| action plans | According to uncertainty reduction theory, mental representations of anticipated behavioral sequences that may be used to achieve goals.
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| action research | A collaborative approach that seeks to engage community members as equal and full participants in the research process.
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| aha factor | A subjective standard ascribing validity to an idea when it resonates with one's personal experience.
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| androgyny | The quality of having a blend of both strong masculine and strong feminine characteristics.
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| anxiety | According to AUM, an affective variable that includes the feeling of being uneasy, tense, worried, or apprehensive about what might happen.
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| appropriation | According to adaptive structuration theory, the process of borrowing rules and resources from parent organizations or the larger culture.
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| assimilation | A perceptual distortion that exaggerates similarities.
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| attachment styles | Four distinct approaches to close relationships based on an infant's experience with his or her primary caregiver and carried over into adult relationships: secure, dismissing, preoccupied, or fearful.
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| axiom | A self-evident truth that requires no additional proof.
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| boomerang effect | According to social judgment theory, persuasion in a direction that has the opposite impact from the desired effect.
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| canons of rhetoric | The principal divisions of the art of persuasion established by ancient rhetoricians: invention, arrangement, style, delivery, and memory.
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| categorical imperative | Duty without exception; for Immanuel Kant, the ethical rule to act only on that maxim which you can will to become universal law.
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| central route | According to ELM, cognitive processing that involves scrutiny of message content; message elaboration.
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| CL (comparison level) | According to social exchange theory, the threshold above which an outcome seems attractive; the minimal level for personal satisfaction.
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| CLalt (comparison level of alternatives) | According to social exchange theory, the value of the best payoffs available outside the current relationship; the worst outcome a person will accept and still stay in a relationship.
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| classical management theory | An approach to organizing that values productivity, the precision and efficiency that result from a division of labor, a hierarchical chain of command, and tight discipline.
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| codetermination | According to critical theory of communication, corporate decision processes that invite open dialogue among all stakeholders.
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| cognitive complexity | A sophisticated set of mental constructs that enables a person to distinguish subtle differences among people.
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| cognitive dissonance | The distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person's two beliefs or a belief and an action; an adverse motivation to change a belief.
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| cognitive heuristic | A mental short cut used to bypass the clutter of verbal and nonverbal signals that bombard people throughout every conversation.
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| cognitive theory | Systematic thought about mental structures and processes.
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| coherence | According to CMM, the process of interpreting the world and assigning significance to our lives; persons-in-conversation who achieve coherence have created shared meaning.
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| collectivistic culture | A core dimension of cultural variability; people identify with a larger group that is responsible for providing care in exchange for group loyalty, thus acting from a we-identity rather than the I-identity found in individualistic cultures.
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| collegial stories | According to the cultural approach to organizations, unsanctioned anecdotes told about other people in the organization.
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| commensurate complexity | As applied to theory construction, the need to add qualifications to account for special circumstances (see also requisite variety).
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| communication theory | An umbrella term for all careful, systematic, and self-conscious discussion and analysis of communication phenomena.
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| communicator reward valence | According to expectancy violations theory, the sum of the positive and negative attributes a person brings to an encounter plus the potential he or she has to reward or punish in the future.
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| communitarian ethics | An ethical standard that regards civic transformation rather than objective information as the primary goal of journalism.
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| complementary communication | Interchange based on accepted differences in power.
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| concealment | A form of deception that tells only a portion of the truth.
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| congruence | According to Carl Rogers, the match between an individual's inner feelings and outer display.
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| consent | According to critical theory of communication, the process by which an employee actively, though unknowingly, accomplishes the interests of management in the faulty attempt to fulfill his or her own interests.
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| construct | According to constructivism, the cognitive template or stencil we fit over social reality to order our impressions of people.
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| contrast | A perceptual distortion that exaggerates differences.
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| conventional design logic | According to constructivism, the implicit belief that communication is a game played cooperatively, according to socially conventional rules and procedures.
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| cool media | According to McLuhan, low-definition channels of communication such as television and telephones that stimulate several different senses and require high audience participation.
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| coordination | According to CMM, joint action; the process by which persons collaborate in an attempt to bring into being their vision of what is necessary, noble, and good and to preclude the enactment of what they fear, hate, or despise.
