PREFACE
Rationale
I started working on the Instructor’s Manual for A First Look back in 2005 on the book’s
sixth edition. I agreed to this task because it’s a first-rate book and because I’ve enjoy talking
about pedagogy. I have been an avid consumer of the words of A First Look at Communication
Theory for many editions. In fact, I was a student in Em’s class when the book was in its first
edition. Over these 13 years, some things have changed dramatically—nearly one-quarter of the
theories covered are entirely different and every chapter has been edited, revamped, and
updated multiple times over that span of time. While it is fun to be “on the inside” as theories
In collaborating with the authors on this communication theory adventure, I see my role
as a supporting cast member both to the authors and to the scores of instructors who use this
book. As I see it, a central paradox characterizes the writing of a good guide: teaching manuals
can be distant, mechanical, impersonal, and lifeless, when in fact good teaching is immediate,
flexible, personal, and lively. In this manual, therefore, I have attempted to communicate to
fellow teachers as directly and vigorously as possible my advice for teaching with A First Look at
Communication Theory. The best way to talk about teaching, of course, is to do just that—talk.
For this edition of the manual, I am a lone wolf but that hardly means these are my ideas
alone. I joined Glen McClish, a talented rhetorical scholar on the manual for the sixth edition.
He and I composed that edition together. For the seventh edition, Glen offered sage counsel,
but more from the sidelines or the press box than from the perspective of an on-the-field player.
I still owe an enormous debt to Glen for his contributions. Though no longer actively involved in
the production of the manual, his words still fill many a page that follows.
In addition, each chapter has been vetted by the authors of the text. They have edited,
added, and amplified my words. For over a decade, Em and I have offered a short course at the
The Contents of This Manual
In order to help you teach the theories in the book as effectively as possible, I’ve included
a wide variety of material in this manual. After this prefatory essay and the sample course
schedules that follow, I move chapter by chapter through the textbook, providing information to
and evaluate their work or simply circulate the outline provided here and ask the students to
compare the two, this exercise will help them understand the structure of academic prose and
the level of detail for which they are responsible. (The concise chapter summaries in Appendix
A may also serve as study guides and checks on reading comprehension.) Please note that
these outlines should never serve as substitutes for the text itself. As basic summaries, they
necessarily sacrifice the depth and development of the original.
Next come Key Names and Terms, a concise list of the principal theorists and concepts
covered in the chapter. In this manual, I have chosen to list the same terms and definitions, so
The Kickoff Question and Interaction Starters section helps provide a starting point. In
my class, I start the day off with one of these type of items. They are intended to get the ball
rolling. Sometimes that directly address an idea that will be developed in the chapter while other
times they are thought-stimulating departure from the direct material of the theory. If you teach
favorite techniques for stimulating student learning. Please note that I include far more
suggestions than you’ll want or be able to use—pick and choose as you desire.
In addition, I would like to confess at the outset that the line between “suggestions for
discussion” and “exercises and activities” is often somewhat arbitrary. Between Suggestions
for Discussion and Exercises and Activities, I’ve included sample Application Logs, brief essays
written by my students in response to the application log assignment. (Below, I have included a
Supplementary bibliographic references are been provided under the heading of Further
Resources. These references are meant to augment, rather than to supplant, those already
listed in the Second Look sections of A First Look at Communication Theory. Many of the books
easily and productively between these two poles. Most of these selections may be assigned as
auxiliary reading projects for individuals or groups of students. Incidentally, you’ll notice that I
have more to suggest for some chapters than for others. This lack of uniformity is due largely to
the unevenness of my knowledge, rather than deliberate bias or intentional neglect. It is my
hope that you’ll help us out in the areas in which we need to expand our reading. If a source is
recommended in more than one chapter treatment, all subsequent citations after the first are
abbreviated.
You may also note, in both the further resources section and throughout the manual’s
discussion ideas, I have choose intentionally to include the work of a diverse offering of scholars
including those from who speak or research on non-Western perspectives or whose work
highlights marginalized groups. In the spirit of full disclosure, these perspectives are important
Lecture or Discussion?
