![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Communication research is interdisciplinary in nature. Many communication scholars have addressed the interdisciplinary nature of communication from diverse perspectives. While communication scholars have discussed the communicator, I propose introducing a sociological approach to the communication field, particularly drawing on relational sociology and practice/embodiment theory. And I discuss the link between the sociological theory and communication theories regarding identity and self. Finally, I suggest that communication research expand interdisciplinary collaboration with biological science, particularly neuroscience, for empirical research. Based on the discussion, I will conceptualize the communicator whose capacity and propensity for communicating (1) shift according to changing contexts and relationships, (2) are socially shaped and personally embodied throughout their life trajectory, and (3) can be empirically assessed through biological research. This theoretical modeling of the communicator also suggests pathways for interdisciplinary theoretical discussions and empirical inquiries about the ontology of the communicator in the field of communication.
Notes
1 Wilbur Schramm, David Riesman, and Raymond A. Bauer, “The State of Communication Research,” Public Opinion Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1959): 6–17.
2 Gary Gumpert, “The Urban Dilemma and Research Gaps: Explorations into Scholarship and Identity,” Communication Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1996): 519–26.
3 Stephen W. Littlejohn, “An Overview of Contributions to Human Communication Theory from Other Disciplines.” In Human Communication Theory: Comparative Essays, ed. Frank E. X. Dance (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).
4 Peterson V. Valerie. “Against interdisciplinarity.” Women and Language 31, no. 2 (2008): 42–50.
5 Mustafa Emirbayer, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 2 (1997): 281–317.
6 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Genesis of the Concepts of Habitus and Field,” Sociocriticism 2, no. 2 (1985): 11–24.
7 Robert H. Gass and John S. Seiter, Persuasion: Social Influence and Compliance Gaining (New York: Routledge, 2015).
8 David Morley, Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 2003).
9 Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
10 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Routledge, 2002).
11 James Arthur Anderson, Communication Theory: Epistemological Foundations (New York: Guilford Press, 1996).
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Michael L. Hecht, “A Research Odyssey: Toward the Development of a Communication Theory of Identity,” Communications Monographs 60, no. 1 (1993): 76–82.
19 Michael L. Hecht et al., “The Communication Theory of Identity,” Theorizing About Intercultural Communication (2005): 257–78.
20 Michael L. Hecht and Hyelong Choi, “The Communication Theory of Identity as a Framework for Health Message Design,” Health Communication Message Design: Theory and Practice (2012): 137–52.
21 Eugene A. Weinstein and Paul Deutschberger, “Tasks, Bargains, and Identities in Social Interaction,” Social Forces 42, no. 4 (1964): 451–6.
22 Stella Ting-Toomey, “Identity Negotiation Theory: Crossing Cultural Boundaries.” In The Sage Encylopedia of Intercultural Competence, ed. Janet M. Bennett (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2015).
23 Ronald L Jackson, “Cultural Contracts Theory: Toward an Understanding of Identity Negotiation,” Communication Quarterly 50, no. 3–4 (2002): 359–67.
24 Emirbayer, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.”
25 Prandini, “Relational Sociology.”
26 Emirbayer, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.”
27 Prandini, “Relational Sociology.”
28 Emirbayer, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.”
29 Arthur B. Markman and Dedre Gentner, “Thinking,” Annual Review of Psychology 52, no. 1 (2001): 223–47.
30 Alistair Mutch, Rick Delbridge, and Marc Ventresca, “Situating Organizational Action: The Relational Sociology of Organizations,” Organization 13, no. 5 (2006): 607–25.
31 Yongjun Shin, “Reconstructing Urban Politics with a Bourdieusian Framework: The Case of Local Low-Income Housing Policy,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38, no. 5 (2014): 1833–48.
32 Loren J. Martin et al., “Reducing Social Stress Elicits Emotional Contagion of Pain in Mouse and Human Strangers,” Current Biology 25, no. 3 (2015): 326–32.
33 Todd E. Feinberg and Julian Paul Keenan, The Lost Self: Pathologies of the Brain and Identity (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2005).
34 Julian Baggini, The Ego Trick (London, U.K.: Granta Books, 2011).
35 Ibid.
36 Stanislas Dehaene, Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (New York: Penguin Books, 2014).
37 David Eagleman, The Brain: The Story of You (New York: Pantheon Books, 2015).
38 Baggini, The Ego Trick.
39 Ibid.
40 Pierre Bourdieu, The Social Structures of the Economy, trans. Chris Turner (Malden, MA: Polity, 2005).
41 Sherry B. Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
42 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
43 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1980/1990).
44 Bourdieu Pierre. Pascalian Meditations, trans. R. Nice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998/2001)
45 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
46 Ibid.
47 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1959).
48 George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press., 1934).
49 Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York: Scribner's, 1902).
50 Lisa J. McIntyre, The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006).
51 Hecht, “A Research Odyssey.”
52 Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1969).
53 James Arthur Anderson, Communication Research: Issues and Methods (New York: McGraw-Hill 1987).
54 Ting-Toomey, “Identity Negotiation Theory.”
55 Stella Ting-Toomey, “Identity Negotiation Theory and Mindfulness Practice.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication (2017).
56 Mark P Orbe, “Critical Autoethnography: Implications and Future Directions.” In Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life, eds. Robin M Boylorn and Mark P Orbe (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2014).
57 Bourdieu and Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.
58 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).
59 Ibid.
60 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).
61 Raymond W. Gibbs Jr, “Embodied Experience and Linguistic Meaning,” Brain and Language 84, no. 1 (2003): 1–15.
62 Raymond W. Gibbs Jr, The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
63 Gibbs, “Embodied Experience and Linguistic Meaning.”
64 Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (New York: Ballantine, 1990).
65 Tyanna Slobe, “Style, Stance, and Social Meaning in Mock White Girl,” Language in Society 47, no. 4 (2018): 541–67.
66 Olivia Descorbeth et al., “Neural Processes for Live Pro-Social Dialogue between Dyads with Socioeconomic Disparity,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 15, no. 8 (2020): 875–87.
67 Ibid.
68 Susan J. Drucker and Gary Gumpert Gumpert, “Public Space and Communication: The Zoning of Public Interaction,” Communication Theory 1, no. 4 (1991): 294–310.
69 Yongjun Shin, “Understanding Spatial Differentiation of Social Interaction: Suggesting a Conceptual Framework for Spatial Media,” Communication Theory 19, no. 4 (2009): 423–44.
70 Walter A. Wolfram, “A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech (Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1969).
71 Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford, eds., Style and Sociolinguistic Variation (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001): Pages.
72 Omar Lizardo, “The Cognitive Origins of Bourdieu's Habitus,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 34, no. 4 (2004): 375–401.
73 Michael C. Corballis, “Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Language,” Brain and Language 112, no. 1 (2010): 25–35.
74 Pia Knoeferle, Matthew W. Crocker, and Friedemann Pulvermüller, “Sentence Processing and Embodiment,” Brain and Language 112, no. 3 (2010): 137–42.
75 Jürgen Streeck, “Embodiment in Human Communication,” Annual Review of Anthropology 44 (2015): 419–38.