Gaining Knowledge
(Epistemological Assumptions)

All we know and understand about communication obviously grows out of what scholars write about communication.  Knowledge comes from systematic research and the sharing of that research.  However, communication scholars take diverse approaches. 

There are generally two camps. One consists of social scientists (or communication theorists), and the other consists of humanists (or rhetoricians, critical theorists, ethnographers, among others).  Both, though, are concerned with building communication theory. 

To put it simply, while the social scientists value science and knowing things through the employment of the scientific method, the humanists value context and knowing things through close textual analysis or case study examples.