Communication Theory ISSN 1050-3293

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Constitutive Metamodel:

A 16-Year Review
Robert T. Craig
Department of Communication, University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA

This article reviews the uses that have been made of the constitutive metamodel (R. T. Craig,
1999) in the first 16 years since its publication. The metamodel has been widely cited as a
shorthand reference to the field, and has been used as a device for teaching theory, reflecting
on communication problems from multiple perspectives, and assessing particular theories
or subdisciplinary areas in relation to the field as a whole. Scholars have also proposed new
traditions of communication theory and at least one revised conception of the traditions
in general. Critiques of the metamodel have focused on questions of epistemological bias,
disconnection of theory from research, the definition of traditions, and the potential for
productive dialogue in the field.

Keywords: Communication Theory, Constitutive Metamodel, Epistemology, Metatheory,

Pragmatism, Traditions of Communication Theory.

doi:10.1111/comt.12076

The rationale for the constitutive metamodel of communication theory that I offered
in Craig (1999) was essentially a practical opportunity argument. Conceived on this
metamodel (a model of models), diverse theories of communication provide us with
a wide array of normative models for constituting (understanding and shaping) the
practice of communication, and the pluralistic field of communication theory is
unified by a common engagement among its seven main traditions in dialogue and
debate on communication problems along a continuum that connects the “theoretical
metadiscourse” of the discipline to the “practical metadiscourse” of everyday life.
The article did not claim that the constitutive metamodel is conclusively warranted
either by rational argument (as an onto-epistemological necessity) or empirical fact
(as a literal description of the field). Rather, this model of and for the field was
recommended as a practical alternative, an opportunity to overcome intellectual
fragmentation, realize the heuristic potential of diversity, and maximize the field’s
practical contribution to society. As the article concluded, “This field of communica-
tion theory is not a repository of absolute truth. It claims no more than to be useful”

Corresponding author: Robert T. Craig; e-mail: Robert.Craig@Colorado.edu

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R. T. Craig The Constitutive Metamodel

(p. 154). Sixteen years later, we may be in a better position to estimate the cash value
of that claim.
How can we assess usefulness? Craig (1999) suggested that work in the field should
use the metamodel: (a) to explore the traditions of communication theory in order
to illuminate key issues among them, (b) to create and engage in discussion on new
traditions and new ways of representing the field, and (c) to apply the traditions to
address real-world communication problems and as a framework for teaching com-
munication theory. Craig (2009b) suggested that the metamodel could be used to cul-
tivate theoretical cosmopolitanism (a broad appreciation of alternative approaches),
to develop comparative, multitheoretical analyses of communication problems, to
conceptualize or reconceptualize theoretical traditions, and to engage in dialogue and
debate with other conceptions of the field. Craig (2007) cautioned that the metamodel
“is at best a simplified heuristic device for thinking about the field as a whole” and
that “[o]nly a small part of the field’s actual work can directly address this [metathe-
oretical] level of analysis” (p. 139). To what extent have communication theorists
used the metamodel as a heuristic device for thinking about the field as a whole, and
what has come out of those efforts? A review of the literature shows that scholars
have applied the metamodel in ways that implicitly follow several of the suggestions
just mentioned. Increasingly in recent years the metamodel has become a subject of
critical discussion among communication theorists, thus fulfilling to some extent its
declared purpose to “jump-start” a reflexive discourse in the field (Craig, 1999, p. 132).
These applications and critiques are discussed in the following sections, and the essay
concludes with a brief reflection on the current state and future prospect of commu-
nication theory as a field.

Applications
The metamodel has been applied through mere citation as a shorthand reference
to the field, and has been used more substantively as a device for teaching theory,
for reflecting on communication problems, and for assessing particular theories
or subdisciplinary areas in relation to the field as a whole. Scholars have also
proposed new traditions and at least one revised conception of the traditions in
general.

Mere citation
As of early 2015, Craig (1999) was approaching 800 Google Scholar citations and
had reached 130 Web of Science citations, ranking it the eighth most cited on Web
of Science among 514 articles published in the first 24 volumes of Communication
Theory. The citations ranged widely across disciplines. For example, the most recent
Web of Science citation at that time was in the field of aquatic conservation. The arti-
cle has also been reprinted (in Craig & Muller, 2007) and has appeared in Russian
( , 2003) and French (Craig, 2009a) translations, all of which versions have
garnered additional citations.

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The Constitutive Metamodel R. T. Craig

It seems quite likely that some of those who have cited the article have never read
it, or in any case they make no substantial use of it. A casual inspection suggests
that some citations, including ones from communication and media studies as well
as other disciplines, have been used as a shorthand way of noting the existence of
communication theory in general, or of one or more of the seven main traditions that
initially populated the metamodel, with little if any further comment. However, as a
widely disseminated stand-in for the field, even in mere citation, the article may have
contributed in some part to the socially constructed, transdisciplinary existence of
communication theory as a field: The field is cited as a source of authority; therefore
it exists.