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| corporate stories | According to the cultural approach to organizations, stories that reinforce management ideology and company policy.
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| cosmopolitan communicators | According to CMM, people who intentionally converse in a socially eloquent way that promotes respectful dialogue and coordination (see also dialogic communication).
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| counteractive communication | According to the functional perspective, interaction that members use to get the group back on track.
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| cross-cultural communication | The comparison of specific interpersonal variables such as conversational distance, self-disclosure, and styles of conflict resolution across two or more cultures, whereas intercultural communication refers to interaction between people of different cultures.
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| culture | A socially constructed and historically transmitted pattern of symbols, interpretations, premises, and rules; complex webs of shared meanings.
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| cybernetics | The study of information processing, feedback, and control in communication systems.
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| cycles | According to the information systems approach to organizations, double interacts best employed in situations of high equivocality.
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| deception | A message knowingly transmitted by a sender to foster a false belief or conclusion by the receiver.
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| deliberative rhetoric | Political speech centering on future policy.
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| dependent variable | In a scientific experiment, a measurable outcome that presumably is influenced or changed by the independent variable; the effect in a hypothesized cause-and-effect relationship.
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| depenetration | According to social penetration theory, the gradual process of withdrawing from closeness in a relationship.
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| determinism | The assumption that behavior is caused by heredity and/or environment.
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| devil term | According to dramatism, the word a speaker uses that sums up all that is regarded as bad, wrong, or evil.
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| dialogic communication | According to Martin Buber, conversation in an I-Thou relationship in which we regard our partner as the very one we are and try to see our relationship as it appears to him or her; according to CMM, speaking in a way that others can and will listen, and listening in a way that others can and will speak.
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| dialogue | According to Buber, a synonym for ethical communication; mutuality in conversation that creates the transaction through which we help each other be more human.
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| differentiation | A component of cognitive complexity measured by the number of separate personality constructs used to describe someone on the RCQ.
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| disassociation | According to interpersonal deception theory, a linguistic strategy of distancing oneself from what one has done.
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| discourse | According to Foucault, a group of statements that provide a way of representing knowledge about a particular topic at a historical moment; it produces and frames knowledge through language.
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| discourse ethics | Jurgen Habermas' vision of the ideal speech situation in which participants could reach a consensus on universal ethical standards.
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| discursive closure | According to critical theory of communication, systematically distorted communication in which those with power suppress potential dissent.
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| discursive formation | According to cultural studies, the process by which unquestioned and seemingly natural ways of interpreting the world become ideologies.
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| disorientation | According to relational dialectics, a nonfunctional response that arises from a feeling of overwhelming helplessness.
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| disruptive communication | According to the functional perspective, interaction that diverts, retards, or frustrates group members' ability to achieve the task functions.
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| double bind | A set of mutually exclusive expectations between parties that places the low-status person in a no-win situation.
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| double interact | According to the information systems approach to organizations, a communication cycle that consists of act, response, and adjustment.
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| dramatic violence | According to cultivation theory, depicting overt physical force against the self or others, or compelling others to do something against their will through threats of pain, injury, or death.
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| dramatistic pentad | According to dramatism, a tool to analyze how a speaker attempts to get an audience to accept his or her view of reality as true using five crucial elements of the human drama: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.
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| duality of structure | According to adaptive structuration theory, rules and resources that are both the medium and the outcome of interaction; they affect and are affected by what is done.
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| ego-involvement | The centrality or importance of an issue to a person's life; according to social judgment theory, one indication is membership in a group with a known stand.
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| elaboration | According to ELM, the extent to which a person carefully thinks about issue relevant arguments contained in a persuasive communication.
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| empathic understanding | The active process of laying aside personal views and entering into another's world without prejudice.
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| empirical research | Systematic study of observable, recurring behavior yielding measurable results.
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| enactment | According to the information systems approach to organizations, proactive communication in which members of an organization invent their environment rather than merely discover it; action that is a precondition for sensemaking.
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| enthymeme | An incomplete version of a formal deductive syllogism; it is created by leaving out a premise that is already accepted by the audience or omitting the obvious conclusion.
