One of the complaints that my students hear from their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) friends is that communication is such an “easy” discipline. In the first week or two of my Communication Theory and Theory and Research classes, we pretty quickly work on refuting that notion. We talk about how even the “simplest” of situations is complicated by the fact that we’re humans, and so there are always lots of different variables that are part of any communication situation. My students usually start off a bit disillusioned (there’s more to communication than I thought!), but then realize that they have in fact picked a challenging field to study (especially when it’s time to do their research papers!).
I’ve also thought about the maxim that once a person has received their doctorate, they realize how little they know. And I definitely feel that — in fact, I believe I’ve talked about not knowing elsewhere on this site. One of the projects I’ve been working on for months is taking my EndNote database (now up to 6,211 articles at the time I write this post) and adding all the abstracts into that database that I can. I’m guessing that ultimately, about 4,500 of the articles I have in there now will have abstracts. At this point, I’m up to a little over 2,700. (Update, February 8: I now have 6,251 articles, and 4,739 have abstracts. The project is complete, some 3 years after I put it in Omnifocus to do!)
Why am I doing this? Could it be some secret need for closure? Is it FONK?
I think that it’s important for me as a department chair, teacher, and scholar to know the increasing boundaries of my discipline, and to have at least a small idea of the kind of work that my colleagues are doing and trends they’re talking about. In some cases, that’s easier to understand because I’ve studied or read enough that I can make my way through those areas of the discipline. While I’m not a performance studies scholar or journalist, I do know some about those areas so that I can (hopefully) intelligently be able to understand where my colleagues are positioned and how they approach their part of the discipline. And it certainly helps that when a colleague here at GCSU mentioned Petit Jean not that long ago, I’ve known quite a few people who have taken their students there, so I know what that conference is about and why it’s important (shoutout to LSU’s Performance Studies alumni and faculty!).
So what am I trying to accomplish by adding back all the abstracts? And why do I “collect” so many journal articles anyway? In part, our discipline covers a lot of ground: rhetoric, public address, public speaking, family communication, interpersonal communication, media studies, journalism, production, organizational communication, public relations, crisis communication, performance studies, argumentation, debate, political communication, persuasion, listening, health communication, technology and its impact on communication, communication education/instructional communication…. I could go on for longer, but all of those areas are part of our discipline. Of course, there’s always the rhetoric of inquiry, which means keeping up with other disciplines as well. As Gruber and Pietrucci argued in their review article in the December 2021 issue of POROI, “rhetorical scholars interested in science must be today spread all over technical and political landscapes like hot butter on toast.”
It’s not always easy to keep up with everything, even when (and perhaps because) I do get access to something like 15-16 journals as they’re published, and others with some kind of time delay. So every so often, I think it’s important to go back and see what I may have missed, and to get a better understanding of other parts of the discipline. It’s a hard task, but utlimately worthwhile.