Communication theory is a proposed description of communication phenomena, the relationships among them, a storyline describing these relationships, and an argument for these three elements. Communication theory provides a way of talking about and analyzing key events, processes, and commitments that together form communication. Theory can be seen as a way to map the world and make it navigable; communication theory gives us tools to answer empirical, conceptual, or practical communication questions.
Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction that empirically investigates the mechanisms by which humans achieve mutual understanding. It focuses on both verbal and non-verbal conduct, especially in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields. CA began with a focus on casual conversation, but its methods were subsequently adapted to embrace more task- and institution-centered interactions, such as those occurring in doctors' offices, courts, law enforcement, helplines, educational settings, and the mass media, and focus on multimodal and nonverbal activity in interaction, including gaze, body movement and gesture. As a consequence, the term conversation analysis has become something of a misnomer, but it has continued as a term for a distinctive and successful approach to the analysis of interactions. CA and ethnomethodology are sometimes considered one field and referred to as EMCA.
Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppression; and the relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social locations such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and disability.
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Organizational storytelling is a concept in management and organization studies. It recognises the special place of narration in human communication, making narration "the foundation of discursive thought and the possibility of acting in common." This follows the narrative paradigm, a view of human communication based on the conception of persons as homo narrans.
Relational dialectics is an interpersonal communication theory about close personal ties and relationships that highlights the tensions, struggles and interplay between contrary tendencies. The theory, proposed respectively by Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery in 1988, defines communication patterns between relationship partners as the result of endemic dialectical tensions. Dialectics are described as the tensions an individual feels when experiencing paradoxical desires that we need and/ or want. The theory contains four assumptions, one of them being that relationships are not one dimensional, rather, they consist of highs and lows, without moving in only one direction. The second assumption claims that change is a key element in relational life, in other words, as our lives change, our relationships change with it. Third, is the assumption that, “contradictions or tensions between opposites never go away and never cease to provide tension,” which means, we will always experience the feelings of pressure that come with our contradictory desires. The fourth assumption is that communication is essential when it comes to working through these opposing feelings. Relationships are made in dialogue and they can be complicated and dialogue with similarities and differences are necessary. Relational communication theories allow for opposing views or forces to come together in a reasonable way. When making decisions, desires and viewpoints that often contradict one another are mentioned and lead to dialectical tensions. Leslie A. Baxter and Barbara M. Montgomery exemplify these contradictory statements that arise from individuals experience dialectal tensions using common proverbs such as "opposites attract", but "birds of a feather flock together"; as well as, "two's company; three's a crowd" but "the more the merrier". This does not mean these opposing tensions are fundamentally troublesome for the relationship; on the contrary, they simply bring forward a discussion of the connection between two parties.
James Renwick Taylor, sometimes known as Jim Taylor, was a Canadian academic and Professor Emeritus at the Department of Communication of the Université de Montréal, which he founded with Annie Méar and André H. Caron Ed.D in the early 1970s.
D. Lawrence Kincaid is an American communication researcher who originated the convergence theory of communication. He was a senior advisor for the Research and Evaluation Division of the Center for Communication Programs and an associate scientist in the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Ruth Wodak is an Austrian linguist, who is Emeritus Distinguished Professor and Chair in Discourse Studies in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University and Professor in Linguistics at the University of Vienna.
Andrea Lee Press is an American sociologist and media studies scholar. She is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Media Studies and Sociology, and Chair of the Media Studies Department, at the University of Virginia.
George E. Cheney is an educator, writer, speaker, facilitator, and consultant. Together with his wife and colleague, Sally Planalp, he has a primary residence in Moab, Utah. Cheney is an internationally recognized leader in the area of organizational communication and focuses his work on the improvement of organizational processes with special attention to the triple bottom line and the pursuit of socially and environmentally responsible economic development. Cheney draws from a variety of disciplines and professions in his work, including sociology, economics, political science, philosophy, marketing, management, and applied ethics.
Karen Ashcraft is an American communication scholar and professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her area of research is in social justice and organizational studies. She looks at identity in the workplace and organizational structures. Specifically she studies issues of diversity, hybrid organizations, gender and power. Being an organizational communication scholar, she sees discourse as central to understanding our human condition as well as how communication amounts to organizing. She examines discourse through a lens of a feminist communicology model to look at the critical role that communication has in one's identity creation.
Linda Smircich is a Professor of Management in the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst where she teaches Organizational Alternative Paradigms. She is part of the critical management studies approach field and a critical researcher in organizational culture and gender.
Bona fidegroup theory is a theoretical perspective of communication in small groups that was initially developed by Linda Putnam and Cynthia Stohl in the 1990s. Intended to provide communication theorists with a valid model of small groups on which to conduct research, this perspective focuses on the principles of communication that take place within naturally formed social groups. This represented a shift in traditional research practices which had primarily consisted of studies on zero-history laboratory groups.
Peter Monge is professor of communication in the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and professor of management and organization in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Monge studies communication and knowledge networks, ecological theories, and organizational change processes.
Karen A. Foss is a rhetorical scholar and educator in the discipline of communication. Her research and teaching interests include contemporary rhetorical theory and criticism, feminist perspectives on communication, the incorporation of marginalized voices into rhetorical theory and practice, and the reconceptualization of communication theories and constructs.
Lana F. Rakow is a professor emerita of communication at the University of North Dakota and author of Gender on the Line: Women, the Telephone, and Community Life (1992). In 2000, she was identified as a top woman scholar in journalism and mass communication, and her research results were reported by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication on the Status of Women. She also has numerous other published works that are primarily in the fields of communication and feminist theory.
Sonja K. Foss is a rhetorical scholar and educator in the discipline of communication. Her research and teaching interests are in contemporary rhetorical theory and criticism, feminist perspectives on communication, the incorporation of marginalized voices into rhetorical theory and practice, and visual rhetoric.
Patrice Buzzanell is a distinguished professor and former department chair for the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida and at the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. Buzzanell focuses on organizational communication from a feminist viewpoint. A majority of the research Dr. Buzzanell has completed is geared towards how everyday interactions, identities, and social structures can be affected by the intersections of gender. She researches how these dynamics can impact overall practices, decisions, and results in the workplace, and more specifically, in the STEM fieldwork environments.
Aida Hurtado is a Mexian-American psychologist who has worked to promote the inclusion of women of color in the field of psychology. Her research has specifically focused on the psychological aspects of gender, race, and ethnicity, and intersectionality. In particular, Hurtado has been a pioneer in the development of feminist psychology. She has received two awards from the American Psychological Association: the Distinguished Contributions to Psychology Award in 2015 and the Presidential Citation in 2018.
