Penn State Greater Allegheny
Department of Communications
Fall 2015 CAS 202
Communication Theory
Instructor: Michael Vicaro
Email: mpv2@psu.edu
Office: 106A Main
Office hours: Monday through Thursday 11am-12 pm and by appointment
Class Meetings: Thursday 1pm-3:45pm
Class Room: Frable 206
Course Description
This course will provide students with an introduction to fundamental concepts in communication
as a field of inquiry. The course begins with an introduction to contemporary critical
communication studies. This theoretical orientation challenges typical models of interaction that
locate meaning within individuals and that relegate communication to the role of a tool for
expression and control. By contrast, we will develop a model that locates meaning in social
practices and views identities, perceptions, and beliefs as outcomes of communicative
interactions. The course then explores this model of critical communication studies in several
arenas, including intra- and inter-personal interactions, workplace communication, political
communication, and mediated interaction.
Goals: Upon successful completion of the course, students will have
1. Explored commonplace communication rituals in intrapersonal, interpersonal, workplace,
political/textual, and mediated interactions
2. Examined the way that communication practices can shape personal and institutional
identities and support norms that foster creativity and/or control.
3. Read and engaged with a variety of ways that contemporary theorists study the field of
communication and applied some of these models to communication questions and
problems of your own.
4. Developed expertise in a special topic in communication theory and lead a class discussion
on that topic.
Texts
You are not required to buy a book for this course. I will provide a number of articles and
handouts to be posted on our course website: https://sites.psu.edu/vicarocas202f15/
The password for the course readings is: cas202
Requirements/Assignments:
1. Midterm (300 pts): The exam will be a take-home, written response to a set of questions that
will require you to apply course concepts and vocabulary to examples of your choosing. Due
at the midterm period.
2. Final Exam (300 pts): The final exam will be a take-home, written response to a set of
questions that will require you to apply course concepts and vocabulary to examples of your
choosing. The exam is “cumulative” in the sense that you are expected to revise and build
upon the work produced for the midterm. Due during the finals period
3. Original Contribution (200 pts): You will be asked to make an original contribution to the
class—developing some expertise in an area of communication theory/practice, making a
presentation about the material you’ve studied, and then leading a class discussion about the
themes. Due during the last few weeks and/or the finals period
4. Homework and participation (200 pts): due throughout the semester
a. Homework: You will be asked produce weekly entries documenting your work as a
communication theorist. Typically, I will assign short experiential projects designed
to prompt your exploration of the week’s themes and concepts, along with several
questions to guide your writing. Your responses should be typed, dated, and well
developed—several paragraphs in length. I will ask you to submit these for review
via email and to keep a copy for yourself. Please send homework to
vicaro.psu@gmail.com no later than Wednesday 1pm for full credit. Partial credit
will be awarded for late work.
b. Participation: There are a number of ways you can document your engagement and
contribution to the course. Each student should focus most attention on in-class
participation and on creating an “original contribution” to the class. You may then
supplement with the other options as desired.
i. In-class participation: Students can participate in class in a variety of ways:
asking good questions; answering questions from the instructor or other
students; discussing examples of course concepts; summarizing class
discussion; playing “devil’s advocate” or taking other roles to complicate the
discussion productively. In order to ensure that your participation is well
represented, consider writing a brief account after each course meeting: what
did you add, where did it come from, and how did it help shape the class
meeting?
ii. Produce detailed notes from readings and class discussions. Notes should be
clear and well developed, and several students can collaborate weekly on
this.
iii. Advanced readings: Some students may wish to engage in some aspect of the
course by doing some advanced readings. You may wish to learn more about
a communication theorist we cover, add one we didn’t, or pursue any other
aspect of communication theory—I’ll work with you to help select good
readings and you can add to your portfolio by summarizing and commenting
on the readings.
iv. A second (or extended) original contribution project:
Attendance:
 Active attendance is crucial for your personal success in this course and a responsibility you
have to your fellow students. Prior notification of a legitimate reason for absence is required
in order to be eligible to make up missed work.
