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Theory Overviews
10th Edition

Short abstracts of each theory that appear in Appendix A of the text

List mode: Normal (click on theory name to show detail) | Show All details (Or click on a theory name to collapse the list)

Chapter  1Launching Your Study of Communication Theory

This chapter introduces you to the study of communication theory. It describes what theories are and what they do, offers metaphors for theory, and considers how to define communication. The chapter concludes with an introduction to the structure of the rest of the book.

Chapter  2Talk About Theory

This chapter describes objective and interpretive as two different worldviews that lead to distinct ways of studying communication theory. It considers how these worldviews differ in their ways of knowing, beliefs about human nature, assumptions of value, and purposes for developing and using theory.

Chapter  3Weighing the Words

This chapter further elaborates the difference between objective and interpretive approaches to communication theory. It offers six standards for evaluating objective theories and six standards for evaluating interpretive theories. The chapter concludes by considering possibilities for common ground between interpretive and objective theorists.

Chapter  4Mapping the Territory

Craig's metamodel identifies seven traditions of communication theory. This chapter describes each tradition and considers how each would approach the study of friendship. The chapter concludes by mapping the traditions onto the objective/interpretive continuum and considering whether an ethical tradition should be added to the list.

Chapter  5Symbolic Interactionism

Humans act toward people, things, and events on the basis of the meanings they assign to them. Once people define a situation as real, it has very real consequences. Without language there would be no thought, no sense of self, and no socializing presence of society within the individual. (Socio-cultural tradition)

Chapter  6Coordinated Management of Meaning

Persons-in-conversation co-construct their own social realities and are shaped by the worlds they create. Communication is a two-sided process of making and managing meaning and coordinating our actions. What we say matters because we get what we make. If we get the pattern right, the best possible things will happen. (Socio-cultural and phenomenological traditions)

Chapter  7Expectancy Violations Theory

Violating another person’s interpersonal expectations can be a superior strategy to conformity. When the meaning of a violation is ambiguous, communicators with a high reward valence can enhance their attractiveness, credibility, and persuasiveness by doing the unexpected. When the violation valence or reward valence is negative, they should act in a socially appropriate way. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter  8Social Penetration Theory

Interpersonal closeness proceeds in a gradual and orderly fashion from superficial to intimate levels of exchange as a function of anticipated present and future outcomes. Lasting intimacy requires continual and mutual vulnerability through breadth and depth of self-disclosure. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter  9Uncertainty Reduction Theory

When people meet, their primary concern is to reduce uncertainty about each other and their relationship. As verbal output, nonverbal warmth, self-disclosure, similarity, and shared communication networks increase, uncertainty decreases—and vice versa. Information seeking and reciprocity are positively correlated with uncertainty. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 10Social Information Processing Theory

Based solely on the information available via online communication, parties who meet online can develop relationships that are just as close as those formed face-to-face—though it takes longer. Because online senders select, receivers magnify, channels promote, and feedback enhances favorable impressions, online communication may create hyperpersonal relationships. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 11Relational Dialectics THeory

Interpersonal relationships are created through the interplay of discourses. These discourses occur within the relationship and outside of it. They address the past and the future. Often, discourses struggle with each other—at the same time or at different times. Common discursive struggles include integration–separation, stability–change, and expression–nonexpression. (Socio-cultural and phenomenological traditions)

Chapter 12Communication Privacy Management Theory

People believe they own and have a right to control their private information; they do so by using personal privacy rules. When others are told, they become co-owners of the information. If co-owners don’t effectively negotiate mutually agreeable privacy rules about telling third parties, boundary turbulence is the likely result. (Socio-cultural and cybernetic traditions)

Chapter 13Media Multiplexity Theory

Strong ties use more media to communicate with each other than do weak ties. Communication content differs by tie strength rather than by medium. Which media we use for which ties depends, in part, on group norms. Changes in media availability most strongly influence the quality of weak ties. (Cybernetic and socio-psychological traditions)

Chapter 14Social Judgment Theory

The larger the discrepancy between a speaker’s position and a listener’s point of view, the greater the change in attitude—as long as the message doesn’t fall within the hearer’s latitude of rejection. High ego- involvement usually indicates a wide latitude of rejection. Messages that fall there may have a boomerang effect. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 15Elaboration Likelihood Model

