CAS 202: Communication Theory
Exam One
Due: Thursday 10/15 via email by 1pm
Short answer (6pts each x 10: 60pts total): For each, include 3-5 sentences in
which you: define the term clearly, provide an original example (not provided in the
reading or in class), and include a statement that explains the significance of the
concept for understanding some social/communicative phenomena.
Choose ten of from this list:
 Disciplinary power
 Panopticism
 The work of Being Watched
 Emotional labor
 Window-bashing
 Ontological assumptions
 Axiological assumptions
 Epistemological assumptions
 Genuine Conversation
 Phronesis
 Politics of experience: (Choose no more than three from below)
o The politics of sincerity
o The politics of recognition
o The politics of order
o The politics of knowledge
o The politics of hope/futurity
Essay (40 points total): In a well-written essay, choose one or several ideas from
the course and apply them to the analysis of a case or problem of your choosing.
Essays will be evaluated for their a) clarity, style, and form; b) accuracy and fluency
with the course concepts; c) originality and depth of thought.
Each essay should have:
1. An introductory paragraph that grabs the reader’s attention from the first
line, announces the focus of your essay and introduces your main case or
problem, and culminates in a thesis statement (the argument or promise you
make to the reader).
2. A body section: Divide the thesis into 2-4 main points and address each
comprehensively in its own paragraph or two.
a. Define terms and demonstrate what they reveal about your case.
b. Find one or several occasions to quote from the class readings (or
powerpoints), explain your understanding of the quotation, and apply
the idea to your example/case.
3. A conclusion that signals the end of the essay, reiterates (in sum) the core
insights, and amplifies the sense of significance of what you have discovered.
Some guidance:
1. The best essays will likely choose very specific examples (e.g. single
interactions at work or home) to illustrate general principles of
communication theory.
2. Think about this as using the conceptual vocabulary of the class to make a
statement of your current thinking about a topic that you care about. (it
might, then, be the start of a larger “original contribution” project).
3. The best essays will likely show how our course concepts shed light on one
or more of these big questions:
a. How do organizations build commitment and extract labor from their
employees and customers?
b. Why do people and groups seem to make the same mistakes again and
again?
c. How do unexamined assumptions lead to faulty responses to
problems?
d. How should individuals respond to cultural pluralism in specific cases
(acknowledging the “politics of experience”)?
e. How can emotions be shaped and made useful by organizations?
f. How can surveillance be productive?
g. How does disciplinary power differ from traditional understandings
of power and what makes it effective?
h. How do one or more of our “insights about language” affect a practical
case you are studying: (e.g. the centrality of primary language to
thought/experience; discursive access to the transcendental; the
relation between language/grammar and identity; the idea that
“language speaks;”)