Teaching
Among the earliest substantial uses of the metamodel were in prominent general com-
munication theory textbooks. Em Griffin added a chapter on “Mapping the Territory”
to the fourth edition of his text (Griffin, 2000), in which he presented his interpreta-
tions of the seven traditions (later editions added an eighth, “ethical tradition”) and
placed the traditions in a visual map of the field along a primary continuum ranging
from “objective” to “interpretive” forms of theory. Stephen Littlejohn added a section
on the metamodel to his seventh edition (2002) and in the next edition, Littlejohn
and Foss (2005) reorganized the text according to a matrix that cross-classified the-
ories in the seven traditions (except for rhetoric) with a set of topical domains (the
communicator, the message, etc.), thus showing which traditions were represented
by theories in each domain. Some texts included short sections in which the meta-
model and the seven traditions were used to illustrate the breadth of communication
theory (Miller, 2002; Richard & Lussier, 2005). Other textbooks have mentioned the
metamodel briefly or not at all.
The intellectual diversity of communication theory as well as the sheer amount
of material that could potentially be included makes it a challenging subject to teach.
Even in a course that does not embrace the underlying principles of the constitutive
metamodel, the seven traditions can be useful for giving students a broad overview of
the subject before introducing a selection of theories for closer study (e.g., Maguire,
2006). Of course, disagreement with its underlying principles can be a good reason
not to use the metamodel, or a narrower approach to the subject may be preferred for
many reasons. Also, this way of representing the field competes with well-established
classification schemes such as epistemological paradigms, “levels” of communication,
and even the hoary “laws-rules-systems” framework that is still used in some courses.
Textbook authors have adapted the seven-tradition scheme and grafted it onto
earlier organizational schemes creatively, although without necessarily addressing the
theoretical issues that arise in doing so. For example, Griffin’s “ethical tradition” cap-
tures what is surely an important dimension of communication theory across tradi-
tions, but its presentation takes no account of the metamodel’s criteria for defining tra-
ditions (Craig, 1999, 2007). Authors have also redefined particular traditions without
reflecting on the implications. For example, Littlejohn (in 2002 and in later editions

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R. T. Craig The Constitutive Metamodel

with Foss) defined the phenomenological tradition in a way that fits well with con-
tent carried forward from earlier editions but differs substantially from that in Craig
(1999), without mentioning the difference. My point is not that my version is neces-
sarily better but that efforts to clarify and discuss differences can serve the field well.
(One could argue in reply that textbooks have a different function.)
While the most common use of the metamodel in teaching has been for the pur-
pose of teaching communication theory, Garcia-Jiménez (2014, 2015) has proposed
to apply it directly as method for analyzing interpersonal communication problems in
multiple perspectives. Her Pragmatic Metamodel of Communication incorporates the
seven traditions in a three-level heuristic scheme of cultural traits, relational dialec-
tics, and metadiscourse. It enables users to reflect on how they describe their commu-
nication problems and to consider alternative descriptions. The model also provides a
framework for cross-cultural comparative research on conceptions of communication
and practical reasoning about communication problems. This approach implicitly
replies to a criticism that the constitutive metamodel inherently focuses the field of
communication theory on the study of theories rather than the study of communica-
tion itself (Martín Algarra, 2009).
Uses of the metamodel in teaching understandably often tend to emphasize the
seven traditions instead of the more abstract principles on which the scheme was
constructed, but this can promote a common misunderstanding of statements like
“Theory X is in tradition Y” through a container metaphor. Traditions as conceived
in the constitutive metamodel are not discrete, inert containers; they do not compose
a fixed system of classification such that each theory can be placed in one and only one
tradition. This container view forgets the essential historicity and interpretive open-
ness of traditions. To be “in” a tradition is less like being contained in a category and
more like intervening to carry forward an ongoing discourse, taking something said
in the past and applying it to a current situation, which always changes the tradition
in some way (Gadamer, 1960/1989). Theories are informed by traditions and carry
them forward. And, of course, a developing line of theory can be simultaneously or
successively “in” more than one tradition in this sense.

Critical reflection on theories and subfields

Scholars have used the constitutive metamodel to reflect on particular theories or sub-
fields of communication research in relation to the field as a whole. For example, Davis
(2013) assessed Luhmann’s contribution in the context of second-order cybernetics
and theories of social autopoiesis, and Siebers (in Garcia-Jiménez, Simonson, Siebers,
& Craig, 2012) reflected on Badiou’s philosophy of the event as a contribution that
might transform the phenomenological tradition or possibly should be recognized as
a new tradition.
Several studies (in addition to work by Garcia-Jiménez discussed above) have
used the metamodel in overviews of interpersonal communication scholarship.
Isotalus and Hargie (2012) described the articles in their special issue on “In-
terpersonal Communication and Social Interaction” in part by associating them