Additional Resources:

Helpful websites to check out: www.americanrhetoric.com; http://rhetoric.byu.edu/,
http://www.youtube.com/user/binerman,
Students with Special Needs
If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are
encouraged to contact your instructor and Victoria Garwood (Frable 102, vkg2@psu.edu), the
campus’ Disability Contact Liaison. Please do so at the very start of the semester so that we can
provide appropriate support.
Academic Integrity
Students in this course will be expected to comply with Penn State’s Policy on Academic
Integrity. Academic integrity is the pursuit of scholarly activity in an open, honest and
responsible manner.
Academic integrity is a basic guiding principle for all academic activity at The Pennsylvania State
University, and all members of the University community are expected to act in accordance with
this principle. Consistent with this expectation, the University's Code of Conduct states that all
students should act with personal integrity, respect other students' dignity, rights and property,
and help create and maintain an environment in which all can succeed through the fruits of their
efforts.
Academic integrity includes a commitment by all members of the University community not to
engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation or deception. Such acts of dishonesty
violate the fundamental ethical principles of the University community and compromise the
worth of work completed by others. Any student suspected of violating this obligation will be
required to participate in the disciplinary processes outlined in the guidelines on Academic
Integrity. www.psu.edu/dept/ufs/policies/47-00.html#49-2
Core Assumptions: The advanced communication theory we’ll study in the class challenges
many common sense beliefs about communication in general and conflict specifically. Below is
a set of core assumptions of this contemporary communication theory—
Note that you are not required to “believe” these things, but asked to treat them experimentally,
“as if.”
First assumption: Communication is what we are in. While many communication texts
consider communication as a tool—as something we stand apart from and use only occasionally
and instrumentally—we will, in contrast, consider communication as something we are in as a
fish is in water. We are always “thrown” into an already meaningful world informed by long
traditions of interaction. Our experience “now” of that World is shaped and colored by those presupposed meanings (from the past) along with our (future directed) projects.
Second assumption: Communication theory is a way of seeing. In this class, we will
examine a wide range of experiences, objects, and events as if they were outcomes of
communication practices. Most research (communication-centered and otherwise) somewhat
naively takes subjective “feelings” and objective “things” for granted. However, for a CriticalInterpretive Communication Theorist—both subjective interiority and objective facts/phenomena
are the result of historically situated “ways of seeing/talking/interacting.” Communication theory,
then, offers a comprehensive view of human experience: just as a physicist can explain all things
as outcomes of physical processes, and just as a neurologist can explain all things as outcomes of
neuronal processes, we can describe all things (or almost all things anyway) as outcomes of
communicative/discursive processes.
Third Assumption: Communication is a theory driven activity. Everyday people use
implicit theories to organize experience and solve everyday problems; these theories become
institutionalized in language and practice. As core problems and situations change, those theories
become less useful and can lead to poor and at times dangerous or abusive responses—
particularly when they are uncritically reproduced. Communication research can be an important
ethical practice when it helps participants understand and, potentially, change the theories that
underlie their everyday judgments and actions.
Fourth assumption: Communication research can make implicit theories explicit and take
them as subject matter for negotiation. While homogeneous cultures can talk from their shared
cultural assumptions and values, our heterogeneous cultures need to talk about them. By making
implicit theories (about values and interests) explicit and talking about them, we can avoid the
reproduction of old and potentially distorted meanings and help produce new, mutually beneficial
meanings. While homogeneous cultures might seek to increase consensus, our heterogeneous
cultures may benefit more by embracing conflict, dissensus, negotiation, and collaboration across
difference.
Fifth assumption: Communication practices can either reproduce or challenge historic
assumptions about power, knowledge, and social recognition. Personal and collective meanings
are the outcome of communicative practices—but they are not formed in conditions of equality.
We are often encouraged to take on other people’s meanings and roles to their benefit. But,
because they are social constructed, these assumptions are open to re-negotiation and
collaborative re-theorizing in any given moment. This negotiation of meanings always takes place
within particular power arrangements. Power may be relatively balanced, allowing for free and
open negotiation/meaning production or it may relatively unbalanced (asymmetrical) leading to
systematically distorted communication. We will work to develop techniques for challenging
distortions and reopening closed communication practices.