This edition has increased to 40 chapters and has included new chapters on applied communication, “dark side” interpersonal communication, privacy, law, media effects, organizational communication, instructional communication, and corporate communication as different from organizational. Several second
edition chapters were dropped or condensed with other chapters. We, the editors, felt that
several chapters still stand on their own, and the first three chapters were deemed as classics
and kept from the first edition.
For those who are first-time readers of this volume, and for those who have purchased
earlier volumes, perhaps a review of how this volume began should be briefly presented.
Twenty years ago, Mike Salwen and I were teaching the graduate introduction classes in
theory and research methods—two separate classes that included students who might not be
taking both simultaneously and others who were taking the classes as electives from other
schools and departments across the campus. We found that students in both classes were
often confused in reading outside assignments, because we had not covered either that
theory or research method. We could find no suitable book that would satisfy the requirements of both courses, as well as introducing students to the various content-specific courses
they would be taking over their academic career. I approached Jennings Bryant, then the
series editor for Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates (now Taylor & Francis), about interest in
such a volume. His response was immediate and direct—without asking for much, he said,
“Write it!” We approached the assignment by looking at what was needed as a basis to
understand the specific content chapters later and decided on an introductory chapter,
a chapter on theory and communication theory, a chapter on quantitative research methods,
Originally created for a graduate student market, the second edition was adopted by many
schools and programs as a “capstone” volume with which undergraduate students demonstrated a mastery of communication theory, research, and skills. This fact demonstrates the
advances we as a profession have made in describing, understanding, and predicting human
communicative behaviors. It is our hope that readers of the third edition will continue this
movement from simple sophistic practice to an integrated approach to message creation,
transmission, and ultimately expected behavior.