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The Constitutive Metamodel R. T. Craig

with particular traditions of communication theory. Manning (2014) constructed

a model of interpersonal communication research to show how eight traditions
of communication theory all currently contribute to the field and to suggest how
dialogue could be advanced by extending and translating theories across traditions.
Haugh, Kádár, and Mills (2013) argued that the interdisciplinary field of Inter-
personal Pragmatics requires a metatheory similar to the constitutive metamodel
in order to facilitate more productive interaction among theoretical approaches
in the field.
Garcia-Jiménez (2012; and in Garcia-Jiménez et al., 2012) used the metamodel’s
sociopsychological and critical traditions to develop an argument about concep-
tions of communication as a social force in 20th-century thought. She argued that
sociopsychological-functionalist and critical theory traditions both described tech-
nologically mediated (mass) communication as a force that functioned to maintain
the status quo in society and to marginalize counterideologies, but theorists in the
two traditions evaluated this reality differently. Paradoxically, communication was
understood both as a primary source of symbolic power that upheld the established
order and, at the same time, as a primary means of emancipation from oppression. In
a different vein, Rich and Craig (2012) mounted a debate between Habermas’s critical
theory of communicative action and Bateson’s cybernetic theory of relational com-
munication in order to theorize nuclear deterrence as a normative communication
problem.
An especially interesting use of multiple traditions to illuminate a normative prob-
lem in communication theory and practice will be found in Eleanor Sandry’s (2015)
book, Robots and Communication. Sandry uses the constitutive metamodel both to
illuminate human-robot interaction in various perspectives and to explore the impli-
cations of these new forms of communication for the design of robots. Specifically,
Sandry pursues a critique of the commonplace belief that human–robot communi-
cation will improve as robots become more humanoid; that is, more like humans.
Underlying this belief is an assumption that successful communication depends on
similarity and produces more similarity in the form of mutual understanding. Cur-
rent trends in communication theory give reason to question this assumption and the
ideal vision of communication with humanoid robots that flow from it, and instead
emphasize the essential importance of otherness and difference in communication.
Some of these arguments are functional and/or sociopsychological (e.g., relating to
dynamic systems and team collaboration), some are ontological (e.g., neo-cybernetic,
posthumanist questioning of traditional anthropocentric distinctions between
humans, animals, and machines), and some are existential or phenomenological,
arguing that authentic communication is fundamentally an experience of nonunder-
standing and irreducible difference. Sandry uses these theories to describe, interpret
and critique examples of human–robot communication drawn from fiction, robotics
research, and contemporary art, while raising questions along the way that pro-
voke reflection on the traditions of communication theory currently represented in
the metamodel.

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New or redefined traditions

Craig (1999) emphasized that the constitutive metamodel’s matrix of seven theoret-
ical traditions is not a closed system with a fixed number and identity of traditions.
Not only is the specific structure of the matrix debatable, it is likely to evolve over time
as the field develops. The metamodel is open to additional “new” traditions, reinter-
pretation of traditions, and even new ways of representing the field. With regard to
new traditions, Craig (1999; see also Craig & Muller, 2007) mentioned several candi-
dates including feminist, aesthetic, spiritual, economic, and biological traditions. Few
scholars have apparently responded to this invitation to propose additions or modi-
fications to the metamodel. To my knowledge, only two fully developed proposals of
new traditions will have appeared in refereed publications as of 2015.
The first was Russill’s (2005, 2008) proposal of a pragmatist tradition of com-
munication theory, which I further elaborated in Craig (2007). For theorists in this
tradition, communication problems arise from the difficulty of achieving consensus
on matters of common concern among the diverse interests and incommensurable
worldviews in complex modern societies. Pragmatist communication theory is con-
cerned with forms of discourse that enable the creation and maintenance of cooper-
ative, pluralistic communities in response to such problems. Russill not only showed
that this tradition exists in the field and offers a distinct conception of communica-
tion, he also made the interesting observation that the constitutive metamodel itself
is a pragmatist theory of communication: a theory in the field as well as of the field.
Second, Rich (in press) has proposed a spiritual tradition of communication the-
ory in which communication is conceived as mimetic of the atemporal. This tradition
is based on a dualistic distinction between the temporal, material world in which we
practice human communication and an atemporal, spiritual plane of truth that can
influence our temporal beliefs and practices when we manage to connect with it, but
that is not in any way influenced, much less socially constructed, through human
interaction. Normative human communication can represent atemporal truth, but
only imperfectly. Among many writings on communication in the spiritual tradition
Rich cites classical works of Plato and Augustine, certain strains of American prag-
matism, and contemporary works including those of several communication scholars.
Having defined the spiritual tradition, Rich puts it in conversation with the eight pre-
viously defined traditions in the field, noting, for example, that genuine dialogue in the
phenomenological tradition is an experience of meeting between individuals while in
the spiritual tradition it emerges from a shared atemporal moment.
The constitutive metamodel advances certain criteria for counting something as
a main tradition in the field. A tradition should run though a substantial body of
thought characterized by historical development and internal complexity and cen-
tered on a fundamental conception of communication that is clearly distinct from
those of all other traditions. The use of these criteria to judge the status of a tra-
dition is not an end in itself. It serves the larger heuristic purpose of reflecting on
how a developing body of thought relates to other approaches across the field and the
implications that it may have for the practice of communication as conceived in other

