference between yourself and another person.
  • Counteraccommodation
    • Direct, intentional, and even hostile ways of maximizing social distance.
  • Self-handicapping
    • For the elderly, a face-saving strategy that invokes age as a reason for not performing well.
  • Maintenance
    • Persisting in your original communication style regardless of the communication behavior of the other; similar to divergence.
  • Overaccommodation
    • Demeaning or patronizing talk; excessive concern paid to vocal clarity or amplitude, message simplification, or repetition; similar to divergence.
  • Intergroup contact
    • When communicators are aware of group affiliations that distinguish them.
  • Social identity
    • Group memberships and social categories that we use to define who we are.
  • Initial orientation
    • Communicators’ predisposition to focus on either their individual identity or group identity during a conversation.
  • Norms
    • Expectations about behavior that members of a community feel should (or should not) occur in particular situations.
  • Attribution
    • The perceptual process by which we observe what people do and then try to figure out their intent or disposition.

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Chapter 35—Face-Negotiation Theory

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  • Stella Ting-Toomey
    • California State University, Fullerton professor who created face-negotiation theory.
  • Face
    • The projected image of one’s self in a relational situation
  • Facework
    • Specific verbal and nonverbal messages that help to maintain and restore face loss, and to uphold and honor face gain.
  • Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson
    • Cambridge University linguists who define face as the public self-image that every member of society wants to claim for himself/herself.
  • Harry Triandis
    • University of Illinois psychologist who distinguishes between collectivism and individualism.
  • Lin Yutang
    • Taiwanese scholar who calls face a psychological image that can be granted and lost, and fought for and presented as a gift.
  • Individualistic culture
    • Wherein people look out for themselves and their immediate families; I-identity; a low-context culture.
  • Collectivistic Culture
    • Wherein people identify with a larger group that is responsible for providing care in exchange for group loyalty; we-identity; a high-context culture.
  • Face-concern
    • Regard for self-face, other face, or mutual face.
  • Face-restoration
    • The self-concerned facework strategy used to preserve autonomy and defend against loss of personal freedom.
  • Face-giving
    • The other-concerned facework strategy used to defend and support another person’s need for inclusion.
  • Avoiding
    • Responding to conflict by withdrawing from open discussion.
  • Obliging
    • Accommodating or giving into the wishes of the other in a conflict situation.
  • Compromising
    • Conflict management by negotiation or bargaining; seeking a middle way.
  • Dominating
    • Competing to win when people’s interests conflict.
  • Integrating
    • Problem solving through open discussion; collaboration; a win-win resolution of conflict.
  • Self-construal
    • Self-image; the degree to which people conceive of themselves as relatively autonomous from, or connected to, others.
  • Mindfulness
    • A recognition that things are not always what they seem, and therefore seeking multiple perspectives in conflict situations. 
  • John Oetzel
    • A researcher from the University of Waikato in New Zealand who has worked with Ting-Toomey to test, critique, and expand face-negotiation theory.

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Chapter 36—Co-Cultural Theory

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  • Dominant culture
    • In the US, the empowered group of relatively well-off, white, European American, nondisabled, heterosexual men.
  • Co-cultural group
    • In the US, marginalized groups such as women, people of color, the economically disadvantaged, people with physical disabilities, the LGBTQ community, the very old and very young, and religious minorities.
  • Co-cultural communication
    • Communication between dominant group and co-cultural group members from the perspective of co-cultural group members.
  • Communication orientation
    • The combination of a co-cultural group member’s preferred outcome and the communication approach he or she chooses to achieve that goal.
  • Communicative practices
    • Recurring verbal and nonverbal actions that co-cultural group members take during their interaction with dominant group members.
  • Nonassertive approach
    • Communication practices that seem inhibited and nonconfrontational; putting the needs of others before your own.
  • Aggressive approach
    • Communication practices that are seen as hurtfully expressive, self-promoting, and assuming control over the choices of others.
  • Assertive approach
    • Communication practices that include self-enhancing, expressive behavior that takes the needs of self and others into account.
  • Assimilation
    • The co-cultural process of fitting into the dominant culture while shedding the speech and nonverbal markers of the co-cultural group.
  • Accommodation
    • The co-cultural process of working to change dominant culture rules to take the life experiences of co-cultural members into account.
  • Separation
    • The co-cultural process of working to create and maintain an identity distinct from the dominant culture and promote in-group solidarity.
  • Phenomenology
    • A qualitative research method committed to focusing on the conscious experience of a person as she or he relates to the lived world.

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Chapter 37—Common Threads in Comm Theories

  • Motivation
    • Needs and desires that drive or draw us to think, feel, and act as we do.
  • Self-image
    • Identity; a mental picture of who I see myself to be—greatly influenced by the ways others respond to me.
  • Credibility
    • The intelligence, character, and goodwill that audience members perceive in a message source.
  • Expectation
    • In human interaction, our anticipation of how others will act or react toward us.
  • Audience adaptation
    • The strategic creation or adjustment of a message in light of the audience characteristics and specific setting.
  • Social construction
    • The communal creation of the social world in which we live.
  • Shared meaning
    • People’s common interpretation or mutual understanding of what verbal or nonverbal messages signify.
  • Narrative
    • Story; words, and deeds that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them.
  • Conflict
    • The struggle between people who are contesting over scarce resources or who perceive that they have incompatible values and goals.
  • Dialogue
    • Transparent conversation that often creates unanticipated relational outcomes due to parties’ profound respect for disparate voices.

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You can access the Key Names for a particular chapter in several ways:

  • Switch to View by Theory, then select the desired theory/chapter from the drop-down list at the top of the page. Look in the list of available resources.
  • To quickly find a theory by chapter number, use the Table of Contents and link from there. It will take you directly to the theory with available options highlighted.
  • You can also use the Theory List, which will take you directly to the theory with available options highlighted.

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