Language Expectancy Theory

It appears that at least once every decade or so, there appears a renewed interest, as evidenced by public discussion and publication activity, in two recurring issues in the discipline of communication. The first focuses on the general health, or even the viability, of the study of Persuasion. Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Miller and M. Burgoon (1978) asked the question of whether or not a case could be made for Persuasion research. They claimed that while it would be hyPerbolic to state that the guns are silent on the Persuasive battleground, the roar of these guns has been sporadic and muted. They further added that traditional Persuasion research had been swimming against the ideological and scholarly currents of the past decade. They were writing at a time when Persuasion research, not only in the discipline of communication but also in allied social science disciplines, no longer was front and center stage but rather had been displaced by other concerns such as interPersonal communication and social cognition.

A dozen years later, M. Burgoon and Miller (1990) followed up on their earlier essay commenting on whether the former article's suggestions, injunctions, and conclusions about the directions of Persuasion research had much, if any, influence on the extant state of research in the area of social influence. They speculated that there would be a “rebirth” of interest in Persuasion research during the final decade of the final century of the then current millennium. Specifically, Burgoon and Miller predicted more concern for macrosocial concerns with an interest in the role of massive social change. They also suggested a greater emphasis on natural [Page 118]setting research that would allow researchers to scrutinize cultural and sociological patterns of communication so that Persuasion researchers could participate in socially important, tangible goals such as reducing the incidence of cancer by 50% by the year 2000.

AUTHORS' NOTE: Support for this research was provided by grants from the Arizona Disease Control Research Commission (Contracts 9804 and 9805), RO1HD31360 (National Institute for Child Health and Development), RO1DA12578 (National Institute on Drug Abuse), and 5POCA77502 (National Cancer Institute) to the senior author. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and not of the various funding agencies.

Perhaps most interesting—and not all of the current chapter authors are unbiased observers of their musings—was the following commentary by M. Burgoon and Miller (1990):

Most of the observations turned out to be relatively accurate harbingers of what the decade would bring in terms of the study of Persuasion. Moreover, that the study of social influence is relatively healthy and concerned with a number of areas of social import is not at issue, as it has been in the past, and is attested to by the existence of the current handbook, replete with examples of lively theoretical debate and interesting empirical data.

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