ABSTRACT
Communicative processes are extended in time, yet the question of what we can learn about communication by paying attention to this temporal dimension has not been widely discussed. This chapter starts by situating temporal communication research within a broader ontological and decolonialising turn in the human and social sciences and proceeds to discuss the role of delay in the communication process. Two examples are used as illustration: (1) the role of delay in the unconscious dimensions of communication as utilised by the variable length of the analytic session in Lacanian psychoanalysis and (2) the function of delay for the poetic structure of all communication, which is explored in a close-reading of Pearse Hutchinson’s poem York Road. The chapter concludes by placing attention to time in communication research within the constitutive metamodel of communication theory as developed by R. Craig.
