1 Launching Your Study

of Communication Theory

A First Look at
Communication Theory

8th edition

Em Griffin

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Slide 2

Launching Your Study of

Communication Theory

 What Is a Theory and What Does It Do?

 What Is Communication?
 An Arrangement of Ideas to Aid Comprehension
 Chapter Features to Enliven Theory

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Slide 3

What Is a Theory?

Theory – set of systematic, informed

hunches about the way things work
 Set of hunches
 Informed hunches
 Hunches that are systematic

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

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What Is a Theory?

Images of theory
 Theories
as nets
 Theories
as lenses
 Theories
as maps

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Slide 5

What Is Communication?

Communication – relational
process of creating and interpreting
messages that elicit a response
 Messages
• Text – record of a message that can
be analyzed by others; for example,
books, films, DVDs, phonographs,
or any transcript or recording

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Slide 6

What Is Communication?

Communication (continued)
 Creation of messages
• Text usually constructed, invented,
planned, crafted, constituted, selected,
or adopted by the communicator
 Interpretation of messages
• Messages do not interpret themselves

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Slide 7

What Is Communication?

Communication (continued)
 A relational process
• Takes place between two or more
persons and affects the nature of
the connections among those people
 Messages that elicit a response
• Messages have an effect
upon people who receive them

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Slide 8

An Arrangement of Ideas
to Aid Comprehension

 Division I – Overview
 Division II – Interpersonal Communication
 Division III – Group and
Public Communication
 Division IV – Mass Communication
 Division V – Cultural Context
 Division VI – Integration

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Slide 9

Chapter Features to Enliven

Theory

Use extended examples from life

on a college campus, a well-known
communication event, or the
conversations of characters
in movies, books, or TV shows
Student accounts of
applications of theories

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Slide 10

Chapter Features to Enliven

Theory

 “Questions to
Sharpen Your Focus”
 “Conversations with
Communication Theorists”
 “A Second Look”

© 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.