Group


 * Definition**

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “group” can be traced back to a 17th century Italian term indicating an assemblage of elements in a painting and, later, a cluster of musical notes in a composition (Oxford English Dictionary online, 1989). “Groupe” took on a more general meaning in late 18th century English, indicating a knot or cluster of people and “convey[ing] a notion of confused aggregation” (Oxford English Dictionary online, 1989).

Contemporary definitions of the noun “group” indicate that the members’ association may be perceived by someone external to the group (“assembled together”, “regarded as a unit”) or internal to the group (“having some unifying relationship”) (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, n.d.). The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary also indicates that the term is valued for its taxonomic imprecision: “3a: An assemblage of related organisms – often used to avoid taxonomic connotations [such as kingdom, phylum, genus, or species] when the kind or degree of relationship is not clearly defined” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, n.d.).


 * Group and Communication Studies**

Communication Studies widely regards the group or “small group” as an important context of communication (West & Turner, 2000, p. 27). Like the general use of the term, however, the discipline’s use of the term offers flexibility regarding the kind or degree of relationship among ‘members.’ (For an interesting application of the member/membrane cognate to group communication, see Arrow & McGrath, 1993, p. 337.)

In Communication Studies, groups and small groups may be used synonymously. Small groups have been defined narrowly as composed of five to seven members or more broadly as composed of three to twenty (West & Turner, 2000, p. 27). A small group may or may not have a common goal or shared purpose, but a “**team**” is generally assumed to have a collective goal or purpose (for a comprehensive team typology, see Sundstrom, De Meuse, & Futrell, 1990, p. 125).

In groups, small groups, or teams, group membership may be compulsory (“obligatory groups”) or elective (“voluntary groups”) (Cathcart, Samovar, & Henman, 1996, p. 3). An important category of small groups that challenges this distinction is the family (Argyle, 1996, p. 25-26; Socha, 1999, pp. 475-476). Families, like small groups, defy simple definition; they may be defined by genetic links, long-term close association, legal distinctions, child socialization, shared experiences of a significant nature, or a number of other factors (Stamp, 2004, p. 10-20).


 * Group and past scholarship**

Early 20th century speech instruction did not focus entirely on individuals and their publics; in fact, it also trained students to participate in small group discussion, decision-making, and problem solving (Gouran, 1993, p. 3). The purpose of this instruction was to prepare students for deliberation in the public arena, framing group discussion as an “instrument of democracy” (Gouran, 1993, p. 3).

Mid-20th century group communication scholars were heavily influenced by psychological and sociological approaches. Social scientists like Kurt Lewin and Robert Freed Bales tried to analyze groups systematically and develop a “science of group process” (Gouran, 1993, p. 5-6). At first, much of this research overlooked communication among group members, instead emphasizing member and situational characteristics (Gouran, 1993, p. 4). By the 1970s, scholars began to advocate for more communication-specific theories of group behavior, and in the 1980s, several prominent theories were developed, such as Poole, Seibold, & McPhee’s (1985) Structuration Theory (Frey, 1999, p. x). The 1990s and early 2000s emphasized the study of how culture, context and technology impact groups (Frey, 1999, p. x; Poole, 1998, pp. 357-358).


 * Group in more recent scholarship**

In the //Handbook of Group Communication Theory and Research// (1999), Marshall Scott Poole described eight “recurrent questions about groups”, that is, aspects of group communication that continue to interest scholars and practitioners (p. 38). In summary, they were:


 * 1) **The genesis of groups** - how groups form and develop identity and cohesiveness;
 * 2) **The Individual-group relationship** – group composition and its effects, group socialization and how individuals negotiate it;
 * 3) **Differentiation** – how group members are differentiated from one another (e.g., roles, status, etc.);
 * 4) **How groups act and interact** – decision-making and coordination of activity;
 * 5) **Environments** – how groups relate to their environments and how they interact with other groups and organizations;
 * 6) **Primary groups** – phenomena found in family groups, peer groups, and close friendship groups;
 * 7) **Group cognition** – not individual cognitive processes but group-level, intersubjective processes; and
 * 8) **The emotional life of groups** – emotional states or climates in groups (Poole, 1999, pp. 38-41).