Message elaboration is the central route of persuasion that produces major positive attitude change. It occurs when unbiased listeners are motivated and able to scrutinize arguments they consider strong. Message-irrelevant factors hold sway on the peripheral path, a more common route that produces fragile shifts in attitude. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 16Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is an aversive drive that causes people to (1) avoid opposing viewpoints, (2) seek reassurance after making a tough decision, and (3) change private beliefs to match public behavior when there is minimal justification for an action. Self-consistency, a sense of personal responsibility, or self-affirmation can explain dissonance reduction. (Socio- psychological tradition)

Chapter 17Functional Perspective on Group Decision Making

Groups make high-quality decisions when members fulfill four requisite functions: (1) problem analysis, (2) goal setting, (3) identification of alternatives, and (4) evaluation of positive and negative consequences. Most group communication disrupts progress toward accomplishing these functional tasks, but counteractive communication can bring people back to rational inquiry. (Socio-psychological and cybernetic traditions)

Chapter 18Symbolic Convergence Theory

Dramatizing messages are group members’ expressed interpretations of events other than those in the here-and-now. Message content becomes a group fantasy theme when it spontaneously chains out among members. The sharing of group fantasies creates symbolic convergence—group consciousness and often cohesiveness. Fantasy theme analysis across groups can reveal a rhetorical vision. (Rhetorical and socio-psychological traditions)

Chapter 19Cultural Approach to Organizations

Humans are animals suspended in webs of significance that they themselves have spun. An organization doesn’t have a culture, it is a culture—a unique system of shared meanings. A nonintrusive ethnographic approach interprets stories, rites, and other symbolism to make sense of corporate culture. (Socio-cultural tradition)

Chapter 20Communicative Constitutions of Organizations

Communication calls organization into being. Such constitutive communication is patterned into four flows: membership negotiation, self-structuring, activity coordination, and institutional positioning. All four flows are necessary for organization to occur, although time and space often separate where each flow appears. (Socio-cultural tradition)

Chapter 21Critical Theory of Communication in Organizations

The naive notion that communication is merely the transmission of information perpetuates managerialism, discursive closure, and the corporate colonization of everyday life. Language is the principal medium through which social reality is produced and reproduced. Managers can further a company’s health and democratic values by coordinating stakeholder participation in corporate decisions. (Critical and phenomenological traditions)

Chapter 22The Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discovering all available means of persuasion. A speaker supports the probability of a message by logical, ethical, and emotional proofs. Accurate audience analysis results in effective invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and, presumably, memory. (Rhetorical tradition)

Chapter 23Dramatism

Words are symbolic action, and rhetoric is the search for a scapegoat to take our guilt. Unless we identify with the drama portrayed by a speaker, persuasion won’t occur. The dramatistic pentad of act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose is the critic’s tool for discovering how a speaker builds such identification. (Rhetorical tradition)

Chapter 24Narrative Paradigm

People are storytelling animals; almost all forms of human communication are fundamentally narrative. Listeners judge a story by whether it hangs together and rings true with the values of an ideal audience. Thus, narrative rationality is a matter of coherence and fidelity. (Rhetorical tradition)

Chapter 25Media Ecology

The media must be understood ecologically. Changes in communication technology alter the symbolic environment—the socially constructed, sensory world of meanings. We shaped our tools—the phonetic alphabet, printing press, and telegraph—and they in turn have shaped our perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and behavior. Thus, the medium is the message. (Socio-cultural tradition)

Chapter 26Semiotics

The significant visual sign systems of a culture affirm the status quo by suggesting that the world as it is today is natural, inevitable, and eternal. Mythmakers do this by co-opting neutral denotative signs to become signifiers without historical grounding in second-order connotative semiotic systems. (Semiotic tradition)

Chapter 27Cultural Studies

The mass media function to maintain the ideology of those who already have power. Corporately controlled media provide the dominant discourse of the day, which frames the interpretation of events. Critics should seek not only to interpret culture, but to change it. Media audiences do have the capacity to resist hegemony. (Critical tradition)

Chapter 28Uses and Gratifications

The media-effects tradition focuses on what media do to people. Uses & grats focuses on what people do with media. Media consumption is a deliberate choice designed to satisfy particular needs. Media don’t have uniform effects on the audience; effects vary according to the individual reasons for media use. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 29Cultivation Theory

Television has become society’s storyteller. Heavy television viewers see a vast quantity of dramatic violence, which cultivates an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world. Mainstreaming and resonance are two of the processes that create a homogeneous and fearful populace. (Socio-cultural and socio-psychological traditions)

