Abstract

Of recent attempts to appropriate pragmatism for communication studies, Rob-ert Craig‘s inclusion of a pragmatist ―tradition‖ in his influential ―metamodel‖ of commu-nication theoriesconstitutes one of the most prominent proposals to date. In this model, pragmatism is principally understood by contrast to other alternatives, such as phenome-nology, semiotics, and rhetoric. As a communication-theoretical tradition in Craig‘s sense, the pragmatist approach is expected to provide distinctive articulations of the na-ture of communication and communication problems, expressed in a particular vocabu-lary. Useful as such a partitioning may be for analytical and dialogical purposes, the de-limitation of pragmatism that emerges from Craig‘s efforts is in many respects problemat-ic. After a summary of the background assumptions and disciplinary aims of Craig‘s pro-ject, this article identifies three serious weaknesses in his account: its neglect of relevant intra-tradition distinctions and debates, its straightforward association of pragmatism with a strongly constitutive approach to communication, and its tendency to disconnect prag-matism from other communication-theoretical positions in ways that are not conducive to his objectives. This discussion highlights the contrast between Craig‘s constructionist in-strumentalism and the habit-realism of the classical pragmatisms of Peirce and Dewey