Consequentiality of Communication

Consequentiality is a framework for understanding the features and dynamics of the communication process that enable it to have an impact on social and cultural life. It focuses attention on the continuous production of behavior by communicators, the coordination required as each communicator adjusts to the unfolding scene or situation, and the meanings that arise in and through this process. Consequentiality serves as a contrast to alternative frameworks that study the effects of particular behavioral acts (“independent variables”) on other behavior (“dependent variables”) or the effects of mental or emotional states on behavior.

The consequentiality framework acknowledges the contingent and unpredictable quality of communication. The behavior communicators produce at any one time is dependent on what else is happening in the immediate circumstances: what all the participants have contributed to the scene up to that point; what is occurring simultaneously; and participants' calculation of what might happen next in the sequence to confirm, clarify, or even reshape the meaning and direction of the event. However, unpredictability does not mean that the communication process occurs randomly. Rather, it is recognition of communicators' ability to deploy selectively various resources for behavior (e.g., language, cultural expectations, social obligations) and, in doing so, to bring order and meaning to each unique communication event. Thus, the framework posits that the communication process makes use of cultural, psychological, and social resources but is a phenomenon sui generis, requiring its own explanations.

Consequentiality is not a single theory or research approach. Rather, the consequentiality framework permits study of the communication process by means of a wide variety of theories and methods, including conversation analysis, coordinated management of meaning, the ethnography of speaking, and social communication.

The framework was initially proposed as a direction for communication theory in an anthology titled The Consequentiality of Communication, edited by Stuart J. Sigman in 1995, with contributions from scholars representing a variety of perspectives. It developed from the concern that [Page 173]communication scholars began to address in the late 1970s and early 1980s that the communication discipline borrowed extensively from psychology; focused on the cognitive, emotional, and personality traits that appeared to influence the production of behavior; and did not consider how the ongoing process unfolded and was managed by communicators. Rather than provide a single communication theory, the initial articulation of consequentiality was intended to serve as a unifying framework for theory development and as a pointer to a set of observations about communication that theorists should attempt to explain.

The aforementioned studies from the 1970s onward acknowledged that the communication process itself, rather than cultural, psychological, or social antecedents to communication, is the proper study for the discipline. These early studies on the “doing” of communication primarily focused on the cultural and social resources that membership in a community makes available to communicators—the “codes,” “rules,” or “scripts” for behavior. The consequentiality framework acknowledges the important direction in the discipline's history represented by a rules approach. Consequentiality pushes the analysis further by focusing on the use and appearance of code resources in actual situations and on the constitutive role played by communication in bringing into existence social categories, cultural patterns, and psychological conditions.

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