COMM 250 Lecture 7: COMM250 Lecture 7.docx
23 Feb 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
A three stage model of communication inquiry a. Inquiry= how do we learn about communication: stage 1: observing communication phenomena, ask appropriate questions, ask questions to understand things better, stage 2: discovering theoretical explanations, stage 3: test theoretical explanations, see if we can find support. Two things to remember about theories- theories are : abstractions, theories are abstract forms of reality but not reality, constructions, theories are something that are built. The building blocks of theory: concepts, all theories contain concepts, explanations, some theories contain concepts explanations. Conceptualizing: start with concrete events, start by the real world, group similar events into categories, label categories (i. e. , concepts, define concepts, come up with definitions for what you mean in your theory (ex. Define technology: the realities of concepts can be defined in different ways. Identifies relationships among concepts: links all concepts together logically, answers questions why and/or how , relies on principle of necessity i.
