THE BEST we have done thus far in communication theory in sociology
is to make vague statements about the reciprocal relationship between
society and communication. We have also elaborated biological, physical,
mechanical, and, more recently, electronic analogies of communication
into models, or "designs," for exercises in research technique. These ana-
logical models are spun out in great detail through elaborate research tech-
niques, which are often not so much a statement of relationship between a
hypothesis and data, as an attempt to rephrase old propositions in the new
jargon, or to describe how techniques were applied to data selected to
fit the technique.

Social acts are now described as events that order themselves through
a "tendency to self-maintenance." Social systems are likened to solar sys-
tems, and social roles are said to "bring out" possibilities of behavior which
fit the "needs and tolerances of the particular patterned structure." In this
model of society, attitudes "gear" and "mesh" because "patterned struc-
ture" and "integrative patterns . . . bring it about that all the statuses of
the society intermesh like a series of interlocking wheels." Communication
of expressive symbols is not studied as an enactment of social order, but
as a process of cathexis in which meanings are "attached" to objects and
persons.

In other analogies, men are likened to dogs, rats, chickens, or pigeons,
and we are told that what is true of pigeons in cages is also true of men
in society, or, among the more sophisticated technicians, that if men were
held like pigeons in a cage then what is true of the behavior of pigeons
would be true of men. Such wild analogical leaps from animals and
machines to men are often justified on the basis of technique alone. For
if (so the argument runs) a certain technique for ordering data about
pigeons is "scientific," then the same technique applied to men in society
will yield studies of similar "scientific" value. How a study is done, not

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