Chapter 30Agenda-Setting Theory

The media tell us (1) what to think about, (2) how to think about it, and (3) what issues go together. We especially pay attention to the media agenda when issues are relevant and uncertain. Agendamelding is the social process where we combine multiple agendas to fit our experiences and communities. (Socio-psychological tradition) 

Chapter 31Genderlect Styles

Male–female conversation is cross-cultural communication. Masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects rather than as inferior or superior ways of speaking. Men’s report talk focuses on status and independence; women’s rapport talk seeks human connection. (Semiotic and socio-cultural traditions)

Chapter 32Standpoint Theory

Different locations within the social hierarchy affect what is seen. The standpoints of marginalized people provide less false views of the world than do the privileged perspectives of the powerful. Strong objectivity requires that scientific research start from the lives of women, the poor, the LGBTQ community, and racial minorities. (Critical tradition)

Chapter 33Muted Group Theory

Man-made language aids in defining, depreciating, and excluding women. Because men have primarily shaped language, women frequently struggle to make their voices heard in the public sphere. As women cease to be muted, men will no longer maintain their position of dominance in society. (Critical and phenomenological traditions)

Chapter 34Communication Accommodation Theory

People in intercultural encounters who see themselves as unique individuals will adjust their speech style and content to mesh with others whose approval they seek. People who want to reinforce a strong group identification will interact with those outside the group in a way that accentuates their differences. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 35Face-Negotiation Theory

People who have an interdependent self- image in a collectivistic culture are concerned with giving other-face or mutual-face, so they adopt a conflict style of avoiding or integrating. People who have an independent self-image in an individualistic culture are concerned with protecting self-face, so they adopt a conflict style of dominating. (Socio-cultural and socio-psychological traditions)

Chapter 36Co-Cultural Theory

 African American men, the LGBTQ community, and people with physical disabilities are at a distinct disadvantage when they interact with people in the dominant culture. Phenomenological research reveals they adopt a communication orientation based on their preferred outcome (assimilation, accommodation, or separation) and their communication approach (nonassertive, assertive, or aggressive). (Phenomenological tradition) 

Chapter 37Common Threads in Comm Theories

This chapter considers ten different threads that tie together the theories covered in the book. It offers one way of connecting the theories in the book together and provides a foundation for studying for the final exam.


You can access the Theory Overview 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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CHANGE TO View by Theory
Theory Overviews
10th Edition

Short abstracts of each theory that appear in Appendix A of the text

List mode: Normal (click on theory name to show detail) | Show All details (Or click on a theory name to collapse the list)

Chapter  1Launching Your Study of Communication Theory

This chapter introduces you to the study of communication theory. It describes what theories are and what they do, offers metaphors for theory, and considers how to define communication. The chapter concludes with an introduction to the structure of the rest of the book.

Chapter  2Talk About Theory

This chapter describes objective and interpretive as two different worldviews that lead to distinct ways of studying communication theory. It considers how these worldviews differ in their ways of knowing, beliefs about human nature, assumptions of value, and purposes for developing and using theory.

Chapter  3Weighing the Words

This chapter further elaborates the difference between objective and interpretive approaches to communication theory. It offers six standards for evaluating objective theories and six standards for evaluating interpretive theories. The chapter concludes by considering possibilities for common ground between interpretive and objective theorists.

Chapter  4Mapping the Territory

Craig's metamodel identifies seven traditions of communication theory. This chapter describes each tradition and considers how each would approach the study of friendship. The chapter concludes by mapping the traditions onto the objective/interpretive continuum and considering whether an ethical tradition should be added to the list.

Chapter  5Symbolic Interactionism

Humans act toward people, things, and events on the basis of the meanings they assign to them. Once people define a situation as real, it has very real consequences. Without language there would be no thought, no sense of self, and no socializing presence of society within the individual. (Socio-cultural tradition)

Chapter  6Coordinated Management of Meaning

Persons-in-conversation co-construct their own social realities and are shaped by the worlds they create. Communication is a two-sided process of making and managing meaning and coordinating our actions. What we say matters because we get what we make. If we get the pattern right, the best possible things will happen. (Socio-cultural and phenomenological traditions)

Chapter  7Expectancy Violations Theory

Violating another person’s interpersonal expectations can be a superior strategy to conformity. When the meaning of a violation is ambiguous, communicators with a high reward valence can enhance their attractiveness, credibility, and persuasiveness by doing the unexpected. When the violation valence or reward valence is negative, they should act in a socially appropriate way. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter  8Social Penetration Theory

