The Work and Workings of Human Communication

Robert E. Sanders

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119706533
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Discover the fundamentals of human communication with this comprehensive and insightful resource

Written in four sections, The Work and Workings of Human Communication identifies the underlying fundamentals that make our communication distinctively human. These fundamentals are the common ground that tie together the many topics and subject matters covered by the study and discipline of communication. They are also the basis of the unique contribution of the communication discipline to the social sciences.

Professor, researcher and theorist Robert E. Sanders starts by focusing on what is unique about human communication and moves on to an examination of the complexities of scientific inquiry in the social sciences in general and in the communication discipline specifically. At the heart of the matter is the fact that humans are thinking beings who can make choices and therefore are not entirely predictable. This points towards new topics and questions that are likely to arise as the discipline evolves.

Sanders' approach leads to recognition of the fact that communication is at the center of how humans build our ways of life and participate together. By focusing on the underlying fundamentals that give rise to the discipline's topics and subject areas, The Work and Workings of Human Communication encourages students to engage in independent thought about what they want to contribute by:

• Emphasizing the importance of communication in creating, sustaining or changing—and participating in—our ways of life on an interpersonal level and on a societal level
• Recognizing that human communication is inherently collaborative; people affect situations by interacting with others, not acting on others
• Explaining the history, current agendas and possible future of the social science side of the Communication discipline

A perfect resource for new graduate students in introductory communication courses who have an interest in the social science side of the discipline, The Work and Workings of Human Communication is also highly valuable for undergraduate communication and liberal arts students who don't possess a background in the discipline.

Section Four
Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences and in Communication

• 9. The Practice of Scientific Inquiry in General
  • 9.1 The Human Face of Scientific Inquiry
    • 9.1.1 Personal Expertise
    • 9.1.2 The Discovery Process
    • 9.1.3 Scientific Communities
    • 9.1.4 Normal Science and Paradigm Shifts in Scientific Communities
    • 9.1.5 The Practical Need for Scientific Communities
    • 9.1.6 The Epistemological Necessity of Scientific Communities
  • 9.2 The Presumption of Orderliness on Which All Scientific Inquiry Rests
  • 9.3 Fact and Theory

• 10. Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences
  • 10.1 Social Science vs Physical Science
  • 10.2 The Problematics of Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences
  • 10.3 Qualitative vs Quantitative Research and Analysis
    • 10.3.1 The Detachment-Neutrality Problem in Social Science Inquiry
    • 10.3.2 Methodological Issues that Divide the Qualitative and Quantitative Sides
      • 10.3.2.1 Concerns about Quantitative Research and Analysis from the Qualitative Side
      • 10.3.2.2 Concerns about Qualitative Research and Analysis from the Quantitative Side
    • 10.3.3 The Scientific Community’s Role in Ensuring Sound Research and Theory
    • 10.3.4 Orderliness Found via Qualitative Research and Analysis
      • 10.3.4.1 Orderliness in an Action Sequence
      • 10.3.4.2 Orderliness in the Cultural Valuation of Speaking
    • 10.3.5 Orderliness Found via Quantitative Research and Analysis
      • 10.3.5.1 Orderliness in the Geographical Variation of an Interpersonal Action
      • 10.3.5.2 Orderliness in the Covariation of Communication Practices and Marital Stability
    • 10.3.6 Orderliness Found via Quantitative Plus Qualitative Research and Analysis
  • 10.4 The Critical Side vs the Scientific Side of the Social Sciences

• 11. Social Scientific Inquiry in the Communication Discipline
  • 11.1 The Problematics of Social Scientific Inquiry in the Communication Discipline
  • 11.2 Two Reasons Why the Discipline’s Proliferation of Subject Matters May Be “Natural”
    • 11.2.1 The Discipline’s Subject Matter Spans Open-Endedly-Many Phenomena
    • 11.2.2 The Discipline’s Culture Favors a Proliferation of Subject Matters
  • 11.3 Groundwork Already Laid for the Coalescence of Our Research and Theory
    • 11.3.1 Theories Related to Exigences that Incentivize the Doing of Communication
    • 11.3.2 Theories about the Results that Communication Brings about
    • 11.3.3 Theories Related to the Doing of Communication
  • 11.4 The Coalescence of Our Research and Theory in a Possible Future
  • Reprise of Section Four and This Book

The first three sections of this book have focused on our subject matter and our discipline on the social science side. In this final section, we turn from substance to process – to the practice of science in general (Chapter 9), in the social sciences (Chapter 10), and in our discipline (Chapter 11). The focus is on underlying fundamentals of scientific inquiry, and their upshot for our research and theory.

However, some precautionary attention to the term “scientific” is needed to start with, to clear away the term’s nuances as either sacred or profane. It is neither. Scientific inquiry deserves intellectual respect, but it should not be put on a pedestal, nor burned at the stake. The term “scientific” is applied to matters that in some cases are quite significant, but in other cases silly. At the quite significant end of the scale we get scientific work that:

• wins a Nobel prize (e.g. Herbert Simon for work in Economics on “bounded rationality” or “satisficing”);
• or influences public policy (e.g. the microbiological finding of a carcinogenic danger posed by certain chemicals in drinking water);
• or becomes fodder for social activism and political controversy (e.g. climate science).

At the trivial end of the scale we get advertisements that claim their product has been “scientifically proven” to make teeth whiter, or make facial wrinkles fade. Most scientific inquiry falls between the poles of quite significant and silly.