In addition to establishing a comfortable and appropriate pace, I urge you to conduct your
class primarily as a discussion, rather than a lecture. A First Look at Communication Theory
ably assumes the lecturer’s role, laying out the material in an orderly, engaging manner. In
addition, the authors employs a personal, down-to-earth writing style that can be seriously
answer a wide variety of questions, to present and meet diverse challenges, and to offer
intriguing exercises and activities that apply, supplement, and test the theoretical material
presented in the book, and your course will shine.
Undoubtedly, it’s far easier simply to prepare and present detailed notes about the
material each day, but unless your charisma level is significantly higher than mine, you’ll run the
risk of boring your audience and yourself. (The most meaningful moments in teaching, like those
in all complex human interactions, transcend the script.) Worse yet, you’ll let your students off
the educational hook. At least half of the responsibility for what happens each day ought to be
theirs, and if you lecture, they’ll become passive participants in the process. Paulo Freire is right,
I realize, of course, that economic realities of educational institutions may necessitate
large, less personal classes that diminish the likelihood of fruitful discussion. Nonetheless, I
encourage you to do everything in your power to get your audience involved in the process.
making the assignment, challenge students to teach as they would like to be taught. If the class
size or other considerations prevent the assignment of one student to one chapter, consider
assigning chapters as group projects. For the sake of variety, I would encourage you not to place
all your student-led classes in a clump in the course schedule. Mix it up.
The Website
In addition to consulting other communication theory textbooks, I would like to
encourage you to check out the user-friendly website for A First Look at Communication
Theory.
www.afirstlook.com
The site has been designed primarily as a companion to the textbook and this Instructor’s
about the authors. At the top of the site are links to the theories featured in the book, as well
as links to complete chapters from earlier editions that covered theories not included in the
current text. If you want your students to read about Delia’s Constructivism, Poole’s Adaptive
Whenever a student comes in and discusses struggling with the course’s rigor, I always
encourage the students to read the manual online. Some instructors actually assign
it. Students need to work hard in this course and even modest success requires lots of
cognitive work.
In the instructors-only, restricted access areas, you can access discussion and activity
suggestions, principle changes, and short-answer quiz questions. After providing some basic
information (name, school, CV and the like), you will be given a password and gain entry.
Under McGraw-Hill’s sponsorship, the authors produced Conversations with
Communication Theorists, a video/CD comprised of interviews with thirteen of the theorists
featured in A First Look (plus a few in the archives). This resource gives you a chance to
personalize the theorists you introduce to your students. Its value, though, goes beyond helping
Constructing Quizzes and Examinations
Many of the Questions to Sharpen Your Focus included in the text make excellent quiz or
examination questions. Assigning these questions for quizzes has the added benefit of
encouraging students to prepare them in advance of class discussion. You may also wish to
consider integrating the cartoons and other visuals featured in the text into your examinations.
Because this book is so tightly packed with provocative ideas, I recommend scheduling at least
three exams over the course of the term. Even with three exams, students may request
additional tests in order to decrease the amount of material they’re responsible for on a given
day.
For my class, I have given up doing monthly exams in favor of weekly quizzes. Though
they complain about the rigor, many students like the accountability (“kept me from falling
(usually 2-3 weeks before the scheduled final exam period). On the day of the exam, I select the
given number of questions—usually 3—and students write their answers. This process has been
exceedingly effective. Students spend the last weeks of the course and their final examination
preparation time efficiently—they have the actual questions. But, I have found that they also
Student Reports and Papers
Students’ responses to exams are easy to quantify, and they provide useful measures of
some kinds of learning, but most exams bear little resemblance to the professional activities our
students will perform once they complete their formal education. Furthermore, the chapter–by–
chapter mastery of material that examinations foster is crucial, but other kinds of understanding
come only when one looks past the boundaries of such artificial units to the broad scope of
knowledge. In many educational settings, thus, a course such as the one developed around A
First Look at Communication Theory would include student oral reports and/or papers,
assignments that would transcend the scope of the Sample Examination Questions and the
1. Theory specialist
One of the best ways to approach oral reports and papers is to assign individualized
readings from the Second Look or Further Resources sections. Ask students to summarize the
key material presented in the source, place it within the context of the course, and critique its
2. Alternate theories
Another approach is to have students investigate theories, theoretical topics, and general
approaches to communication not explicitly featured in the text. Theories that fall in this
category include Plato’s dialectic (particularly as presented in the Phaedrus); Richard Weaver’s
ethical rhetoric; Robert Scott’s epistemic rhetoric; Stephen Toulmin’s model of argument; Wayne
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management theory; Eric Berne’s transactional analysis, performance theory, and conversation
analysis; Peter Anderson’s cognitive valence theory of intimate communication; Jacques
Derrida’s deconstruction; John Stewart and Milt Jackson’s dialogic listening; John Bowlby’s
attachment theory; Mary Ann Fitzpatrick’s theory of relationships; Caryl Rusbult’s equity theory;
Carl Rogers’s empathic arguer; Mark Knapp’s theory of relational stages; Jack Webb’s theory of
defensive communication; John Fiske’s consumer-oriented approach to media,Frank Dance’s
inner speech theory; Donald Cushman’s rules theory; Robert Sommer’s environmental
approach; Susan B. Shimanoff’s rules theory; Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics; Joshua
Meyrowitz’s theory of mediated place; Steven McCornack’s information manipulation theory;
James Grunig’s situational theory of publics; Young Yun Kim’s cross-cultural adaptation theory;
and Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham’s Johari Window. Each is worthy of investigation by the
right student or group of students.
