Life Span Communication and Quality of Life
2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 57; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00325.x
ISSN1460-2466
Autores Tópico(s)Psychological and Temporal Perspectives Research
ResumoCommunication as a social-science discipline was an adolescent as I began my graduate career in the middle 1970s. It was not uncommon to be handed a syllabus for a graduate seminar in communication theory that required very few readings written by scholars whose academic home was within communication, or for that matter had ever heard of an academic discipline named communication. We mostly were schooled in the theories of human behavior and interaction that were freely flowing within social psychology, sociology, anthropology, and even economics. It is a much different story today. Our best "thinkers" have thought, theorized, tested, and revised an impressive breadth of communication theories, metatheories, and perspectives that help each one of us describe and understand human interaction. Communication is quickly moving into the young adulthood years. It is now time for us to move beyond our theoretical adolescence and to become mature thinkers and researchers! By this, I mean it is time for us to network, to interconnect our communication theory and research with the entirety of the social sciences, the life sciences and the professions within the dialogue of "bigger," more socially relevant questions. For me, this means moving toward a direct and specific link between the results of our empirical findings and the bigger issue that now drives the majority of my own work: quality of life. It is time for us to theorize about and to construct empirical models that place communication at the heart of any scientific discussion of successfully managing the short- and long-term challenges and adaptations that each of us encounter as we move through the entirety of our life span.
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