What is Communication Studies?

This relatively unknown field can make your relationships and your world better.

Photo by Mike Meyers on Unsplash

I am a scholar of Communication Studies. This subject area has profoundly shaped my worldview, and it has helped me to become much better at relationships. It’s a relatively new field, and so for many people, it’s a bit of a mystery. I think it has so much to offer that I’m not kidding or exaggerating when I say that everyone should learn a bit about it.

I do often joke, though, about how upset my colleagues and I get when someone says that we do communications, with an s at the end of the word. Communications implies products like press releases, mission statements, radio spots, news stories, posts on social media, and the like.

Communication, though, without the s, focuses on processes: How do groups make sense of what is happening in the world? How does the meaning they create influence what they do next? How do people coordinate their actions to achieve shared goals? How do they resolve conflict to strengthen their relationships? How can we interact in ways that better affirm our values and one another? How do we struggle together to nurture a more just world? The field of Communication Studies answers these questions.

These process-based questions distinguish Communication Studies from a related field, psychology. Psychologists often focus on what goes on inside a person’s mind. They support an individual as they shift those internal dynamics, and in turn, the person then shows up differently with others. Instead of homing in on the space between someone’s ears, Communication Studies pays attention to the space between people. Experts in communication know tons about the impacts of what people say to each other, and how they say it. Communication Studies teaches people how to adapt across cultures, interact in ways that care for trauma, and build relationships where everyone feels seen, heard, understood, and valued.

Communication Studies teaches people how to build relationships where everyone feels seen, heard, understood, and valued.

Building these thriving relationships—through the process of communication—is core to transforming the world for the better. Indeed, most experts in Communication Studies assume that the world is made through these interactions. The jargon-y term we use is social construction. Put briefly, theories of social construction contend that our mundane, everyday encounters are the building blocks of society. Through them, we come to understand what the world means, who we are in it, and how to shape it together. In the tiniest of moments, we create patterns that scale up to become social structures and systems. These seemingly small interactions are profoundly powerful.

But Kate, you might be thinking, how complicated can it be? We communicate with people from the moment we’re born. It’s something people just DO.

Absolutely! Communication is ubiquitous, so much so that colleagues of mine like to say that you cannot not communicate. In my classrooms, when I’m teaching introductory courses, I bring a ball to class early in the semester. I make eye contact with a student, ask them to catch the ball, then throw it to them. The student catches the ball, and I then ask them how they knew how to catch it. Usually they’ll say something like, “Well, I just know!”

In the discussion that follows, we first affirm the power of what we all just know. So much wisdom comes from our lived experiences. Then, we talk about what a neurobiologist, a physicist, a physical therapist, a professional athlete, or an artist knows about how the student caught the ball. These experts would describe synapses firing in the brain, the body’s chemical processes, ways humans assess the speed and height of a moving ball, how visual and motor systems integrate, the relationships between gravity and inertia, and the poetry of motion. They’d call our attention to the nuances of a process that seems simple and, in so doing, give us a greater appreciation for its marvel.

Even more, if we’re hoping to get better at catching a ball, these experts can help us to improve and practice, to understand the complexities of what’s happening so that we can expand our skills and become more adept, strong, and flexible. Communication Studies experts do this for everyday interactions. They complement our felt and experiential knowledge, the things we just know, by calling our attention to aspects of human communication that we might otherwise overlook. They help us to notice things differently and, in so doing, give us more tools to use in our relationships.

So, Communication Studies, and especially my corner of it, is not about transmitting perfect messages, the products of knowledge. It is, instead, about the ongoing give-and-take of connection, the process of relating well. It enhances people’s capacity for more thoughtful, validating, equitable interactions.

Please support CommuniKate

To support this blog, show you value this work, and make this info available to more people, please subscribe (for free!) to CommuniKate.

Please also leave a comment. I love hearing from you, and your comments also boost the visibility of CommuniKate with Kate Lockwood Harris.

Know someone else who might enjoy this newsletter? Please share this post!

Want to learn more about me? Read my story here.

What’s next?

For now, I’ll post something new on CommuniKate once every month. As support grows, I’ll increase how often new material is available. Up next, on October 21, I’ll write about how communities can use communication to repair harm when something has gone wrong, for example when one community member has harassed or assaulted another.

---