This book provides a thorough analysis of the scientific, critical, and cultural questions at the foundation of theory-building in communication and other social sciences. Any claim to knowledge, the author explains, can be analyzed in terms of a series of characteristics: the object of its explanation, the explanatory form and evidentiary method employed, its characteristic explanations, the scope of its performance, and its consequences of value. From identifying basic epistemological questions to exploring the impact of the "knowledge industry" on society, the volume offers readers the...

This book draws on the dialogism of social theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to develop a new approach which the authors term "relational dialectics" to the study of interpersonal communication. Emphasizing a social self instead of a sovereign self, multivocal oppositions instead of binary contradictions, and indeterminate change instead of transcendent synthesis, chapters examine and critique prevailing approaches to interpersonal communication. Building on these theoretical foundations, the volume rethinks such key areas as relationship development, closeness, certainty, openness, communication...