The Social Perspective and Professional Communication: Diversity and Directions in Research
Charlotte Thralls and Nancy Roundy Blyler
This article was written in 1993 for Professional Communication: The Social Perspective. Thralls states that it gives newcomers in the field a sense of the “enormous impact” “the social turn” (quotes in original) had on professional communication research. It also provides a starting point for comparing research trends in the early phases of “the social turn” with the later evolution of those trends (125).
With the rejection of positivism, where knowledge is a direct apprehension of reality, reality is now unknowable apart from language. Language and culture are intimately related; and the importance of the communal and local are emphasized, leading to the centrality of socially mediated meaning and interpretation. Current theoretical movements at this time included poststructuralism, radical feminism, and the philosophy and sociology of science.
The purposes of this article are twofold:
1) Describe the three different and sometimes competing theoretical approaches within the social perspective (social constructionist, ideologic, and paralogic hermeneutic),
2) Use the three approaches to conceptualize important patterns and differences emerging in studies of professional writing.
Each of the three approaches are examined using the four concepts of community, knowledge and consensus, discourse conventions, and collaboration.
Social Constructionist
According to this approach, knowledge is not “individual, internal, and mental” (127), but rather is social in nature. It focuses on community and views “communal entities as the sources of knowledge maintained by consensual agreement; as the repositories of discourse conventions by which communities are defined and shaped; and as the bodies to which nonmembers must—through collaboration—be acculturated” (131).
Community
The concept of community is central to the social constructionist theory because communal entities are sources of knowledge. There is a presupposition of like-mindedness on the part of community members, although even within this approach there is disagreement over the definition of community. Central to this part of the approach is the idea that communities shape discourse and vice versa. Researchers have been particularly interested in the normative aspect of community, particularly on the way these regulate discursive practices.
Knowledge and Consensus
According to Bruffee, one of the theorists most cited in the portion on the social constructionist approach, knowledge results from a community’s consensus about what it will call true; Bruffee terms this consensual knowledge socially-justified belief. This concept has influenced research in the field because it has shifted attention away from universals ensuring truth to the means by which beliefs are incorporated into a community’s knowledge store.
Discourse Conventions
According to Bruffee, communities are constituted by the language its members use. Discourse conventions are indices of community member ship and have a regulatory effect. The simplest form research in this area has taken has been to study the conventions that identify various communities. Because discourse conventions are so closely tied to communities and member ship in them, constructionists have stressed how nonmembers can internalize community norms and language to acquire membership; Bruffee focused specifically on collaboration as a means to this end.
Collaboration
According to constructionists, collaboration the social process implicit in all writing as well as a pedagogic tool for teaching writing; writing is a “communal and collaborative act” (130). Research in this area has focused on how collaborative writing projects can assist in the acculturation of students to their academic disciplines and professions.
The Ideologic Approach
With this approach comes the thought of power and responsibilities of indivduals to challenge established institutional order. Scholars taking this approach wish to extend social inquiry to include the ideologic frameworks that shape language practices with thought and identifies within professional communities.
Community
The ideologic likes to think that academic and corporate communities are powerful mechanisms of reproductive ideoogy. Some feminists critics scrutinize the way academic and business communities reproduce sexism and hierarchical social arrangements. One last thought is a leftist critique of community is leading researchers to a more self-conscious examination of the larger cultural.
Knowledge and Consensus
An ideologic critique on consensus has important implications for research and pedagogy in professional communication. Knowledge and its means of production are distributed in an unequal, exclusionary social order and embedded in hierarchical relations of power (some interests are suppressed while others comminute). The ideologic approach also redirects the analysis of discourse conventions because, if consensus is the production apparatus for reproducing communal values, discourse conventions reflect and reify that consensus.
Discourse and Conventions
The ideologic identifies discourse conventions as complex semiotic systems or symbolic orders that signify and sustain the relations of power implicit in consensual knowledge. There is one more worry and that is neutral discourse elements can mask ideology.
Collaboration
Scholars argue that collaboration should demonstrate to students not merely that knowledge is socially constructed and collaborative activities should also "change the social character of production". Collaborative pedagogy, the power might be distributed more equitably among students in collaborative groups and between students and teachers in technical and business writing classrooms.
Summary of Ideologic Approach
The ideologic approach is one of the ages and has been around for many years, just different ways. There will always be the fine line between language practices in the professional communities. Once they figure out the balance of power in all fields it will benefit all. Wells study says it all with an ideologic approach to knowlege and consensus is directing attention away for constructionists' notions of this concept as indicating agreement among community members and toward the relations ofpower that authorize some knowledge claims and exclude othiers.
