Few scholars would deny that communi­cation is an essential feature of conflict.

As Thomas and Pondy (1977) noted in their massive review of conflict in organizations, “It is communication with which we are most concerned in understanding conflict management” (p.

Despite the importance of communication in social conflicts, early researchers often cast it as a backdrop or a taken-for-granted activ­ity. In particular, initial studies that include communication in the Prisoner’s Dilemma games often treated it simplistically, as “let the players talk or don’t let them talk” or as tacit cues that conveyed preferences through moves and countermoves (Bostrom, 1968; Gergen, 1969). Disenchanted with the paucity of atten­tion to communication in conflict studies, scholars across the discipline gathered in 1972 in Philadelphia for a conference sponsored by the Speech Communication Association. This conference and subsequent publications that emanated from it (see Bowers, 1974b; Miller & Simons, 1974) nurtured the growth of communication and conflict studies as a distinct area that has mushroomed across the discipline. As this volume demonstrates, research on communication and conflict is alive and well.

Amid this widespread growth, communica­tion scholars are often silent or presumptive about the relationship between communica­tion and conflict. Scholars typically define conflict in a consensual way and then treat the elements of this definition as assumed within their research designs. Thus, characteristics and dimensions are often presumed within the operational nature and measurement instru­ments of conflict (Weider-Hatfield, 1993).

This chapter unpacks these relationships through presenting a historical overview of communication and conflict studies, including examining three seminal theories, comparing definitions and assumptions, reviewing mod­els and approaches to conflict, and highlight­ing research methods. The latter part of the chapter provides an update on recent research in terms, especially, of developments between 2006 and 2012. In particular, it focuses on the roles of communication in conflict as a vari­able, a process, an interpretation or meaning, and a dialectical relationship. Finally, it sets forth some options for integrating research across the field and promoting theory building through future directions for communication studies.

Given the breadth of communication and conflict research, a full-scale historical treat­ment of each contextual arena is beyond the scope of this chapter. Moreover, each chap­ter in this volume offers its own historical background for conflict studies in particular domains. In like manner, this chapter is not an exhaustive state-of-the-art review, as pre­sented in the early articles and handbook chapters (Donohue, Diez, & Stahle, 1983; D. W. Johnson, 1974; Olekalns, Putnam, Weingart, & Metcalf, 2008; Putnam & Jones, 1982b; Putnam & Poole, 1987; Roloff, 1987; Steinfatt, 1974) or summarized in the early textbooks that now appear in multiple edi­tions (Folger & Poole, 1984; Hocker & Wilmot, 1978). What this chapter does, how­ever, is to situate research on communication and conflict in the 1970s as a period that led to the rapid acceleration of conflict studies in family and interpersonal communication (Fitzpatrick & Winke, 1979; Millar, Rogers, & Bavelas, 1984; Sillars, 1980a, 1980b), small group interaction (Pood, 1980; Waln, 1982), negotiation and bargaining (Donohue, 1981a, 1981b; Putnam & Jones, 1982b), organiza­tional conflict styles (Putnam & Wilson, 1982; Riggs, 1983; Shockley-Zalabak, 1981), and intercultural conflict (Gudykunst, 1985; Ting- Toomey, 1985).

Historical Overview of Communication and Conflict Studies

For more than 30 years, communication scholars have studied social conflicts. Initially aligned with rhetorical scholarship, research focused on diplomacy (Oliver, 1950, 1952) and the rhetoric of confrontation and agita­tion (Bowers & Ochs, 1971; Scott & Smith, 1969). Inspired by campus demonstrations, protest movements, and riots in the 1960s, communication scholars directed their atten­tion to crisis rhetoric, persuasion in social conflicts, and rhetorical strategies of coercion (Burgess, 1973; Simons, 1969, 1972, 1974a). Specifically, Tompkins, Fisher, Infante, and Tompkins (1974) applied Burkian concepts to an analysis of mystery and order in the admin­istration of a public university in the midst of campus conflicts.

Also focusing on public conflicts, Bowers (1974a) compared the perceived costs, poten­tial rewards, and probability of using dif­ferent individual and institutional forms of communication during community disputes. Individuals in social conflicts differed from institutions in presenting oral and written petitions, engaging in collective actions, and escalating confrontations; institutions, in turn, were limited to avoidance, counterpersuasion, and nonviolent suppression as defensive reac­tions. Rhetoricians also analyzed the public discourse surrounding the Arab-Israeli con­flict (Heisy, 1970) and the argumentative competence of Henry Kissinger’s negotiation (Schuetz, 1978).

Amid this attention to social and political conflicts, other scholars in the field employed experimental methods to study bargain­ing and conflict in dyads and small groups.

To unpack the explicit versus implicit role of communication, D. W. Johnson, McCarty, and Allen (1976) compared cooperative with competitive bargainers in both verbal and nonverbal conditions. They observed that verbal statements of cooperation led to more agreements in less time than did the other three conditions, including nonverbal expres­sions of cooperation; thus, explicit cooperative messages had a strong effect on reaching a negotiated settlement. In a similar way, com­munication scholars contrasted bargaining out­comes in telephone, face-to-face, and written modes of interaction (Turnbull, Strickland, & Shaver, 1976). This study revealed that full, face-to-face interaction between disputants increased the number of successful payoffs and enhanced the diversity of negotiated settle­ments for cooperative conditions (Greenwood, 1974; D. H. Smith, 1969). Early communica­tion researchers also examined information exchange (D. H. Smith, 1971), argumentation patterns (Reiches & Harral, 1974), cogni­tive complexity (Saine, 1974), and persuasive strategies that facilitated concession making (Beisecker, 1970b).

Small group researchers also began to study communication in cooperative and competitive groups. Specifically, Baird (1974) found that members of cooperative groups engaged in greater diversity of contributions, exchanged more relevant messages, and were more friendly and attentive to each other than were individuals in competitive teams.

In response to this growing work, Jandt (1973) assembled a collection of readings, mostly reprints from classic articles outside the field. The aim of this volume was to apply conflict research to multiple levels of commu­nication studies—from dyads to sociopolitical conflicts. This volume also introduced the field to conflict studies in family, classroom, intra- organizational, racial, and intercultural arenas.

Thus, in the mid-1970s, the stage was set for a significant conference on communica­tion and conflict studies. Attended by scholars throughout the discipline, researchers both agreed and disagreed about the directions for future conflict studies. The book Perspectives on Communication in Social Conflict (Miller & Simons, 1974) embodied this controversy, particularly diverse perspectives and ideo­logical differences among researchers. These differences appeared in Simons’s (1974b) pro­logue and Miller’s (1974) epilogue and opened communication studies to the myriad perspec­tives that scholars currently see in the field today. In particular, their dissatisfaction with theories, definitions, and models for conflict research influenced the questions that scholars now pose, hybrid research designs, innovative topics and methods, and a quest to unpack the conceptual relationship between communica­tion and conflict.

Conflict Theories and Perspectives: Charting the Disenchantment

Scholars at this landmark conference typically concurred that theories and models needed to be expanded. They recommended that research focus on “co-acting entities whose behaviors must be modeled dynamically and relationally” (Simons, 1974b, p. 3). They concurred in their critiques of game theory, but they disagreed on the viability of social exchange and systems theory as options for future studies.