Recent rhetorical scholarship suggests a new focus on qualitative theories of human communication. Explores the implications of three general emphases for future inquiry: (1) rules research, (2) constructivism, and (3) constructionism. (PD)

A 20th-century discipline in American universities, communication has struggled with questions of academic identity: generically, as to whether it is a "humanities" or a "social science", a "practice" or a "technology", and theoretically, as to what sorts of axioms, theorems, research methods or logics, and problems should form its core. This…