Communication Ethics: The Dialogic Turn

Abstract

This essay reviews a community of memory about communication ethics scholarship, updating Ronald C. Arnett's “The Status of Communication Ethics Scholarship in Speech Communication Journals from 1915–1985” and outlining the evolution of communication ethics scholarship: (1) identifying metatheoretical surveys of the literature, (2) engaging Kant's metaphor of “ought” to understand communication ethics as a “good,” and (3) reviewing scholarly journal articles addressing communication ethics categorized into six separate themes with a significant scholarly article serving as standard-bearer for each theme. The final contribution of this work frames the theoretical and practical movement from a communication ethic to the postmodern reality of a multiplicity of communication ethics. The “dialogic turn” embraces this multiplicity of “goods”, seeking to meet, learn from, and negotiate with difference.