ABSTRACT
The nature of communication research is often a topic of discussion among people who have various interests in it. As individuals who study and live their academic lives, communication researchers periodically ponder what makes their scholarship distinctively communication research. In other words, are there qualities that set their research in communication apart from that, for example, in social psychology, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, or psychology? Over the history of communication studies, there have been numerous attempts to define and position the contributions of communication scholars as unique. Some of these identify researchers’ interests in the content of and ways in which verbal and nonverbal messages operate. Others sustain interests in varieties of discourse (ranging from micro-practices through macro-societal narratives). Whatever the focus, collections of essays and review articles over the years attest to the difficulty of pinpointing exactly what communication brings to the table in scholarly enterprises as well as in academic life generally.1 Perhaps the most satisfactory responses to the question are embedded in individual researchers’ programs of study, or within particular scholarly traditions.
