Can the Communication Discipline Critically Engage with Mindfulness?

Abstract

Questions arose at the 2018 Western States Communication Association conference as to whether mindfulness is necessarily a depoliticizing trend in the communication discipline or whether a critical or radical version can be useful for scholar-activists from marginalized locations. A nuanced definition of mindfulness, one that assumes some kind of sustained mindfulness practice, is offered. The definition allows space for or even requires and expects work toward social justice. Although the discipline has been slow to study or consider mindfulness, the essays that follow here explore whether and how mindfulness can be a useful addition to the discipline.

Keywords:

• Mindfulness
• Practice
• Social Justice
• Social Marginality
• Whiteness

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Kendall Phillips, Michelle Holling, Victoria Chen and Liz Cooney for their suggestions on this co-edited collaboration and to Diane’s undergraduate research assistants Averi Davis and Vivien Lee.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Several caveats: I [Diane] searched the term “mindfulness” in the NCA/ICA/Regional journals, then searched the term again within any article that came up to see whether the author was using the term in an everyday way or as defined above and associated with some kind of practice. Additional relevant articles might have turned up had I searched terms like “meditation,” “contemplation,” “positive communication,” or “compassion.” Because the theme that sparked the special section was mindfulness, and many of the critiques directed specifically at the idea of mindfulness, I did not go beyond that term in the journal search. Among the articles counted here and those in journals outside communication, many mindfulness articles are variable analytic studies that might be of less interest to the readers of this special section. Exceptions include Berry and Patti (2015); Engels (2019); and Vats (2016).

2. The journals outside of NCA, ICA and regionals that were searched using the key word “mindfulness” were: Communication Research, Discourse and Society, Health Communication, and Management Communication Quarterly.

3. The journals that each had one article about mindfulness (based on title) were: Rhetoric Review; New Media and Society; International Journal of Listening; Language and Communication; Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture; Etc.: Semantics Journal; Journal of Communication and Religion; Communication Arts; Atlantic Journal of Communication; International Journal of Language and Communication; Language and Semiotics Study; Journal of Media Ethics; China Media Research; Poroi: Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention; Mobile Media and Communication; Journal of Media and Cultural Studies; Communication Research Trends; Journal of Language and Education; and Journal of Religion, Media, and Digital Culture.

4. Work within the discipline but outside the journals includes a mindful communication textbook (Huston, 2015) as well as Kim Pearce’s Compassionate Communicating (2012). Scholars who have been juxtaposing mindfulness and social justice over a sustained period of time include Kristin Blinne (2016) and Beth Berila (2016). I hope that work on mindfulness in the communication discipline will not have a long stage of mostly variable analytic research but will move quickly to include qualitative, critical, and praxis work.