ABSTRACT
No one would argue Robert Hopper’s consummate social scientism. Whether in his early scholarship as a social psychologist of language and interaction or in his conversation analytic work over the last two decades, Robert’s work has exhibited a rigorous empiricism. Yet there is a quality in his writing that sets it apart from much scholarship in the social sciences and that elevates it to a status beyond that attained by Robert’s considerable contributions to communication theory in language, social interaction, and gender. Throughout his work runs, unabashedly it would appear, a values orientation that extols Robert’s beliefs in the essential goodness of the human condition, while also gently prodding his readers toward bettering their own and others’ humanity. Three themes-eliminating social injustice, educating the “students” of speech communication, and advancing the notion of dialogue in human interaction-inform the moral component of Hopper’s work. Although they are present even in Robert’s earliest studies of “linguistic underdogs,” they enjoy fruition in his later works (e.g., Telephone Conversation (1992) and, particularly, in his latest manuscript Gendering Talk (in press)).