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| epideictic rhetoric | Ceremonial speech centering on praise and blame.
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| episode | In CMM, a recognized communication routine that has boundaries and rules-a recurrent language game.
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| epistemology | The study of the origin, nature, method, and limits of knowledge.
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| equifinality | A systems theory assumption that a given outcome could have been effectively caused by any or many interconnected factors.
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| equivocality | The degree of ambiguity that is associated with information; too many possible meanings rather than not enough information.
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| equivocation | A form of deception that uses vague language to dodge an issue.
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| ethical imperative | The premise that theorists in their constructions must grant people they study the same autonomy they grant themselves.
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| ethnography | A method of participant observation designed to help a researcher experience a culture's complex web of meaning.
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| ethos | Ethical proof, which comes from the speaker's intelligence, character, and goodwill toward the audience as these personal characteristics are revealed through the message.
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| excitation transfer | According to Dolf Zillman, an effect of television viewing whereby the process of media-induced arousal carries over to unrelated emotions in real-life situations immediately following the program.
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| expectancy | According to expectancy violations theory, what people predict will happen, rather than what they necessarily desire.
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| experiment | A research method that manipulates an independent variable in order to judge its effect on a dependent variable and thus establish a cause-and-effect relationship.
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| expressive design logic | According to constructivism, the implicit belief that language is a medium for openly and honestly expressing our thoughts and feelings.
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| face | A metaphor for our public self-image.
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| face-giving | The other-concerned facework strategy used to defend and support another person's need for inclusion.
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| face-restoration | The self-concerned facework strategy used to preserve autonomy and defend against personal loss of freedom.
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| facework | According to face-negotiation theory, the enactment of specific verbal and nonverbal messages that help maintain and restore face loss, and uphold and honor face gain.
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| falsifiability | A feature of a good scientific theory-testability; a way to prove incorrect theories false.
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| falsification | A form of deception that creates a fiction; a lie.
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| fantasy | According to symbolic convergence theory, the creative and imaginative interpretation of events that fulfills a psychological or rhetorical need.
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| FOICS (function-oriented interaction coding system) | Hirokawa's coding system for group discussion that classifies the function of specific statements.
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| forensic rhetoric | Judicial speech centering on accusation and defense.
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| framing | The process of calling attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring others, which might lead to different reactions; according to agenda-setting theory, the selection of a restricted number of thematically related attributes for inclusion in the media agenda when a particular object is discussed.
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| free will | The assumption that behavior is predominantly voluntary.
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| functional utterance | According to the functional perspective, an uninterrupted statement of a single member that appears to perform a specific function within the group interaction process.
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| GDSS (group decision support systems) | Media technology used to promote idea creation and democratic decision making in computer-assisted conferences.
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| gender | A social construction of the characteristics of men and women that are often labeled as masculine and feminine; sex is a fact, while gender is an idea that has been learned from and reinforced by others.
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| genderlect | A term that suggests that masculine and feminine styles of communication are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects and not inferior or superior ways of speaking.
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| generalized other | According to symbolic interactionism, the composite mental image a person has of his or her self based on community expectations and responses.
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| global village | McLuhan's concept of a new tribal world order in which everyone can be in touch with everyone else because of instantaneous electronic communication; closed human systems no longer exist.
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| god term | According to dramatism, the word a speaker uses to which all other positive words are subservient.
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| golden mean | According to Aristotle, the virtue of moderation; the virtuous person develops habits that avoid extremes.
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| guilt-redemption cycle | According to dramatism, the way we ultimately purge ourselves of an ever-present, all-inclusive sense of guilt in public discourse.
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| hegemony | The preponderant influence or domination of one nation over another or, by extension, of the powerful over the weak.
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| hermeneutics | The study and practice of interpretation.
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| hierarchy hypothesis | According to uncertainty reduction theory, the prediction that when people are thwarted in their attempts to achieve goals, their first tendency is to make low-level, minor adjustments to their plans.
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| high-context culture | A culture in which most of the information communicated is located in the physical context or internalized in the person, but little is in the coded, explicit part of the message; a collectivistic culture.
