Interpersonal Communication Theory and Research: An Overview of Inscrutable Epistemologies and Muddled Concepts

Abstract

This article reviews some of the intellectual developments outside of the field of communication which may have directly or indirectly influenced our field's rejection of logical empiricism and subsequently stimulated the metatheoretical controversies now being experienced. Special attention is given to the philosophy of language and action theory, cybernetics and modern systems theory and the crisis of confidence in social science. In the second part of the paper the authors examine some of the popular conceptions and terminology in the study of interpersonal communication. Although the ideas of control, metacommunication, and context are commonly, even axiomatically, assumed to be important, the literature on interpersonal communication shows them to be muddled, inoperable or vague. Nevertheless, these ideas, and similar or directly related ones, may offer the soundest basis for advancing our understanding of interpersonal communication.