The Paralogic Hermeneutic Approach
The name of this approach comes from concern with the interpretive or hermeneutic act and as other approaches it is concerned with social negotiation of meaning. The paralogic hermeneutic theorists claim that all interpretation and understanding come out of communicative interaction (Thralls & Blyler, 1993, p. 136).
This approach is fundamentally different from the social constructionist and ideologic approaches discussed previously.
Community
The social constructionists look at the community members as people who share commonalities in their beliefs and language use, as well as interpret and attach meanings to their experiences within interactions of the community. The argument of paralogic hermeneutic theorists is that despite belonging to certain communities, we have a variety of beliefs and statements that we regard as true besides the ones that are preferred in our communities and we also understand others who live in different communities.
The paralogic hermeneutic theorists redefine the concept of community by brining focus on the interaction experiences of each communicant. Emphasis is primarily on communication and the meaning it creates for each participant.
Knowledge and Consensus
The paralogic hermeneutic theorists also disagree with social constructionists’ understanding of knowledge and consensus. According to the paralogic hermeneutics approach, each participant engages in so called hermeneutic guessing until they arrive at the understating of other interactant’s values, beliefs and language use. During the hermeneutic guessing, interactants use concepts of “prior” and “passing”; “prior” is assumption about the interactant and his/her beliefs, values and language-use, and “passing” is adjustment to prior assumptions as they continue the interaction. Consensus in this case is when two interactants share passing theory; however, the consensus is always temporary and will need readjustment next time they communicate.
Discourse Conventions
The paralogic hermeneutic approach again opposes the other two theories on how we communicate. “Paralogic theorists claim that the discourse conventions derive meaning from their use by communicants (Kent, 1989)” (Thralls & Blyler, 1993, p. 138). Essentially according to this theory, meaning is in people, not in words.
Communicators try to match their beliefs about the language use to the beliefs of others, share those beliefs and reach agreement. Paralogic theorists state that discourse conventions should never be equated with effective communication, but only used in combination with valuable background knowledge and perceptive hermeneutic guessing in each interaction.
Collaboration
The interpretive or hermeneutic act is fundamentally collaborative; therefore, the paralogic theorists agree that the interpretive act should be the focus in writing pedagogy. The paralogic hermeneutic approach suggests to look at the writing as an accommodative activity and to transform the classroom into a one-on-one student/teacher collaborative environment. This further suggests rethinking the purpose of many collaborative activities presently used in a writing classroom. Theory also emphasizes that group members cannot base their writing on a set of rules that will produce an effective document. These conventions could be used as a useful background knowledge (previous experience with writing similar documents) only.
Summary of the paralogic hermeneutic approach
The paralogic hermeneutic approach represents a very different look at professional communication. It differs from the social constructionist and ideologic approaches on fundamental issues of interpretation and communication emphasizing the external and uncodifiable (non-systematic) nature of communication process.
Assessment and Directions for Future Research
The social constructionist theory has contributed a lot to the field of professional communication studies. As a result there is a widened research agenda in professional communication that includes qualitative and quantitative studies of the organizational and classroom contexts in which writing occur (Thralls & Blyler, 1993, p. 141).
The social constructionist theory has also helped to establish professional communication within a larger field of cultural studies thus linking professional communication to other disciplines.
Ideologic and paralogic hermeneutic approaches have contributed to the discussions of social theory consequently deepening our understanding of communication as a socially based activity. Both approaches also encouraged us to scrutinize some of the constructionist claims and their implications. The ideologic and paralogic hermeneutic approaches offer important and dramatic directions of future professional communication research.
10 comments:
Great summary! These are some interesting concepts. To me, the social constructionist theory makes the most sense. Language gives us the ability to form something concrete out of concepts: we can be aware that the birds are singing, but words allow us to describe the experience in detail, share it with others, and modify it based on feedback. And it makes sense to me that we develop collective understandings of how things are depending on our communities.
The idea that "communities shape discourse and vice versa" is exactly why audience analysis is so important. We have to define the audience, or the community, and understand their definitions and "truths". This applies not only to societal communities but to professional communities as well.
I'll be honest. This was not an easy read for me. I think I can appreciate the different theoretical approaches, but the practical application of them lies squarely in the field of academe. This begs the question for me--how do practitioners and theorists benefit from each other’s work? Do the practitioners provide the framework for theorists to formulate their ideas? I'm not saying that the study of communication theory isn't important. I just would like to know who benefits most from the study?
With that said, the approach of the three that seemed to be most plausible for me is the Paralogic Hermeneutic. I think this approach allows for the greatest diversity of thought.