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| hot media | According to McLuhan, high-definition channels of communication such as print and radio that focus on a single sense receptor and require low audience participation.
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| I | According to symbolic interactionism, the spontaneous driving force that fosters all that is novel, unpredictable, and unorganized in the self.
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| ideal speech situation | Habermas' optimal setting for determining right from wrong, where participants are free to listen to reason and speak their minds without fear of constraint or control.
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| identification | According to dramatism, the common ground that exists between speaker and audience, such as physical characteristics, talents, occupation, background, experiences, personality, beliefs, and values.
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| ideology | According to cultural studies, mental frameworks that different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out, and render intelligible the way society works.
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| I-It relationship | According to Buber, an interpersonal relationship in which the other person is treated as a thing to be used, an object to be manipulated.
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| independent self | According to face-negotiation theory, the self-construal of individuals who conceive of themselves as relatively autonomous from others; I-identity.
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| independent variable | In a scientific experiment, the factor that the researcher systematically alters in the quest to discover its effect on one or more dependent variables; the cause in a hypothesized cause-and-effect relationship.
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| individualistic culture | A core dimension of cultural variability; people look out for themselves and their immediate families, thus acting from an I-identity rather than the we-identity found in collectivistic cultures.
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| interactive universalism | According to Seyla Benhabib, the goal of an ethical consensus that would be interactive rather than legislative, cognizant of gender differences instead of gender blind, and contextually sensitive as opposed to situation indifferent.
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| interdependent self | According to face-negotiation theory, the self-construal of individuals who conceive of themselves as interconnected with many others; we-identity.
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| interest aggregations | According to agenda-setting theory, interest groups or clusters of people who demand center stage for their one overriding concern; single-issue advocates.
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| interpenetration of structures | According to adaptive structuration theory, gradual change within a group due to the merging of discrepant rules and resources.
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| interpersonal communication | The interactive process of creating unique shared meaning.
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| interpretive scholarship | The work of assigning meaning or value to communicative texts.
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| invitational rhetoric | A request for mutual understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self-determination, as opposed to traditional rhetoric, which emphasizes persuasion and control.
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| involvement | According to critical theory of communication, organizational stakeholders' free expression of ideas that may or may not affect managerial decisions.
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| I-Thou relationship | According to Buber, an interpersonal relationship in which we regard our partner as the very one we are, an end rather than a means to our end.
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| latitude of acceptance | According to social judgment theory, the range of ideas and statements that strike a person as reasonable and worthy of consideration.
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| latitude of noncommitment | According to social judgment theory, the range of ideas and statements that a person finds neither objectionable nor acceptable.
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| latitude of rejection | According to social judgment theory, the range of ideas and statements that a person finds objectionable and unreasonable.
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| leakage | Unconscious nonverbal cues that signal an internal state.
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| levelers | Inclusive words that imply a shift of responsibility to others by downplaying individual choice.
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| limited effects model | A mass communication model that characterizes society as a honeycomb of small groups bound by a rich web of personal ties and dependencies, and explains empirical findings of relatively small and scattered mass media impact.
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| logos | Logical proof, which comes from the line of argument in the speech.
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| looking-glass self | According to symbolic interactionism, the mental self-image that results from taking the role of the other.
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| loose coupling | According to the information systems approach to organizations, a characteristic of some systems in which causal inference is difficult because relations are mediated, intermittent, dampened, and delayed; typically, different parts of the system have a widespread yet marginal effect on each other.
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| low-context culture | A culture in which most of the information communicated is located in the explicit code of the message rather than in the physical context or internalized in the person.
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| mainstreaming | According to cultivation theory, a process by which heavy viewers of television develop a common socially conservative outlook through constant exposure to the same images and labels.
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| managerial control | According to critical theory of communication, corporate decision processes that systematically exclude the voices of people who are affected by the decisions.
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| managerialism | According to critical theory of communication, discourse based on a systematic logic, a set of routine practices, and an ideology that privileges top-down control.
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| masculinity | A dimension of cultural variability; clearly defined sex roles with male values of success, money, and material possessions dominant in society.
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| me | According to symbolic interactionism, the image of self seen in the looking glass of other people's reactions; the self's generalized other.