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The Constitutive Metamodel R. T. Craig

traditions. Rich (in press) notes, for example, that positioning Plato in the critical
tradition, while not invalid, ignores an important distinction between Plato’s dualis-
tic concept of atemporal truth and the monistic materialism of more recent critical
theory.
This interpretive exercise can be instructive even when one’s judgment concern-
ing the status of a candidate tradition turns out to be negative. For example, I have
maintained that there is no distinct biological tradition of communication theory
even while acknowledging the important and growing role of biological thought in the
field (Craig, 1999; Craig & Muller, 2007). Two recent special issues on “Biological and
Physiological Approaches to Communication” (Afifi & Floyd, 2015) and “Biology and
Brains—Methodological Innovations in Communication Science” (Weber, 2015) do
not fundamentally challenge this assessment. Biological approaches continue to grow
in importance. The “problem” from the standpoint of the constitutive metamodel
(which, of course, is no problem at all for biological approaches in their own terms) is
that the sociopsychological and/or cybernetic concepts of communication that under-
lie this research are neither novel nor distinct from traditions already defined in the
metamodel. These studies conceptualize communication as behavioral expression,
interaction, and influence (sociopsychological tradition) and/or as information trans-
mission and processing (cybernetic tradition), depending on the particular research
focus. The novel contribution of these approaches is not a distinct conception of com-
munication but rather a new range of research techniques and causal mechanisms for
explaining communication behavior—a primary concern of the sociopsychological
tradition.
Although the biological turn does not constitute a new tradition in the metamodel,
however, it marks an important change of emphasis in the sociopsychological tradi-
tion of communication theory with implications that radiate across the field. Reflect-
ing on those implications can have heuristic value. The central practical “message”
of sociopsychological theory for the field at large concerns the causal predictabil-
ity of communication and the possibility of intervention to manipulate the causes to
control outcomes. The biological turn suggests that those interventions will increas-
ingly take the form of drugs, gene therapy, prosthetic implants, assistive devices, etc.,
so more and more communication problems as conceived in this tradition will no
longer have communication (information- or talk-based) solutions. Not only does
this trend potentially challenge claims about the centrality of communication that may
arise from other traditions, it also projects a changing landscape among the traditions
marked by a convergence of sociopsychological (e.g., physiological explanations of
message effects), cybernetic (e.g., neural processing and biocomputing), and semiotic
(biosemiotic) theories.
The limitations of such thought experiments with the metamodel should be
acknowledged. They are interpretive exercises undertaken for heuristic purposes.
Slavish adherence to the “rules” for defining traditions may be judged overly rigid,
artificial, or pedantic in some cases. Debate needs to focus on the claims of particular
theories, with the broad context of the field usually well in the background. However,

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R. T. Craig The Constitutive Metamodel

I believe the benefits of making that metatheoretical move occasionally can be

quite substantial. Even just running through the traditions as a kind of checklist of
possible approaches to a particular problem can yield surprising insights, suggest
new distinctions, and illuminate practical dilemmas. The usefulness is limited but
not inconsiderable.

Reconstructing the metamodel

Craig (1999) invited alternative representations of the field, and Craig (2007) claimed
that any tradition could be used to reconstruct the entire matrix of traditions accord-
ing to its own conception of communication. Craig and Muller (2007) pointed out in
particular that nonwestern traditions of communication theory challenge the euro-
centrism of the current scheme and may lead the way a more inclusive representa-
tion of the field. De-westernization of communication theory has emerged recently
as an important movement that faces complex issues (Waisbord & Mellado, 2014).
Gunaratne (2010), while pursuing a de-westernization agenda, nevertheless used the
metamodel’s original seven traditions as a framework in which to articulate distinct
nonwestern contributions to the field. However, he also noted that the integration
of nonwestern thought would transform the traditions while correcting their euro-
centric bias. Gunaratne (2015) has extended the roots of the seven traditions further
into Eastern thought while also suggesting a “globalized” Buddhist reconstruction of
communication history that would avoid dividing the field into separate traditions.
How this proposed reconstruction might replace or otherwise relate to the constitu-
tive metamodel remains to be clarified.
Cooren (2012, 2014) has proposed to reconstruct the constitutive metamodel on
the basis of a “ventriloquil” theory of communication. The metaphor of ventriloquism
highlights properties of human interaction that explain how abstract social realities
such as identities, organizations, and ideologies are communicatively constituted. The
ventriloquist who speaks for a dummy must speak in the dummy’s voice and respond
in turn to what the dummy says, and in this light it can just as well be said that the
dummy animates the ventriloquist as that the ventriloquist animates the dummy. The
dummy has its own sort of agency in the situation. Just so, interacting humans who
speak for, or in the name of, figures such as rules, facts, and groups in order to val-
idate lines of social action, at once animate and are animated by those things, all of
which have their own sorts of agency. An ideology, for example, only really exists as
it animates speakers who give it voice for their own purposes.
Like a lot of new theoretical work, Cooren’s theory does not neatly follow any one
tradition of the metamodel, although it clearly speaks to traditional concerns of the
interactionist (micro) wing of sociocultural theory. Cooren (2014), however, places
it in the pragmatist tradition and proposes to use it as a constitutive metamodel for
the field of communication theory, just as I derived a metamodel (implicitly in Craig,
1999; explicitly in Craig, 2007) from a different strain of pragmatism. In Cooren’s ver-
sion, the problem for communication theory is how to construct communication, and
traditions are defined by what they “have to say” about that problem, or what Cooren

