Disrupting the humanities and social science binary: framing communication studies as a transformative discipline

ABSTRACT

Debates whether communication studies should be housed with the humanities or social sciences have raged on for decades. In response to attacks on the humanities, we argue that the discipline has much to gain from seeing how the humanities contributes to the social sciences and the potential benefits of integrating humanistic and social scientific approaches. Specifically, we present two case studies that illuminate ways humanities-informed thinking has contributed to and benefited social science theory, method, and data. First, we review Jeffrey A. Bennett's Banning Queer Blood to illustrate the importance of reflexivity and practice when analyzing interview data. Then, we highlight how the philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin influenced Leslie A. Baxter's most recent articulation of relational dialectics theory and development of contrapuntal analysis. Finally, we discuss obstacles and opportunities for engaging in transformative research.

KEYWORDS:

• humanities
• social sciences
• communication studies
• Banning Queer Blood
• relational dialectics theory

ORCID

Kristina M. Scharp http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9280-6313

Lindsey Thomas http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5581-3007

Notes

1 Dawn O. Braithwaite, “Moving toward NCA's 100th: What Ties Carry Us and Keep Us Together?” 2010 NCA Presidential Address and Awards Presentation, November 16, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjbbvOurNVQ&feature=youtu.be. We would, at this point, also like to note our thanks to Dawn for her speech transcripts, helpful articles, and support over the years.

2 W. Barnett Pearce and Karen A. Foss, “The Historical Context of Communication as a Science,” in Human Communication: Theory and Research, ed. Gordon L. Dahnke and Glen W. Clatterbuck (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1990), 1–19.

3 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).

4 Pearce and Foss, “The Historical Context of Communication as a Science,” 4.

5 Herman Cohen, The History of Speech Communication: The Emergence of a Discipline 1914–1945 (Annandale, VA: National Communication Association, 1994).

6 Regarding the Midwestern school of speech, see ibid., 37.

7 Pat J. Gehrke and William M. Keith, “A Brief History of the National Communication Association,” in A Century of Communication Studies: The Unfinished Conversation (London: Routledge, 2014), 1–25.

8 Braithwaite, “Moving toward NCA's 100th.”

9 Dawn O. Braithwaite, Paul Schrodt, and Kristen Carr, “Introduction: Meta-Theory and Theory in Interpersonal Communication Research,” in Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives, 2nd ed, ed. Dawn O. Braithwaite and Paul Schrodt (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015), 1–20.

10 Dawn O. Braithwaite, “‘Opening the Door’: The History and Future of Qualitative Scholarship in Interpersonal Communication,” Communication Studies 65, no. 4 (2014): 441–45.

11 Ibid.

12 Elizabeth A. Suter, “Introduction: Critical Approaches to Family Communication Research: Representation, Critique, and Praxis,” Journal of Family Communication 16, no. 1 (2016): 1–8.

13 Nicole Piemonte, “More to the Story: How the Medical Humanities Can Learn from and Enrich Health Communication Studies,” Review of Communication 17, no. 3 (2017): 137–48.

14 Regarding autoethnographic research approaches, see Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner, “Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject,” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd ed, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 733–68.

15 Jeffrey A. Bennett, “Passing, Protesting, and the Arts of Resistance: Infiltrating the Ritual Space of Blood Donation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 1 (2008): 23–43; Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009).

16 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “FDA Workshop on Behavior-Based Donor Deferrals in NAT Era,” transcript (Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, March 8, 2006), 87.

