Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

A communication rule is a description of a communicative regularity relevant to social interaction. The communicative regularities contained within rules are normative, in the sense that they are what is expected to occur by participants in social engagements and their absence usually results in social disapproval or sanction on the part of those participants toward a transgressor. The most prevalent use of the concept within the communication discipline stems from its centrality within the natural language philosophical tradition begun by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) in Philosophical investigations . Within this tradition, all culturally defined social situations are governed by a set of rules consisting of two types: those that define the situation ( constitutive rules ) and those that instruct participants about what actions are permissible and impermissible ( regulative rules ). Regulative rules take the standard form “When in Situation X, Action Y is required/recommended/recommended against/forbidden” (e.g., in the context of basketball, “When a team has possession of the ball, an attempt at shooting the ball through the other team's basket is permissible”), whereas constitutive rules take the standard form “When in Situation X, Action Y counts as/means Z” (e.g., in the same context, “A ball legally shot through the other team's basket counts as, depending on its length, ... log in or subscribe to read full text