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The Constitutive Metamodel R. T. Craig

calls each tradition’s “design specs” for communication. A coherent metamodel can
be built up by incorporating design specifications that respond to the concerns of
each tradition. Each tradition thus animates the metamodel as it is animated by the
metamodel for the metamodel’s purposes. This is Cooren’s version of dialogue in the
field.
In contrast to the ideal of “dialogical–dialectical” coherence proposed in Craig
(1999), Cooren’s vision of theoretical metadiscourse in the field aims for something
like a unified metatheory that incorporates relevant insights from all traditions but
is characterized by “a certain ontological and epistemological coherence” (2012,
pp. 11–12). Craig (1999) explicitly opposed this goal, arguing that a unified theory
of communication is not only unlikely in practice but would be undesirable from
a practical standpoint (because it would sacrifice the heuristic potential of diverse
communication models offering diverse perspectives on problems), and that a con-
stitutive metamodel of communication must acknowledge the “reflexive paradox”:
that no one constitutive model of communication can be exclusively true in principle.
Cooren has not responded to those arguments.
These two versions of the metamodel agree on some fundamentals. The core
problem of communication theory for both is how to construct the practice of
communication, and both define the traditions of communication theory as forms
of metadiscourse for constituting communication. The key difference is that Craig
(1999) attempted to define the traditions entirely in their own terms, happily allowing
them to contradict each other (and themselves, through self-criticism) for the sake
of illuminating issues and opening spaces for dialogue, whereas Cooren (2012,
2014) has attempted to incorporate selected elements of all traditions in a unified
metatheory. As Cooren writes, “the basic idea of our exercise is not to respect a
whole tradition, but to respond to what seems to matter to its representatives in
terms of communicative constitutiveness” (2012, p. 9). This is a reasonable position:
If the problem of communication theory is how to construct communication, then
we should develop a coherent theory in response to that problem. However, what
is the potential of any such theory to serve as a metatheory for a field that remains
stubbornly, and rightly, pluralistic? If a constitutive metamodel must acknowledge
an epistemological “reflexive paradox,” it must also acknowledge the pragmatic
“paradox of pluralism” that confronts pragmatism itself: a position that wants to
embraces the pluralistic whole, thereby denying its own positionality (Craig, 2007).
Coherence in a pluralistic community is an elusive goal, but then so is dialogue—a
point I return to below.
Cooren endorses the principle that communication theory is a problem-oriented,
metadiscursive practice and writes that the ventriloquil reconstruction of the con-
stitutive metamodel is intended to provide conceptual resources for reflecting on
practical problems (2012, p. 13). However, his presentation of the seven traditions
does not engage with their fundamentally different ways of framing communication
problems, which is a primary source of their heuristic value for Craig (1999). This is

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R. T. Craig The Constitutive Metamodel

not to suggest that the ventriloquil theory is without practical usefulness. To the con-
trary, it seems especially useful for reflecting on problems of agency, authority, and
responsibility in communication. It provides a rich, nuanced vocabulary for dis-
tributing agency among different kinds of entities, taking account of the paradoxical
reversibility of the roles of ventriloquist and dummy, and negotiating claims of
authority. In this regard, it may prove more useful as a theory in the field than as a
theory of the field. However, in the latter role it usefully opens a critical discussion on
the question of epistemological versus dialogical–dialectical coherence in the field
of communication theory.

Critiques
If an explicit goal of the constitutive metamodel was to stimulate discussion in and
about the field, then criticism of the metamodel can be evidence of its usefulness for
the intended purpose, especially when a creative proposal such as Cooren’s ventril-
oquil reconstruction is the result. While Cooren has pressed for stricter adherence
to a constructionist epistemological stance, other critics have taken issue with what
they regard as the metamodel’s excessively constructionist epistemology, its failure to
articulate theory with research, its conception of traditions in general or of particular
traditions, or its “dialogical–dialectical” model of communication in the field. I take
up each of these areas of criticism briefly before concluding.

