Studying Communication

I think that every academic researcher must experience a similar dilemma, the inevitable problem of trying to explain one’s work and discipline to outsiders – those family members, friends, and new acquaintances who, quite reasonably, would like to know “what you do” in your work. Communication researchers, however, seem to face an additional wrinkle in this explanation, I think, because the object of our study – “communication” – is a subject upon which everyone (it seems) considers him or herself an expert. The definition of our subject is also a question, (what do you mean by “communication,” anyway?) and most speakers also consider themselves to have a very good grasp of exactly what that definition is. They have very strong opinions on it, in fact.

I somehow doubt that physicists are routinely told, when they explain their work to non-academics, “Oh, yes, I use gravity every day. I know all about that.” Or that molecular geneticists are assured by new acquaintances, “Oh, yes, DNA. I have that. It’s pretty simple, right?”

Of course, this is not really a complaint, because all of the reactions generated by my response to the question, “So, what do you study, anyway?” also constitute data for me. The wrinkle does, however, create a rather difficult situation when research subjects do their best to tell me what they think I want to know about their communication, rather than simply letting me observe it. It seems to take a very long time before subjects will allow me to recede into the background, and become a mere observer, a data collection instrument, rather than the foregrounded oddity, outsider, random academic whose presence is cause for a great deal of speculation and conversation. Why would anyone need to study something so obvious?