Interpersonal closeness proceeds in a gradual and orderly fashion from superficial to intimate levels of exchange as a function of anticipated present and future outcomes. Lasting intimacy requires continual and mutual vulnerability through breadth and depth of self-disclosure. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter  9Uncertainty Reduction Theory

When people meet, their primary concern is to reduce uncertainty about each other and their relationship. As verbal output, nonverbal warmth, self-disclosure, similarity, and shared communication networks increase, uncertainty decreases—and vice versa. Information seeking and reciprocity are positively correlated with uncertainty. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 10Social Information Processing Theory

Based solely on the information available via online communication, parties who meet online can develop relationships that are just as close as those formed face-to-face—though it takes longer. Because online senders select, receivers magnify, channels promote, and feedback enhances favorable impressions, online communication may create hyperpersonal relationships. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 11Relational Dialectics THeory

Interpersonal relationships are created through the interplay of discourses. These discourses occur within the relationship and outside of it. They address the past and the future. Often, discourses struggle with each other—at the same time or at different times. Common discursive struggles include integration–separation, stability–change, and expression–nonexpression. (Socio-cultural and phenomenological traditions)

Chapter 12Communication Privacy Management Theory

People believe they own and have a right to control their private information; they do so by using personal privacy rules. When others are told, they become co-owners of the information. If co-owners don’t effectively negotiate mutually agreeable privacy rules about telling third parties, boundary turbulence is the likely result. (Socio-cultural and cybernetic traditions)

Chapter 13Media Multiplexity Theory

Strong ties use more media to communicate with each other than do weak ties. Communication content differs by tie strength rather than by medium. Which media we use for which ties depends, in part, on group norms. Changes in media availability most strongly influence the quality of weak ties. (Cybernetic and socio-psychological traditions)

Chapter 14Social Judgment Theory

The larger the discrepancy between a speaker’s position and a listener’s point of view, the greater the change in attitude—as long as the message doesn’t fall within the hearer’s latitude of rejection. High ego- involvement usually indicates a wide latitude of rejection. Messages that fall there may have a boomerang effect. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 15Elaboration Likelihood Model

Message elaboration is the central route of persuasion that produces major positive attitude change. It occurs when unbiased listeners are motivated and able to scrutinize arguments they consider strong. Message-irrelevant factors hold sway on the peripheral path, a more common route that produces fragile shifts in attitude. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 16Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is an aversive drive that causes people to (1) avoid opposing viewpoints, (2) seek reassurance after making a tough decision, and (3) change private beliefs to match public behavior when there is minimal justification for an action. Self-consistency, a sense of personal responsibility, or self-affirmation can explain dissonance reduction. (Socio- psychological tradition)

Chapter 17Functional Perspective on Group Decision Making

Groups make high-quality decisions when members fulfill four requisite functions: (1) problem analysis, (2) goal setting, (3) identification of alternatives, and (4) evaluation of positive and negative consequences. Most group communication disrupts progress toward accomplishing these functional tasks, but counteractive communication can bring people back to rational inquiry. (Socio-psychological and cybernetic traditions)

Chapter 18Symbolic Convergence Theory

Dramatizing messages are group members’ expressed interpretations of events other than those in the here-and-now. Message content becomes a group fantasy theme when it spontaneously chains out among members. The sharing of group fantasies creates symbolic convergence—group consciousness and often cohesiveness. Fantasy theme analysis across groups can reveal a rhetorical vision. (Rhetorical and socio-psychological traditions)

Chapter 19Cultural Approach to Organizations

Humans are animals suspended in webs of significance that they themselves have spun. An organization doesn’t have a culture, it is a culture—a unique system of shared meanings. A nonintrusive ethnographic approach interprets stories, rites, and other symbolism to make sense of corporate culture. (Socio-cultural tradition)

Chapter 20Communicative Constitutions of Organizations

Communication calls organization into being. Such constitutive communication is patterned into four flows: membership negotiation, self-structuring, activity coordination, and institutional positioning. All four flows are necessary for organization to occur, although time and space often separate where each flow appears. (Socio-cultural tradition)

Chapter 21Critical Theory of Communication in Organizations

The naive notion that communication is merely the transmission of information perpetuates managerialism, discursive closure, and the corporate colonization of everyday life. Language is the principal medium through which social reality is produced and reproduced. Managers can further a company’s health and democratic values by coordinating stakeholder participation in corporate decisions. (Critical and phenomenological traditions)

Chapter 22The Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discovering all available means of persuasion. A speaker supports the probability of a message by logical, ethical, and emotional proofs. Accurate audience analysis results in effective invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and, presumably, memory. (Rhetorical tradition)