Epistemological bias
The metamodel has been criticized for epistemological relativism and idealism. It is
indeed relativist in its assumption that many theories of communication can be use-
ful for different purposes, so we need not look for the one true or best theory, and
idealist in its assumption that the practice of communication is constituted in part by
the metadiscursive vocabularies we use to talk about it. An early critic, Myers (2001;
see also Craig, 2001) charged that the metamodel, while falsely claiming to embrace
the diversity of the field, actually reduces and assimilates all theoretical traditions to
an imposed, social constructionist model of communication, and that it provides no
basis for assessing the empirical truth of theories or rejecting false theories. In an essay
defending an objectivist, biological-behavioral approach to communication research,
Sánchez and Campos (2009) rejected the metamodel along with all other “fashion-
able contemporary constructivist, relativist, perspectivist and postmodernist, forms
of addressing communication theory” (p. 76). Bergman (2012), still writing from a
realist position but one aligned with philosophical pragmatism, advanced the more
nuanced view that the metamodel is not actually incompatible with some versions of
epistemological realism, a point with which I agree.
Although the metamodel is indeed both relativist and idealist in some respects, it
is more fundamentally a pragmatist project (Craig, 2007) that wants our field to make
a real difference in the real world by informing the conversations about communi-
cation problems and practices that are always going on in society. (Contra Kirtiklis,

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The Constitutive Metamodel R. T. Craig

2009, the point of conversation about theories according to the metamodel is precisely
to establish their relevance to everyday problems.) The metamodel assumes that those
conversations really can make a difference in the formation of social norms and com-
monplace beliefs about communication, and that our work really can influence those
conversations. This communication process through which communication research,
in the role of a practical discipline, interacts with communicative practices in society
(Craig, 1989, 2006) is one that can and should be studied empirically while keeping in
mind the distinction between the process as it currently goes on and as it could go on
if communication research were more consistently oriented to this purpose. In other
words, the role and mission of our discipline in society is fundamentally a norma-
tive question, not an empirical one, although the potential success of any normative
model of the discipline is subject to real empirical constraints and consequences that
warrant investigation.
As it is with the practice of communication research, so it is with the practice
of communication. The constitutive metamodel assumes that communication prac-
tices are sufficiently malleable (at least to the extent already proven by their historical
and cultural variability) that conversations about how they should be conducted can
make a difference in how they really are conducted. This, again, is a question that can
be investigated empirically (e.g., Garcia-Jiménez, 2014) while keeping in mind that it
is not a purely empirical problem. How we should conduct our communication prac-
tices is fundamentally a normative question, although the possible answers are subject
to empirical constraints and consequences. To whatever extent biological-behavioral
studies prove that certain communication phenomena are highly predictable, deter-
mined by known causes, and not malleable at all, then those empirical facts should
influence our normative discussions in theory and in practice. In terms of the meta-
model, this might take the form of a sociopsychological critique of unrealistic assump-
tions about communication that hold sway in some other theoretical traditions. This is
one way that sociopsychological communication theory can be useful. Even so, other
sorts of metadiscourse, including other traditions of communication theory, can also
continue to be useful for the different problem frames and normative visions of com-
municative practice that they suggest. Hence, the constitutive metamodel’s pragmatic
relativisim and idealism are not inconsistent with pragmatic realism and appropriate
respect for empirical truth.

Articulation of theory to research

A second line of critique related to epistemology is that the constitutive meta-
model’s way of defining theoretical traditions according to their characteris-
tic conceptions of communication fails to align the traditions with the main
epistemological–methodological positions in the field and in social science gen-
erally, thereby disconnecting theory from research, isolating communication from
other social sciences, and distracting attention from fundamental assumptions that
underlie different approaches (Kirtiklis, 2011; see also Nastasia & Rakow, 2010). This
critique reveals a limitation of the metamodel and supports the conclusion that other

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R. T. Craig The Constitutive Metamodel

ways of representing the structure of theory in the field are needed, at least for some
purposes. It also allows us to clarify by way of contrast the specific purposes that the
metamodel can best serve from those it cannot.
Kirtiklis (2011) argues that a typology of theory in the field should align with epis-
temological positions and their associated research methodologies, which, he argues,
are essentially two: naturalist and interpretive. Such a typology clarifies how different
kinds of research contribute to their corresponding forms of theory development. It
also captures the most obvious dimension on which the discipline of communication
tends to polarize, not only, like other social sciences, with regard to epistemology but
also with regard to the very idea of communication. That is, naturalist (realist, objec-
tivist, empirical-scientific) theory not only aligns with certain empirical–analytical
research methods, it also aligns with what Carey (2009) called a transmission (infor-
mational, effects-oriented) concept of communication. At the opposite pole, interpre-
tive theory aligns with interpretive-critical research methods and with ritual (cultural,
constitutive) concepts of communication.
This analysis seems to me essentially correct. Even my own most recent attempt
to represent methods of theory construction in communication research relied on a
primary distinction between empirical-scientific and critical-interpretive approaches,
while also acknowledging many finer distinctions within each of those two broad cate-
gories (Craig, 2013). The cross-cutting lines of difference pointed out by Stanfill (2012)
still tend to correlate along this one main dimension. Notably, the traditions defined in
the constitutive metamodel also align to some extent with this dimension. Gunaratne
(2010) divided the seven traditions, though perhaps a bit too neatly, into three identi-
fied with communication science (sociopsychological, cybernetic, and sociocultural)
and four identified with communication arts (rhetorical, semiotic, phenomenolog-
ical, and critical). Noting the intense hybridization among traditions in recent the-
ory, Craig and Muller (2007) also speculated that the field might polarize between
two main traditions, which correspond more or less to the distinctions drawn by
Gunaratne (2010); Kirtiklis (2011), and Nastasia and Rakow (2010), among others.
The constitutive metamodel was explicitly designed to focus the field’s attention
on an array of practically oriented conceptions of communication rather than topi-
cal domains, “levels” of communication, or epistemological–methodological stances
(Craig, 1999). This choice of focus acknowledges both the field’s diversity as well as
the heuristic potential of its multiple traditions. It illuminates a common ground on
which otherwise isolated views can inform practical deliberation about communica-
tion problems. Better than two traditions frozen in their philosophically polarized
positions, a model that distinguishes seven or more problem-oriented traditions con-
structs the possibility of a deliberative conversation open to multiple and changing
views. However, attractive or realistic that possibility may be, Kirtiklis and others are
surely right that the epistemological and associated methodological assumptions that
guide research in the field cannot be put aside for all purposes. As I noted above, the
open conversation envisioned by the constitutive metamodel can only be a part-time
activity.