Scientific inquiry in the social sciences has value both for better understanding the ways of our own kind, and for intervening (as most science eventually ends up doing); for example, finding the need for, and the means of, public health campaigns against smoking and vaping. But in the view of critics, social science research is incapable of capturing, and is prone to over-simplifying, societal, communal, familial, and individual complexities (e.g. “personality profiles”), and has propagated unjust social policies under the banner of being “scientifically” justified (e.g. “scientific” justification for claiming that intelligence varies by race).

A different reason to be measured in one’s respect for scientific inquiry is that it is not the only way that we humans have found to reflect on, study, and better understand ourselves and the world in which we live, especially the human-made one, and our experiences in it. Philosophers, critics, theologians, and artists also engage in such undertakings. The common ground among all these modes of inquiry is that they address the same questions:

• What has taken place or is taking place here, or what exists here with what form or structure, under what conditions?
• How does what has taken place or is taking place here, or what exists here with that form or structure, come about? How does it work?
• What difference does it make that what has happened or is happening here has occurred or is occurring, or that what exists here has the form or structure it does?
• Can we [scientific inquiry] or should we [other modes of inquiry] do something about what has taken place or is taking place here, or about the form or structure of what exists here, and if so, what?⁸⁵

But there are key differences between scientific inquiry and other modes of inquiry. One is what qualifies a person to make a serious contribution. In other modes of inquiry, there are a variety of qualifications but no single one(s) in particular – most prominently, mastery of relevant expressive means, imagination, life experience, creativity, and knowledge of (at least some) current and past work (e.g. ideas, criticisms, exemplars, debates and issues). Some of these are also desirable for engaging in scientific inquiry productively, such as imagination and creativity, but unlike other modes of inquiry, there is one that is essential – knowledge, or more precisely, expertise. The needed expertise has two parts. One part is a mastery of the knowledge base in one’s subject area, as comprehensive a one as possible, including history, relevant work in other disciplines, and debates and issues about its soundness. The other part is technical and methodological, about how to get data and test claims.

A second main difference between scientific inquiry and other modes of inquiry is the status of claims and theories or portrayals made in answer to these questions. It is permissible for claims, positions, or portrayals made in other modes of inquiry to be selective about the empirical record as necessary to communicate and justify an idea, a position, an interpretation, a portrayal, etc. In contrast, scientific claims, positions, and theories must be accurate about the empirical record and adhere to it, and will be discredited if they do not, however inconvenient that may be for supporting them.

Third, in other modes of inquiry, the presumption is that any claim, position, or portrayal that merits being taken seriously is provisionally sound. It cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed because its primary basis is not the empirical record, but it can be endorsed or contested by others through critique, argument, and precedent, with the expectation that it will either endure or be abandoned. In scientific inquiry, in contrast, the presumption is that any claim, position, or theory that merits being taken seriously is provisionally flawed. It will be tested by others using approved scientific methods, including formal proofs, with the expectation that even if it is confirmed at present, it is not entirely right or complete, and will eventually be improved or replaced.⁸⁶,⁸⁷

The flaws and occasional silliness of scientific inquiry notwithstanding, it has an essential place in our lives intellectually (basic science) and practically (applied science). Intellectually, it supports our curiosity about, and desire to find out, how the (natural and human-made) world we live in works, such that it is not random or accidental that things are the way they are – that they occur as they do and/or have the form and structure they do necessarily. Practically, scientific inquiry supports our desire to intervene in and change the way things are. We could not have evolved the human-made environment^⁸⁸ that we occupy except for scientific inquiry. However, while many benefits have come from having found out how to intervene in the natural environment^, so have many harms that came from interfering in natural and societal ecosystems that it turns out we did not understand as well as we thought we did. Nonetheless, the only constructive way forward lies in scientific inquiry, to both improve our lot and fix our mistakes.

In Chapter 9, the agenda is to elaborate what makes an inquiry scientific, described in a broad enough way to apply to both the physical sciences and social sciences. The focus is on the presumption of orderliness that all scientific inquiry has in common, and the progression from observation to analysis to theory that is logically necessary to find and account for that orderliness. However, this development of our knowledge about the orderliness of the phenomena we study is not, and cannot be, an individual achievement, but rather one that comes about over time through overt and de facto collaboration within scientific communities.

In Chapter 10, the agenda is to consider the ways in which social science inquiry is different from inquiry in the physical sciences. At the core of what sets the social sciences apart, and problematizes doing social science, is that we do not study the behavior of inanimate matter, but rather the actions of an intelligent being with agency, moreover “ourselves.” That we are studying ourselves creates an obstacle to achieving the neutrality and detachment on which scientific inquiry depends. To counter the inevitable biases and preconceptions of individual scientists, we rely on the aproved methods and the knowledge base of our scientific communities to neutralize them.

That we are studying the actions of an intelligent being involves an orderliness that is exhibited in probabilities around a central tendency rather than in certainties, and arises from its (our) underlying mental processing. This has given rise to two main ways of finding the orderliness in a person’s actions, the so-called qualitative–quantitative divide, which differ in terms of what data we seek and how we analyze it. The qualitative ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Section One: Preliminaries
• Section Two:Fundamentals of Human Communication
• Section Three: The Communication Discipline and Its Place in the Social Sciences
• Section Four:Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences and in Communication
• Bibliography
• Index