Poole has elsewhere advocated that, as scholars continue to pursue these topics, they will need to address two fundamental empirical challenges of group research. The first is the “problem of intersubjectivity”, or how to explain and predict properties of groups that “are not located in any individual, but are intersubjective in that they are maintained by the interaction system of the group (or society)” (Poole, 1998, p. 360). The second is a problem of defining groups when, as is often the case, their boundaries are permeable and members belong to and interact with a host of other groups in other contexts (p. 360). Stohl and Putnam (1994) have suggested addressing these two problems by reframing the field’s definition of what a group is and does (p. 286). They have proposed the construct “bona fide group” and defined it as a group with stable but permeable boundaries, in which members develop interdependence by co-constructing identities and interpretive frames (p. 286-287; see also Putnam & Stohl, 1990).

The group continues to be not only an important unit of analysis in communication research, but an important influence in most people’s everyday lives (Frey, 1999, p. ix). The field has developed to the extent that, according to Lawrence Frey, “[s]cholars from many other disciplines have started to recognize the constitutive and functional nature of communication in groups, that communication is both the functional means by which groups accomplish whatever their goals may be and, even more important, that groups themselves are best regarded as emerging from or constituted in communication” (Frey, 1999, p. ix).

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 * References**

Argyle, M. (1996). Five kinds of small social groups. In R. S. Cathcart, L.A. Samovar, & L. D. Henman (Eds.), Small Group Communication: Theory & Practice (pp. 25-32). Boston: McGraw Hill.

Arrow, H., & McGrath, J. E. (1993). Membership matters: How member change and continuity affect small group structure, process, and performance. Small Group Research, 24, 334-361.

Cathcart, R. S., Samovar, L. A., & Henman, L. D. (1996). Small Group Communication: Theory & Practice. Boston: McGraw Hill. Frey, L. R. (1999). Introduction. In L. R. Frey (Ed.), Handbook of Group Communication Theory & Research (pp. ix-xxi). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gouran, D. S. (1999). Communication in groups. In L. R. Frey (Ed.), Handbook of Group Communication Theory & Research (pp. 3-36). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

group. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/group

group. (1989). In Oxford English Dictionary online. Retreived from http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50099389?query_type=word&quer yword=group&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place =2&search_id=TV1z-78QaJq-9669&hilite=50099389

Poole, M. S. (1998). The small group should be the fundamental unit of communication research. In J. S. Trent (Ed.), Communication: Views from the helm for the 21st century (pp. 94-97). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. (Reprinted in Craig, R. T., & Muller, H. L. (2007). Theorizing communication: Readings across traditions (pp. 357-364). Los Angeles: Sage.)

Poole, M. S. (1999). Group communication theory. In L. R. Frey (Ed.), Handbook of Group Communication Theory & Research (pp. 37-70). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Poole, M. S., Seibold, D. R., McPhee, R. D. (1985). Group decision-making as a structurational process. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 71, 74-102.

Putnam, L. L., & Stohl, C. (1990). Bona fide groups: A reconceptualization of groups in context. Communication Studies, 41, 248-265.

Socha, T. J. (1999). Communication in family units: Studying the first ‘group’. In L. R. Frey (Ed.), Handbook of Group Communication Theory & Research (pp. 475-492). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Stamp, G. H. (2004). Theories of family relationships and a family relationships theoretical model. In A. L. Vangelisti (Ed.), Handbook of Family Communication (pp. 1-30). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Stohl, C., & Putnam, L. L. (1994). Group communication in context: Implications for the study of bona fide groups. In L. R. Frey (Ed.), Group Communication in Context: Studies of Natural Groups (pp. 284-292). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Sundstrom, E., De Meuse, K. P., & Futrell, D. (1990). Work teams: Applications and effectiveness. American Psychologist, 45, 120-133.

West, R., & Turner, L. H. (2000). Introducing communication theory: Analysis and application. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

 [NO1]I think it would be good for us to have an intro para summarizing def, big idea of entry, and offering small preview of what is to come