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| mechanistic approach | A functional approach that sees organizations as machines designed to accomplish specific goals, with workers as interchangeable parts.
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| message design logic | According to constructivism, three implicit theories-expressive, conventional, rhetorical-of the ways in which communication can be shaped to serve as means to ends.
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| meta-analysis | A statistical procedure that blends the results of independent, empirical research studies exploring the same relationship between two variables, such as the correlation between amount of television viewing and fear of violence.
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| metacommunication | Communication about communication; sometimes used to refer to communication about relationships.
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| metaperformance | According to Dwight Conquergood's performance ethnography, ritual actions that group members recognize as symbolic, for example, a gang handshake.
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| metatheoretical concerns | Theoretical assumptions about how to construct theory; assumptions about ways of knowing, human nature, values, the purpose of theorizing, and research methodology.
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| mindfulness | According to AUM, the process of thinking in new categories, being open to new information, and recognizing multiple perspectives; according to face-negotiation theory, an awareness of our own assumptions, viewpoints, and ethnocentric tendencies when entering any unfamiliar situation.
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| minding | According to symbolic interactionism, an inner dialogue used to test alternatives, rehearse actions, and anticipate reactions before responding.
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| minimal justification hypothesis | According to cognitive dissonance theory, the best way to achieve private attitudinal change is to offer just enough reward or punishment to elicit public compliance.
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| minimax principle | An economic approach to human behavior stating that people seek to minimize their costs and maximize their benefits as they interact with others.
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| mystery | According to CMM, the essence of a cosmopolitan attitude that views one's own life as a manifestation or part of something greater, characterized by rapt attention, open-mindedness, a sense of wonder, and perhaps even awe.
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| mythos | According to the narrative paradigm, ideas that cannot be verified or proved in an absolute way; story consists of both logos and mythos.
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| narration | Story; according to the narrative paradigm, symbolic actions (words and/or deeds) that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, or interpret them.
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| narrative coherence | According to the narrative paradigm, internal consistency with characters acting in a reliable fashion.
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| narrative fidelity | According to the narrative paradigm, congruency between values embedded in a message and what listeners regard as truthful and humane.
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| narrative rationality | According to the narrative paradigm, a mode of evaluating the worth of stories based on the twin standards of narrative coherence and narrative fidelity.
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| narrow ridge | According to Martin Buber, the path of dialogic living, distinguished by the tension between subjectivism and absolutism.
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| nonimmediacy | According to interpersonal deception theory, a strategy for symbolically removing oneself from the situation.
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| objective scholarship | The scientific quest to understand, explain, and predict human behavior.
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| organizational culture | According to the cultural approach to organizations, a web of shared meaning; the residue of employee performances by which members constitute and reveal their culture to themselves and others.
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| organizing | According to the information systems approach, a way to make sense out of equivocal information.
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| outcome value | According to social exchange theory, the rewards minus the costs of a given course of action.
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| paradigm | A conceptual framework or worldview.
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| parsimony, rule of | Relative simplicity; given two plausible explanations for the same event, scientists favor the less complicated one.
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| participant observation | A method of adopting the stance of an ignorant yet interested visitor who carefully notes what people say and do in order to discover how they interpret their world.
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| participation | According to critical theory of communication, the process by which all stakeholders in an organization negotiate power and openly reach collaborative decisions.
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| pathos | Emotional proof, which comes from feelings that a speech draws from its hearers.
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| penetration | According to social penetration theory, a metaphor for relational closeness that results from interpersonal vulnerability, especially self-
disclosure.
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| peripheral route | According to ELM, cognitive processing that accepts or rejects a message based on nonrelevant cues as opposed to actively thinking about the issue.
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| personal space | The invisible, variable volume of space surrounding an individual that defines that individual's preferred distance from others.
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| personal stories | According to the cultural approach to organizations, stories that company personnel tell about themselves, often defining how they would like to be seen within the organization.
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| person-centered messages | According to constructivism, sophisticated communication that reflects an awareness of and adaptation to different relational contexts.
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| persons-in-conversation | According to CMM, the primary social process of human life; the term designates interpersonal communication as seen from inside the process.
