The Construction And Deconstruction:Research On The Critical School’s Discourse Change In China’s Context

For a long time, the concept of critical school has been mentioned frequently in teaching materials and scholar’s monographs in China. On the basis of the research styles and methods, most textbooks and treatises just roughly classified the communication study into two categories, namely empirical school and critical school. However, in the initial period of communication study entering China, the theories and views of critical school are not treated equally as empirical school in spite of its importance. What’s more, the development of critical school also twists and turns which was rather unusual. For critical theory which emphasizes on practice and liberation, the relevance between knowledge and society tend to be especially important. As a social science, there is no doubt that the significance of communication study exists in the interaction with the social reality. From the perspective of the knowledge sociology, there are strong links among social context and academic production, development or diffusion. Therefore, by putting the concept of Critical School into the macro social background and describing the social context, political environment and ideology context of the past more than thirty years, this study adopts the framework of knowledge sociology, and then takes the interpretation of domestic scholars as a clue to tease out the discourse transformation and historical writing. Apart from clarifying the relationships and differences between the critical theories and the discipline of communication, this study is also discussing the improvements of communication study which reflects from the critical school’s discourse vicissitudes. The improvements is specifically embodied in the theoretical trend of Chinese communication research first, and second, as a social science, the communication is no longer a tool of power under the administrative law, but a neutral subject which is getting rid of the ideology. Last but not the least important, the understanding towards western classic communication theories of our scholars is going to be increasingly profound, and the subject of communication is moving towards diversification as well as showing its academic attractions.