In Social Constructivism community defines what is true. For me, that speaks to simple consensus. I don't think it's that easy to find truth in consensus. It may be convenient but not necessarily truth.
The Ideologic approach seems to leave out community altogether to favor a particular group or way of thinking. Seems rather limiting or narrow.
So in the end, I like the thought of interaction allowing truth to be reached. Some might call it compromise. I'd call it true collaboration. And isn't that what is most important in producing a good final product - collaboration.
I have to agree with Lance on his assessment of this piece. As a practicing professional in the field of technical/professional communication slogging it out in the trenches, I often fail to see the relevance of some of these more esoteric essays. This essay was a difficult, bombastic read, but I really appreciate the summary. You really captured it well!
This piece did teach me a lot about the many social perspectives of professional communication by providing deep discussion around theoretical approaches and evolving patterns.
What kept coming into my mind as I read this is how none of these theories is correct, some of them are correct, and/or all of them are correct. I guess the "correctness" of a theory can be measured in whether people derive useful predictions and understanding from it. In that sense, whether or not a theory is a "real" depiction of how knowledge is generated and maintained, it can still have value to researchers. For some of us, this is a difficult idea to swallow. We want the TRUTH, and nothing less will suffice. But application of these theories has enriched our understanding of human communication, knowledge, community, collaboration...
This may be controversial, but the real utility of science is not the pursuit of Truth, but in the development of theoretical frameworks that allow us to make predictions. The theory of gravity predicts that we should be able to slingshot a space probe off of Jupiter--so we build it, launch it, and (yes!) the theory holds. The theory of evolution, whether we think it's True or not, allows us to understand the complex genetic relationships between organisms. With it, we can predict that a close genetic relative of an endangered tropical plant with cancer-curing properties should have those same properties. So, we investigate and (yes!) the prediction holds. It's widely believed in physics circles that the existing theory of gravitation is not correct because it doesn't play well with the other elemental theories. But even though it's not true, it's still useful--just ask the scientists who sent a probe into deep space using Jupiter as an accelerator.
Getting back to the social theories that dominate tech comm research--all have expanded our understanding and predictive abilities. If they hadn't, we wouldn't even be talking about them. In this light, we could probably all benefit by being a little less quick to "take sides" with one theory or another in the name of Truth.
David, I appreciate your comment to this article. I think I have to agree with you. With that said, thank you to everyone who has posted a comment so far!
To be honest, I have not read the article yet-but I am interested in it now after reading the summary. I think I will be able to put the pieces together a bit better in my mind after reading the entire article for myself. The summary did intrigue me. I found the statement especially true and relevant to our work as technical communicators: “Theory also emphasizes that group members cannot base their writing on a set of rules that will produce an effective document. These conventions could be used as a useful background knowledge (previous experience with writing similar documents) only.”
Nice summary or a very theoretical topic! Reading the article set me back in my philosophy class :). I liked the comment that language and culture are intertwined. Humans are the only ones who communicate though written and spoken language. It evolves with our cultural development (drawings in caves to E-files). I would even stretch the statement and dare to say that language is a mirror of one's culture, thus being part of it. It defines the state of the culture a group of humans is in.
This essay was also a hard read for me. I wasn't familiar with any of the theories, it is all new to me, so it gave me a nice intro. I think this blog post summed up the chapter nicely. I agree with David's comment. I see valid points in all of the theoretical approaches.
I suspect that in our career fields, we most often adhere to the social constructionist theory. We speak and write within what we perceive the norms of our occupational culture to be.
As an example, I had an opportunity to work at the Mankato Area Chamber as the School-to-Work Director. I was the liason between employers and educators and often the interpreter between the two. Each group brought different terms and perceptions to the table, so we all had to make an effort to communicate so all could understand (audience analysis??)
In one of my previous classes, I read a challenging, literary article like this one. The assignment was to summarize the article and to talk about what we thought about it. The article was a very deep and verbose article about the genre of medical forms. It really made me kind of laugh to read it. In my assignment, I made the mistake of admitting that I found the article sort of pretentious, and I asked the question, who would find this type of article useful? Well, I got a bit of a lecture from my professor and a C on the assignment. Just because I didn't find the article useful, there was an audience for it, and if I hoped to be taken seriously in my graduate work, I should keep my uneducated opinions to myself. (I'm paraphrasing.) So can I just say that I find these scholarly writings beyond my interest and patience, even though I recognize that it is more a shortcoming on my part, rather than that of the authors. I enjoyed reading the summary and comments and say thank you to all for helping to comprehend what was being said. I especially enjoyed Lance's comments and his analysis of the three approaches.
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