Chapter 23Dramatism

Words are symbolic action, and rhetoric is the search for a scapegoat to take our guilt. Unless we identify with the drama portrayed by a speaker, persuasion won’t occur. The dramatistic pentad of act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose is the critic’s tool for discovering how a speaker builds such identification. (Rhetorical tradition)

Chapter 24Narrative Paradigm

People are storytelling animals; almost all forms of human communication are fundamentally narrative. Listeners judge a story by whether it hangs together and rings true with the values of an ideal audience. Thus, narrative rationality is a matter of coherence and fidelity. (Rhetorical tradition)

Chapter 25Media Ecology

The media must be understood ecologically. Changes in communication technology alter the symbolic environment—the socially constructed, sensory world of meanings. We shaped our tools—the phonetic alphabet, printing press, and telegraph—and they in turn have shaped our perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and behavior. Thus, the medium is the message. (Socio-cultural tradition)

Chapter 26Semiotics

The significant visual sign systems of a culture affirm the status quo by suggesting that the world as it is today is natural, inevitable, and eternal. Mythmakers do this by co-opting neutral denotative signs to become signifiers without historical grounding in second-order connotative semiotic systems. (Semiotic tradition)

Chapter 27Cultural Studies

The mass media function to maintain the ideology of those who already have power. Corporately controlled media provide the dominant discourse of the day, which frames the interpretation of events. Critics should seek not only to interpret culture, but to change it. Media audiences do have the capacity to resist hegemony. (Critical tradition)

Chapter 28Uses and Gratifications

The media-effects tradition focuses on what media do to people. Uses & grats focuses on what people do with media. Media consumption is a deliberate choice designed to satisfy particular needs. Media don’t have uniform effects on the audience; effects vary according to the individual reasons for media use. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 29Cultivation Theory

Television has become society’s storyteller. Heavy television viewers see a vast quantity of dramatic violence, which cultivates an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world. Mainstreaming and resonance are two of the processes that create a homogeneous and fearful populace. (Socio-cultural and socio-psychological traditions)

Chapter 30Agenda-Setting Theory

The media tell us (1) what to think about, (2) how to think about it, and (3) what issues go together. We especially pay attention to the media agenda when issues are relevant and uncertain. Agendamelding is the social process where we combine multiple agendas to fit our experiences and communities. (Socio-psychological tradition) 

Chapter 31Genderlect Styles

Male–female conversation is cross-cultural communication. Masculine and feminine styles of discourse are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects rather than as inferior or superior ways of speaking. Men’s report talk focuses on status and independence; women’s rapport talk seeks human connection. (Semiotic and socio-cultural traditions)

Chapter 32Standpoint Theory

Different locations within the social hierarchy affect what is seen. The standpoints of marginalized people provide less false views of the world than do the privileged perspectives of the powerful. Strong objectivity requires that scientific research start from the lives of women, the poor, the LGBTQ community, and racial minorities. (Critical tradition)

Chapter 33Muted Group Theory

Man-made language aids in defining, depreciating, and excluding women. Because men have primarily shaped language, women frequently struggle to make their voices heard in the public sphere. As women cease to be muted, men will no longer maintain their position of dominance in society. (Critical and phenomenological traditions)

Chapter 34Communication Accommodation Theory

People in intercultural encounters who see themselves as unique individuals will adjust their speech style and content to mesh with others whose approval they seek. People who want to reinforce a strong group identification will interact with those outside the group in a way that accentuates their differences. (Socio-psychological tradition)

Chapter 35Face-Negotiation Theory

People who have an interdependent self- image in a collectivistic culture are concerned with giving other-face or mutual-face, so they adopt a conflict style of avoiding or integrating. People who have an independent self-image in an individualistic culture are concerned with protecting self-face, so they adopt a conflict style of dominating. (Socio-cultural and socio-psychological traditions)

Chapter 36Co-Cultural Theory

 African American men, the LGBTQ community, and people with physical disabilities are at a distinct disadvantage when they interact with people in the dominant culture. Phenomenological research reveals they adopt a communication orientation based on their preferred outcome (assimilation, accommodation, or separation) and their communication approach (nonassertive, assertive, or aggressive). (Phenomenological tradition) 

Chapter 37Common Threads in Comm Theories

This chapter considers ten different threads that tie together the theories covered in the book. It offers one way of connecting the theories in the book together and provides a foundation for studying for the final exam.


You can access the Theory Overview 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.

Back to top



 

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