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The Constitutive Metamodel R. T. Craig

What traditions? Whose traditions?

The theoretical traditions that illustrate the metamodel were admittedly “instrumen-
tal constructions rather than essential categories” (Craig, 1999, p. 132), the products
of interpretive choices that could have been otherwise and, therefore, are subject to
criticism. There are gaps, to be sure: The original scheme ignored its own tradition
of pragmatism; the matrix seems to fit German thought better than French, and Chi-
nese thought hardly at all. In addition to these and other biases noted above, schol-
ars have questioned the definition of particular traditions. Martinez (2008) criticized
my brief account of the phenomenological tradition as superficial, misleading, and
potentially injurious to the field’s reception of phenomenological thought. Bergman
(2012) argued that the Craig-Russill conception oversimplifies the pragmatist tra-
dition by ignoring internal differences, artificially separates it from semiotics and
other traditions of communication theory, and too closely identifies it with social
constructionism, thus neglecting an important strain of philosophical realism in prag-
matist thought (including my own, as mentioned above). There is also pragmatism’s
ambiguous status as both a tradition in the field and a metatheory of the field (Craig,
2007)—the metamodel’s softer counterpart to the wave–particle duality in physics.
Without question, all traditions in the metamodel were simplified in order to sat-
isfy the model’s “design specs,” which require each tradition to center on a unique
definition of communication. While internal complexity, overlap, hybridity, and his-
torical change were all emphatically acknowledged in the narrative presentation in
Craig (1999) and elsewhere, they were all largely absent from the matrix represen-
tation of the metamodel except for a cell representing internal self-criticism of each
tradition. This can be understandably problematic for scholars who actually work in
a tradition, for whom internal positioning, connections abroad, and the cutting edge
of changing ideas are all supremely important. The traditions, in a sense, are too tra-
ditional, centered on figures like Aristotle, Locke, and Wiener, who may be anything
but trendy.
In another view, however, the traditions are not traditional enough. Although
tradition is a diachronic concept, the metamodel represents the traditions synchron-
ically. Vlăduţescu (2013), who prefers an “axial” model of the field, claims that some
of the traditions are not actually traditions because a tradition must run through at
least two generations of intellectuals (which I think all of them do on a reasonable
definition of “generations”). Kulczycki (2014) points out that the traditions are not
developed with respect to the history of the idea of communication. It is certainly true
that my approach to defining the traditions has been more conceptual than historical,
and there is a tension between the two.
There is, finally, a political aspect to the definition of traditions that has not been
much discussed in print (Craig, 2007, 2009b) but that I have encountered many times
in seminar discussions. The traditions often fail to align with current intellectual iden-
tities. Critical rhetoricians who are into transgender theory or new materialism do not
feel at home in the “rhetorical tradition,” conversation analysts feel left out the meta-
model even though the semiotic and sociocultural traditions, at least, would welcome

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R. T. Craig The Constitutive Metamodel

them, and quantitative social scientists feel underrepresented by a scheme that gives
them “only” one or two out of seven or eight traditions. While a professional associ-
ation like ICA can accommodate new academic identities by creating new divisional
units ad hoc (which brings its own problems), a conceptual model of the field must
retain some overall coherence from some point of view and will always be out of step
with newly emerging trends.
As there seems to be no real solution to this problem, the best approach may be to
lower the political stakes by thinking of any metamodel as a “mere tool,” not a literal
map of the field but a conceptual device for thinking about the field by using semi-
arbitrary reference points (i.e., the traditions). The purpose is heuristic, to generate
diverse perspective on problems and openings for dialogue, and that purpose can be
served just as well by articulating views against the matrix as in the matrix.