One way to approach the assignment is to ask students to write their reports as potential
chapters for inclusion in the next edition of A First Look at Communication Theory. Require them
to include Critique, Second Look, Questions to Sharpen Your Focus sections, as well as comics
that bring to life key theoretical issues. Encourage them to keep in mind the principal virtues of
Griffin’s text—a down-to-earth prose style, extended examples, careful organization, concision,
and humor—as they write. This assignment works particularly well with students who are
concurrently enrolled in other communication courses.
3. Communication Theory in practice
Finally, you may wish to have students investigate their own communicative practice or
the practices of people they know. One way to help students develop material for such papers
is to encourage or require them to keep weekly journals in which they record the ways in which
the theories they are studying apply to their lives or the lives of people they know. You can collect
and grade this journal periodically or have students share their insights orally in class.
I require each student to write a paragraph of application for each theory. I then collect
a sample of these writings each week. Over the course of the term, we grade five submissions
from each student. Here is how we describe the “application log” assignment:
Consistent with Kurt Lewin’s famous maxim that there is nothing as practical as a good
theory, I ask students to apply each theory to their own lives. After you read a theory
chapter describing a communication theory (chapters 5-36), you are to write 1-3
Typed Entries
Please type your entries with margins that leave room for my comments. Keep your
whole collection of entries bound together and bring the entire batch to class every
Friday. I will read, comment upon, but not grade that first entry so that you can gain
feedback to guide you on future entries. For the remaining chapters, I will collect a
random sample of the logs every Friday. You will be asked to submit your log five
different times during the semester. The logs will provide an opportunity for you to show
that you grasp the theories’ practical implications and can apply them in specific
situations.
Second-chance/ On-line submission and discussion:
From your “unread” entries, you will post two (2) logs on Schoology to be read (by
classmates) and graded (by your professor). When responding, up to 3 people can
respond to any given post. Each post and response is graded.
The application log assignment is consistently rated as one of the best components of
the class by students. I am very specific: these entries are applications not summarizes
of the material (assuming we know the material, you don’t need to explains terms) or
critiques (I’m less concerned if students “liked” it and more interested if they “get” it).
The “second-chance” posting do two things: allows students to have good entries read
Teaching Theory to the Large Lecture Class*
Teaching an introductory theory class can be a somewhat daunting task. Teaching theory
as a required course to a classroom with as many as 180 students, drawn from a variety of
communication majors (e.g., advertising, journalism, public affairs, intercultural communication,
etc.), offers even greater challenges.