17 Bennett, “Passing, Protesting, and the Arts of Resistance.”

18 Ibid., 31.

19 Ibid., 43.

20 Bennett, Banning Queer Blood.

21 Suter, “Introduction.”

22 Bennett, “Passing, Protesting, and the Arts of Resistance.”

23 Ibid., 37.

24 Ibid., 38.

25 Regarding interview populations, see Kristina M. Scharp, Christina G. Paxman, and Lindsey J. Thomas, “‘I Want to Go Home’: Homesickness Experiences and Support-Seeking Practices,” Environment and Behavior 48, no. 9 (2016): 1175–97; Kristina M. Scharp, “‘You’re Not Welcome Here’: A Grounded Theory of Family Distancing,” Communication Research OnlineFirst (2017): doi:10.1177/0093650217715542; Lindsey J. Thomas, Jennifer A. Jackl, and Jenny L. Crowley, “‘Family?  …  Not Just Blood’: Discursive Constructions of ‘Family’ in Adult Former Foster Children's Narratives,” Journal of Family Communication 17, no. 2 (2017): 238–53.

26 Bennett, “Passing, Protesting, and the Arts of Resistance.”

27 Tamara D. Afifi, “Making our Research Matter,” Communication Monographs 84, no. 1 (2017): 3.

28 Bennett, “Passing, Protesting, and the Arts of Resistance,” 40.

29 Ibid.

30 Regarding work that employs methods of field research and ethnography in critical/rhetorical scholarship, see Sara L. McKinnon et al., eds., Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016).

31 Jimmie Manning, “Review of Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance by Jeffrey A. Bennett,” Women & Language 34, no. 1 (2011): 96.

32 Leslie A. Baxter, “A Tale of Two Voices,” Journal of Family Communication 4, no. 3&4 (2004): 183.

33 See Stanley Deetz, “Describing Differences in Approaches to Organization Science: Rethinking Burrell and Morgan and Their Legacy,” Organization Science 7, no. 2 (1996): 191–207.

34 Leslie A. Baxter, Voicing Relationships: A Dialogic Perspective (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2011).

35 Leslie A. Baxter, “A Tale of Two Voices.”

36 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981); Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986); V. N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973/1986).

37 Baxter, “A Tale of Two Voices.”

38 Dawn O. Braithwaite, Elizabeth A. Suter, and Kory Floyd, eds., “Introduction: The Landscape of Meta-Theory and Theory in Family Communication Research,” in Engaging Theories in Family Communication: Multiple Perspectives, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2018), 1–16; Braithwaite, Schrodt, and Carr, “Introduction.”

39 Leslie A. Baxter and Barbara M. Montgomery, Relating: Dialogues and Dialectics (New York: Guilford Press, 1996); Leslie A. Baxter, “Interpersonal Communication as Dialogue: A Response to the ‘Social Approaches’ Forum,” Communication Theory 2, no. 4 (1992): 330–37.

40 Baxter, “Interpersonal Communication as Dialogue,” 330.

41 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, 183.

42 Ibid., 185 original emphases.

43 Baxter, “Interpersonal Communication as Dialogue,” 330.

44 Baxter, Voicing Relationships.

45 Kristina M. Scharp and Lindsey J. Thomas, “Family ‘Bonds’: Making Meaning of Parent–Child Relationships in Estrangement Narratives,” Journal of Family Communication 16, no. 1 (2016): 32–50.

46 Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” 276.

47 Baxter, Voicing Relationships.

48 Leslie A. Baxter et al., “‘Birth Mothers Are Not Bad People’: A Dialogic Analysis of Online Birth Mother Stories,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 1, no. 1 (2012): 53–82.

49 Leslie A. Baxter et al., “The Dialogic Construction of ‘Adoption’ in Online Foster Adoption Narratives,” Journal of Family Communication 15, no. 3 (2015): 193–213.

50 Baxter, Voicing Relationships.

51 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, 198.

52 Baxter, Voicing Relationships, 139.

53 Robert T. Craig, “Communication Theory as a Field,” Communication Theory 9, no. 2 (1999): 120.

54 Dawn O. Braithwaite, Julia Moore, and Jenna Stephenson Abetz, “‘I Need Numbers before I Will Buy It’: Reading and Writing Qualitative Scholarship on Close Relationships,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 31, no. 4 (2014): 494.

55 See Braithwaite, “Opening the Door.”

56 Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005).

57 Ibid., 136.