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| persuasion | Intentional influence that is more voluntary than coerced.
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| phenomenology | Intentional analysis of everyday experience from the standpoint of the person who is living it.
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| postdecision dissonance | According to cognitive dissonance theory, distressing doubts about the wisdom of a decision after it is made; the resulting need for reassurance is highest the more the decision was important, difficult, and irrevocable.
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| postmodernism | An epistemological stance that is suspicious of any truth claim; according to Lyotard, an incredulity toward grand narratives such as Marxism, Freudian psychology, and Christianity.
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| power distance | A dimension of cultural variability; the extent to which the less powerful members of society willingly accept the unequal distribution of power.
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| powerful effects model | An early mass communication model that compared media messages to bullets fired from a machine gun into a crowd or to a hypodermic needle injecting a potent message directly into the audience.
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| pragmatism | An applied approach to knowledge; the philosophy that true understanding of an idea or situation has practical implications for action.
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| principle of veracity | Sissela Bok's ethical assumption that truthful statements are preferable to lies in the absence of special considerations that overcome their negative weight.
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| production | According to adaptive structuration theory, the use of rules and resources in interaction.
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| promotive communication | According to the functional perspective, interaction that moves a group along the goal path by redirecting attention to decision-making functions.
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| proxemics | The study of people's systematic use of space as a special elaboration of culture.
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| punctuation | In spoken communication, the tone, emphasis, and cues that direct how a message is meant to be interpreted; according to the interactional view, the way someone marks the beginning of an interpersonal interaction.
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| rational-world paradigm | A scientific approach to knowledge that assumes people are logical, making decisions on the basis of evidence and lines of argument.
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| RCQ (Role Category Questionnaire) | A free-response instrument used by constructivists to measure a person's cognitive complexity in interpersonal perception.
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| reaffirmation | According to relational dialectics, an active recognition that dialectical tensions are ongoing and normal.
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| recalibration | According to relational dialectics, the process of temporarily reframing a situation so that the pulls on partners no longer seem oppositional.
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| reflective thinking | John Dewey's rationally based, systematic process of decision making that is the prototype of the functional perspective.
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| reframing | The process of stepping outside the current perspective and giving new meaning to the same situation.
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| relational dialectics | An approach to close relationships that emphasizes inherent ongoing tensions, struggles, and contradictions; for example, a desire for connectedness and separateness.
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| reproduction | According to adaptive structuration theory, the reinforcement of system features already in place, maintaining the status quo.
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| requisite variety | According to the information systems approach to organizations, the degree of complexity and diversity an organization needs to match the level of ambiguity of the data it processes (see also commensurate complexity).
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| resonance | According to cultivation theory, the process by which congruence of symbolic violence on television and real-life experience of violence amplifies the fear of a mean and scary world.
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| resonance principle of communication | According to Tony Schwartz, broadcast messages are most effective when they strike a responsive chord in members of the audience, thus evoking stored experiences from the past.
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| resources | According to adaptive structuration theory, materials, possessions, or attributes that can be used to influence or control the actions of the group or its members.
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| rhetoric | According to Aristotle, the art of seeing all available means of persuasion; the intentional act of using words to have an effect.
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| rhetorical design logic | According to constructivism, the implicit belief that communication is the creation and negotiation of social selves and situations.
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| rhetorical vision | According to symbolic convergence theory, a collective view of social reality that develops when the same set of fantasy themes is voiced across many groups situations.
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| rituals | Repeated performances that articulate significant aspects of cultural life.
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| rules | According to adaptive structuration theory, propositions that make value judgments or indicate how something ought to be done.
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| rules, organizational | According to the information systems approach, stock responses that served well in the past and have become standard operating procedure. They are effective when equivocality is low.
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| segmentation | According to relational dialectics, the tactic of compartmentalization by which partners isolate different aspects of their relationship.
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| selection | According to the information systems approach to organizations, the interpretation of actions already taken; retrospective sensemaking.
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| selective exposure | According to cognitive dissonance theory, the principle that people pay attention only to ideas they already believe because discrepant information would be mentally distressing.
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| self | According to symbolic interactionism, the ongoing process combining the "I" and the "me."
