Evaluating Theories of Communication

For each of the following theories, evaluate it as best you can. Try to use Frey et al.'s (1991) criteria for evaluation (on page 12). Minimally, however, you should attempt to answer these questions:

• How does this theory view "communication" as a concept? How does communication work, in other words, and what purpose does it serve?
• What is the nature of the individual in this theory?
• What is the nature of the collective (the group, the organization, the society) in this theory?
• What does this theory suggest is the best way to study human communication?

These descriptions of communication theories are taken from Littlejohn (1996) (see online syllabus for full citation).

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism emerges from the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1930s and later, particularly from the work of George Herbert Mead. The central premises of symbolic interactionism are as follows:

• People understand things by assigning meaning to their experience. Human perception is always mediated by a filter of symbols.
• Meanings are learned in interaction between people. Meanings arise from the exchange of symbols in social groups.
• All social structures and institutions are created by people interacting with one another.
• Individual behavior is not strictly determined by prior events, but is voluntary.
• Mind consists of an internal conversation, which reflects interactions one has had with others.
• Behavior is enacted, or created in the social group in the course of interaction.
• One cannot understand human experience by observing overt behavior. People's understandings -- the meanings they assign events -- must be ascertained.

Attribution Theory

Attribution theory deals with the ways people infer the causes of behavior, reports Littlejohn (1996). It emerges from the discipline of psychology, and has three basic assumptions.

• People make attempts to determine the causes of behavior of themselves and others. When in doubt, they look for information that will help them determine why someone is doing something.
• People assign causes systematically, attempting to create generalizations about behavior and its causes or motivations.
• The attributed cause will then affect the person's own emotions, cognitions, and behavior.

Accommodation Theory

Accommodation theory is interested in the ways in which individuals adjust their behaviors to one other, either to become more alike or to exaggerate their differences. These processes of convergence and divergence are the matter of interest to speech accommodation theory, developed by Howard Giles and his colleagues in the 1960s and 1970s.

• Accommodation occurs in a wide variety of communication behaviors, including accent, rate, loudness, vocabulary, grammar, voice, and gestures.
• Convergence and divergence may be mutual (when both speakers display it) or non-mutual.
• Convergence may be partial or complete.
• Accommodation may occur consciously, but speakers tend to be unaware of it.
• Accommodation leads to social identity and bonding or disapproval and distance.
• Accommodation occurs either as an attempt to increase understanding, or as an attempt to seek approval. The ways in which accommodation is often differ according to the status of the speaker and the listener, and is associated with power.

The Rule-Based Approach to Communication

The idea that people operate by rules in language, discourse, and social interaction has become widely accepted. Some of the basic principles of this approach include the following:

• The action principle states that our most important behaviors are actively initiated by the individual, rather than mechanically deterministic.
• Social behavior is structured and organized. Behaviors recur in similar situations, and "rules" emerge to describe those situations.
• Rule-governed approach: Rules are beliefs about what should or should not be done in particular situations, and people know these rules and have a choice about whether or not they should follow them. People usually act consciously, intentionally, and rationally.
• Rule-using approach: The actor is confronted with a variety of rules for accomplishing various intentions. The actor chooses which rule to use, following some and discarding others.
• "Rule using...helps us understand communication competence by revealing how well a person sorts through the set of objectives and rules to plan a strategy."