Destabilizing social communication theory

THIS ARTICLE seeks to conceptualize social communication as acomplex operation in uncertainty and argues that existing interactionaccounts are unable to construct a theory that is both sufficiently sensitive to uncertainty in cognitive and communication terms1 and able to reconcile such uncertainty with theoretical accounts of collective knowledge, consensus-formation or integration. Existing interaction accounts are heavily influenced by an interaction paradigm which continues to predominate in social communication models to this day and – under the influence of such varied theorists as Mead, Bakhtin, Husserl, Schutz, Luckmann and Habermas – to inform much of the human and social sciences.2 Taken at a weak, intuitive level of extension, the concept of interaction is unproblematic: people interact all the time. However, this is not the end of the story, since the term is more often than not accompanied by strong claims. It is taken as a synonym for generalized modes of interaction, and often modelled as dialogue, dialogism or exchange of meaning. These models raise some key issues discussed outside communication studies strictu sensu, for example, in social theory and logic, and are often based on notions of symmetry and even correspondence. This article argues that it is at this point of transition from intuitive notions to generalized models where problems relating to the theoretical conceptualization of interaction emerge. For it is at this point that intuitive beliefs are all too often reified. The central argument presented here is that, however defined, the interaction concept has changed little since the emergence of the semantic of interaction, remaining within transcendentally normative theories. Furthermore, despite the more recent diversification of communicatio