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| self-fulfilling prophecy | The tendency for our expectations to evoke responses that confirm what we originally anticipated.
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| self-referential imperative | The premise that theorists must include themselves as participants in their own constructions; they affect and are affected by their ideas.
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| semiotics (semiology) | The study of signs and their impact on society.
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| sexual harassment | Refers to the unwanted imposition of sexual requirements in the context of a relationship of unequal power.
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| sign | The combination of a signifier and a signified.
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| signified | The meaning ascribed to a sign.
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| signifier | The actual image of a sign.
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| sleeper effect | The tendency for the impact of source credibility to dissipate over time, often because the audience remembers the message but forgets the source.
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| social constructionism | The belief that persons-in-conversation co-construct their own social realities.
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| social exchange theory | An economically based theory of human behavior that assumes that people accurately gauge the outcomes of a variety of interactions and rationally choose the action that will provide the best result.
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| social learning theory | According to Albert Bandura, viewers imitate novel behavior they see on television; vicariously learned aggression can erupt in future antisocial behavior.
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| speech code | A system of socially constructed symbols, meanings, premises, and rules pertaining to communicative conduct.
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| spiraling alteration | According to relational dialectics, the practice of responding to dialectical forces by dealing with one pull at a time.
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| spiritual child | A metaphor for an interpersonal relationship; the relationship is a child born as the result of a couple's coming together, and it requires continual nurture and care.
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| standpoint | Perspective; a place in time and space from which to view the world around us.
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| statistical significance | The quantifiable conclusion that the results of an empirical study cannot reasonably be explained by chance.
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| strategy | According to critical theory of communication, the overt practice of managerial control.
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| strong objectivity | According to standpoint theory, the intentional practice of starting research from the lives of women and other marginalized groups whose perspectives are less partial than those of persons with power.
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| structuration | The production and reproduction of social systems through members' use of rules and resources in interaction.
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| survey research | A research method that employs questionnaires and face-to-face interviews to collect self-report data demonstrating what people think, feel, and intend to do.
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| suspicion | According to interpersonal deception theory, a state of doubt or distrust that is held without sufficient evidence or proof.
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| symbolic convergence | The process of sharing common fantasies, by which a collection of individuals is transformed into a cohesive group.
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| symmetrical communication | Interchange based on equal power.
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| synergy | A group product that is greater or better than all of its members could produce working on their own.
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| system | A group of elements within a greater environment that affect each other and form a larger pattern that is different from the sum of its parts (e.g., weather system, central nervous system, delivery system).
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| tag question | A short question at the end of a declarative statement, often used to soften the sting of potential disagreement and to invite participation in open, friendly dialogue.
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| test of publicity | A method of determining ethical behavior; checking with a variety of fair-minded people to see if they would endorse a proposed course of action.
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| text | Any verbal or nonverbal intentional symbolic expression.
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| textual analysis | A research method that describes and interprets the characteristics of any text.
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| thick description | The process of tracing the many strands of a cultural web and tracking evolving meaning.
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| topoi | According to Aristotle, the general and specific stock arguments marshaled by speakers to persuade an audience.
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| transcendent eloquence | According to CMM, a characteristic of cosmopolitan communication that enhances coordination between disparate moral communities as it seeks human welfare as a worthy end in itself; dialogic communication.
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| truth bias | The persistent and pervasive expectation that people will tell the truth.
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| uncertainty | According to uncertainty reduction theory and AUM, a cognitive variable that includes the doubts we have about our ability to predict the outcome of our encounters with strangers as well as to explain past behaviors.
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| uncertainty avoidance | A dimension of cultural variability; the extent to which people feel threatened by ambiguity and create beliefs and institutions to try to avoid it.
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| unconditional positive regard | An attitude of acceptance of another person that is not contingent on his or her performance.
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| uses and gratifications | An approach to media effects suggesting that television viewers are selective, choosing programs that satisfy their need for information, personal identity, social interaction, or entertainment.
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| victimage | Scapegoating; the process of designating an external enemy as the source of all personal ills.
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| violation valence | According to expectancy violations theory, the perceived negative or positive value of a breach of expectations, regardless of who the violator is.
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