Dialogue and the paradox of pluralism

A final area of critique to be discussed here relates to dialogue in the field. The con-
stitutive metamodel advances a principle of “dialogical-dialectical coherence” that is
not without problems. First of all it must be understood that the metamodel, although
intended to portray and invite dialogue, is not itself dialogue. A theory or metathe-
ory that argues for dialogue is still a monological argument, a position staked out in
the field at a certain moment, not a dialogue. This is why the constitutive metamodel
announces its intention to “jump-start” a conversation the course of which cannot be
anticipated, much less contained, by the metamodel itself: As the conversation goes
on, the field will change.
Myers (2001) regarded this call for dialogue as deceptive because it requires all
models of communication to assimilate to a constitutive metamodel. I argued in reply
that the metamodel does not assimilate all theories, which remain as diverse and
contentious as before, but it does call on participants to acknowledge the existence
of other traditions of theory with different views on practical problems that may
have something useful to contribute. It requires what I called “theoretical cosmopoli-
tanism,” ability and willingness to engage in more than one theoretical conversation
(Craig, 2001). It must be admitted that an ideal of dialogue probably appeals more to
scholars on the critical-interpretive side of the epistemological great divide than to
many on the empirical-scientific side, because the former’s epistemology places more
value on multiple interpretations. On the other hand, the metamodel recommends
dialogue for its heuristic value and no one actually opposes creativity. The episte-
mological divide is about validation, not heuristics. There is, however, inevitably a
social constructionist bias in the metamodel, and it occurred to me later that the bias
instantiates an unavoidable “paradox of pluralism” in pragmatism as I understand it
(Craig, 2007). Pluralism is a position that tries and necessarily fails to transcend its
own positionality, but this is no reason to reject pluralism because the very instability
of such a position invites dialogue.
While no metatheoretical position can transcend all positions in the field, some
may invite dialogue more effectively than others. Comparison of my version of the

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The Constitutive Metamodel R. T. Craig

constitutive metamodel with Cooren’s (2012, 2014) is instructive in this regard. My

version welcomes a looser coherence that allows every tradition its own views in
conflict with other views, whereas Cooren selects only the most compatible ideas
from each tradition to build an epistemologically consistent metamodel. He expresses
openness to criticism of his own position but does not ventriloquize the traditions
so as to suggest what some of those criticisms might be—which would be a ges-
ture toward dialogue (though no substitute for actual dialogue, as we have noted). He
describes the fact that the traditions in Craig (1999) each have something to say about
all of the others (including self-criticism from within each tradition) as “interesting”
but does not include this feature—a way of constituting the traditions as interacting
positions with potential for change—in his reconstructed metamodel. These, I think,
are differences that potentially make a difference for a culture of dialogue in the field.
Is dialogue happening in the field? What would that look like? What can be
expected realistically? Dialogue theorists tell us that genuine dialogue, when it occurs
at all, does so in brief moments, not as a continuous process extended through time
(Cissna & Anderson, 1998). On this analogy, dialogical–dialectical coherence in the
field of communication theory would not take the form of a constant interchange
across traditions. To repeat: Metatheoretical discussion among communication
theorists cannot be more than a part time activity. Rather than continuous dialogue,
we would look for “moments” of dialogue sparked by thinking across traditions on
particular problems. Many of the works cited in this essay seem to me to represent
such moments of dialogue, facilitated by the constitutive metamodel.

Conclusion
The constitutive metamodel after 16 years can claim to have demonstrated some use-
fulness. It has been used widely as a token of the field’s existence, as a representation of
the field, and to teach the field. It has been used occasionally as a method for discussing
communication problems from multiple viewpoints, and for mapping subfields or
positioning theories with reference to the field as a whole. It has inspired some efforts
to define new traditions and at least one effort to redo the whole metamodel. It has also
been criticized for its imperfections, and in that way has stimulated productive debate
on how to represent the field. On the other hand, the metamodel has not achieved
paradigmatic status and has not been widely adopted as the official model of the field
for bureaucratic purposes—a limitation for which we all can be thankful.
Is the field of communication theory any less fragmented than it was 16 years ago,
and can the constitutive metamodel claim any credit for making it more coherent?
This is partly an empirical question on which we lack good evidence. A replication
of Anderson’s (1996) informal study of theory textbooks, which found surprisingly
little overlap in their contents, might find more convergence now. One recent bib-
liometric study that focused on theories cited in empirically oriented journals found
some evidence of convergence across areas of the field but omitted most traditions
in the metamodel (Chung, Barnett, Kim, & Lackaff, 2013). My impression is that the

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R. T. Craig The Constitutive Metamodel

prevailing structure of communication theory continues be “productive fragmenta-

tion” (Craig, 1999), which is good for the sake of productivity. If awareness of com-
munication theory as a field has been growing nonetheless, a quarter century of this
journal, Communication Theory, surely accounts for more of that change than any one
article that has appeared in its pages. But this review suggests that the constitutive
metamodel has played a role that may continue to be relevant for some time to come.
Do we need a revised version of the metamodel? I have argued here as elsewhere
that multiple versions are theoretically possible and should be welcomed if they seem
potentially useful, but I will not devote my remaining days to spinning out those ver-
sions. Certainly, any future presentation of the metamodel should take due account
of the applications, extensions, and critiques mentioned in this review, and I have
sketched some lines of argument here to serve that purpose. At the constitutive meta-
model’s heart, in whatever version, is an ideal vision of multiple theoretical discourses
informing reflection and deliberation on practical communication problems. For me,
the most urgent task is to develop more and better ways of realizing that ideal.

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