ABSTRACT
The editor of this book has made a crucial distinction in the book’s title. It is a very different thing to talk about the consequentiality of communication, as opposed to the consequences of communication. The etymology of the different suffixes is illuminating. The suffix ty (after the connecting vowel i) comes from Latin and indicates a state or condition, whereas the suffix ence indicates action or process in addition to, or to the exclusion of, a state. This distinction represents no fine semantic hassle. The choice of title indicates rejection of both the transmission model and the variable analytic tradition of research. I call the confluence of the transmission model and variable analysis the received view of communication. In the received view, communication is a process that has consequences of various sorts (i.e., effects subsequent to it and outside it). The reader of this chapter may be disappointed to find no claims derived from the received view of the following sort: “More communication promotes greater mutual understanding” or “Communication helps us to reach our goals.” In both of these statements, the process of communication is asserted to have consequences outside itself. Such statements are, of course, counterparts of the following, which also come from the received view: “High self-esteem produces more assertive communication” and “High status in a group produces more talking turns.” Taken together, the foregoing statements suggest that various prior factors in the person and situation (usually conceived as variables) determine the content and form of communication, and communication subsequently has measurable consequences for another set of variables.