Theory, by nature, is abstract and often difficult for some to grasp. This difficulty can be
exacerbated by equally abstract presentations offered to an audience with an inherently short
attention span and an expectation that they should be amused. However, one way to kindle
interest and promote understanding is by presenting the information in a context relevant to the
audience’s interests and personal experiences. This will, of course, require a degree of
familiarization with the life style of students in your locale (i.e., where and how do they spend
their leisure time, how many are employed, what are the student body social norms, what is on
* These remarks are based on comments by Professor Emeritus Ed McDaniel (San Diego State
University) and Glenn Sparks (co-author of A First Look who teaches at Purdue University).
enthusiasm. Lecture materials can, and should be, enhanced through what I consider
performance activities. These activities will involve only a few (volunteer) students, and
frequently, the instructor. Although large lecture sections generally preclude small group
interactions, there are activities (e.g., the elevator exercise discussed in Chapter 7 on
expectancy violations theory, as well as others noted in this manual) that can be used to
There is also the question of student attendance—should attendance be mandatory or
not? If required, then a method must be devised to rapidly assess who is present and who is
absent, but taking role in a class of 180 students requires considerable time. From my
experience, not requiring attendance is the best course of action. This helps eliminate those
students who would come if required, but would not be attentive and would probably create
distractions for other students, as well as yourself. An alternate approach is to take “pop
attendance.” Glenn chooses to tell students that attendance will not be taken at every lecture—
but it will be taken at 7-10 randomly selected lectures unannounced to students ahead of those
class sessions. He counts attendance for a certain number of points at each selected lecture
frequent self-deprecating illustrations related to the theory. Not only does this approach help
explain the concepts; it can serve to reduce the professor-student intimidation barrier.
If your institution has an online course delivery and management system (such as
BlackBoard or Schoology), you can ease your administrative burden and concomitantly save the
department money by reducing copy costs. I use the classroom management system to post
It is best if large lectures are structured with a weekly lab or recitation section also
assigned to each student. At Purdue, where Glenn teaches, enrollment in those lab sessions is
capped at 25 students. These sessions afford the advantage of providing opportunity for deeper
exploration, discussion, and Q&A about material covered in the large lecture sessions. Graduate
students run these lab sessions each week as their teaching assignment for the semester.
A Pitch for Pluralism
As you construct your syllabus and prepare for the first day of the course, I want to
encourage you to think as pluralistically as possible about communication theory. All of us come
to such teaching assignments with our professional biases, developed over years of specialized
graduate training, specific research programs, and pedagogical practice. The goal of A First Look
at Communication Theory, however, is to reveal the full spectrum of theoretical possibilities, a
goal that can only be achieved if the instructor facilitates open-minded investigation of all
than any subset offers. I’m sufficiently postmodern to believe that an entirely objective,
complete understanding of reality is beyond our comprehension, but its rough image gradually
takes shape if we work our critical pencils dutifully. The goal of achieving the best picture
possible of the human condition, it seems to me, lies at the very heart of A First Look at
Communication Theory.
Closely related to pluralism is the value of partial theoretical applicability. Many students
will be tempted to reject a theoretical construct if it does not fit perfectly with their perception of
reality. Others become suspicious when they see well-known theories rigorously questioned in
the Critique sections of this book. The classic student lamentation: “Well, if every theory has
The Tree or the Forest: Making efforts to integrate
One of the first and most important decisions you need to make as a communication
theory instructor is your basic approach: will you go with a theory-by-theory approach (in
keeping with the layout of A First Look) or will you re-order theories by schools of thought,
paradigms, or traditions. It will likely come as no surprise that I favor a one-theory-at-a-time
provided a needed backstory or extension to another theory. They can also be in competition,
telling narratives that seem to clash. In each case, I think it is important for students to
understand the points of assimilation and of discord.
I have found I need to force-feed my students on integration for about half the semester
before they can make some of those connections on their own. As soon as you have a few
theories under your belt, I would encourage you to start making associations. In my classes, I
tell students to star a concept in their notes (if I know we will be returning to it on a different
theory) or to put a foreshadowing comment in the margins (if we aren’t to something yet that
will be linked back later). Don’t worry if, as a first–time instructor, you aren’t as prepared to do
this form of heavy lifting. Once you have been through the class, it gets easier—and dare I say,
a lot more fun.
Fasten your seatbelt! Enjoy the ride!
Having taken care of the preliminaries, there’s not much more for me to say here except
“good luck” and “go to it.” I know the assignment seems overwhelming at times, but remember
that as you face the task of teaching this daunting course, no one on earth is really qualified for
the job. No one has the breadth of knowledge necessary to fully understand every theory
inevitably raise, you’ll do fine. Remember, as well, that my opening comments about desiring