Building a Discipline of Communication

Abstract

In the "Call for Papers" for this issue of the Journal of Communication the editors wrote, "Communication scholarship lacks disciplinary status because it has no core of knowledge. Thus institutional and scholarly legitimacy remains a chimera for the field."For a variety of reasons, I find the premise and consequent of this proposition-that the field "lacks disciplinary status" and thus lacks a certain "legitimacy"-to be self-evident. What seems less obvious is the cause of our undisciplined and illegitimate status. The posed proposition suggests that our disciplinary troubles are the result of having "no core of knowledge." This essay will argue, however, that disciplines are defined not by cores of knowledge (i.e., epistemologies) but by views of Being (i.e., ontologies). Disciplinary status for a field rests on the ontological status of that field's "idea"-disciplines represent various foundational ideas. Understanding the lack of disciplinary status accorded communication requires an understanding of the lack of ontological status granted the idea of communication in modernity-understanding how the foundationalist sense of a discipline is antithetical to the nonfoundational, modern sense o f communication. The Nature of DisciplinesAn etymological consideration of the word discipline suggests it to be a character of ontology and characteristic of modernity's faith in foundations. Discipline is derived from the Latin disciplina: instruction of disciples. Disciples, in turn, are instructed in a doctrine (and by "doctors")-they are "indoctrinated." Thus, Berkeley could write that to be "undisciplined" is to be "nurtured to no doctrine" (Oxford English Dictionary, 1971, pp. 741, 3496).Doctrines provide disciples with foundations for beliefs and action, but those foundations are views of Being more than cores of knowledge. The religious connotation that accompanies the word disciple is illuminating: Gregory J. Shepherd is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the LJniversity of Kansas, Lawrence.

Disciplinarity and the Rhetoric of Science: A Social Epistemological Reception Study

“…The criticism was largely the consequence of the strategy of disciplinarity the first text adopted, in which rhetoric is asserted to be ontologically foundational of science (cf. Shepherd, 1993). This position aligned Gross in the eyes of external readers with the radical (i.e., non-Mertonian, social constructionist, epistemologically relativist) wing of science studies.…”

“…Within science, a discipline acts both through and upon its adherents (see Prior, 1994), organizing knowledge-producing resources in response to institutional pressures and intellectual exigencies (Good, 2000) while at the same time establishing the object of inquiry for its members ontologically (Shepherd, 1993). Sullivan (1996) notes a further tension, in that scientists are expected to respect the traditions of their field but at the same time required to make novel contributions to it (224).…”

La investigación en Comunicación ante una encrucijada: de la teoría de los campos a la diseminación y diversidad gnoseológica. Estudio inicial comparado entre España, Brasil y Chile

“…Se trata de una propuesta que huye del anquilosamiento propio que se deriva de la autonomía científica disciplinar, para así ocuparse de definir un nuevo estatuto epistemológico para la comunicación: el de la interciencia. El debate de la interciencia traslada la discusión hacia la consideración de la comunicación como campo académi-co dentro de un ámbito de conocimiento que pivota en torno a tres posicionamientos fundamentales (Sheperd, 1993;Rodrigo, 2001;Pereira, 2005): a.…”

“…Comunicación como disciplina: en función de su necesidad de institucionalización. Por su carácter ontológico y simbólico (Sheperd, 1993).…”

La communication en tant que champ d’études

“…D'autres critiques ont attaqué l'idée même de la cohérence, soulignant d'importants bénéfices institutionnels et intellectuels émanant de la fragmentation disciplinaire (par exemple, O'Keefe, 1993 ;Newcomb, 1993 ;Peters, 1993 ;Swanson, 1993 Parmi les plus intéressantes de ces propositions de définitions du champ, on trouve plusieurs versions d'un modèle constitutif, ou rituel, de la communication. Généralement, le modèle proposé est défini par contraste avec son opposé dialectique, soit un modèle de transmission ou informationnel, dont on dit qu'il continue de dominer le sens commun et une bonne part de la pensée universitaire (Carey, 1989 ;Cronen, 1995 ;Deetz, 1994 ;Pearce, 1989 ;Peters, 1989 ;Rothenbuhler, 1998 ;Shepherd, 1993 ;Sigman, 1992Sigman, , 1995b. Selon le concept usuel de la transmission, la communication est un processus d'envoi et de réception des messages ou de transfert de l'information d'un esprit à l'autre.…”