Well-known authors present not only their own theories of human communication, but also describe, from personal vantage points, the process by which they constructed their theories. The authors' narratives of their experiences in posing, formulating, and empirically investigating their questions provide invaluable instructional models for current students. The vitality of this book derives from the communal focus on the theory and practice of language and other means of communicative conduct. Each chapter is concerned with the pragmatics of human communication and describes an original and systematic study of the phenomena with recourse to data. Together, these chapters represent a range of important contemporary directions in communication studies.