Communication Professor Wins NCA Award for Outstanding Scholarship
12/9/2020
Dr. Michelle Scollo recognized for work in language and social interaction
University of Mount Saint Vincent Associate Professor Michelle Scollo has added another impressive feat to her outstanding resume.
Engaging & Transforming Global Communication through Cultural Discourse Analysis: A Tribute to Donal Carbaugh, a 2019 book that Dr. Scollo is lead co-editor of, received the National Communication Association (NCA) Language and Social Interaction Outstanding Scholarly Publication Award in November.
The prestigious and highly competitive award is given to the most outstanding scholarly publication in language and social interaction in the last five years by the NCA. Dr. Scollo serves as the co-vice chair-elect for the NCA’s Language and Social Interaction Division in addition to her role in the Division of Communication, Art, and Media at the Mount. She also received the same award back in 2012 for an article on cultural discourse analysis, making her the third person in history to achieve the honor on multiple occasions.
“We are thrilled to receive the award and deeply honored, humbled, and grateful to make this contribution to the field,” Dr. Scollo said enthusiastically.
The book, which is divided into five parts and spans 16 chapters, a preface, introduction and epilogue, is noted to be “remarkable in its unique combination of cutting-edge research on an array of pressing communication issues across the globe, with explanation and expansion of the theoretical and methodological framework used to conduct this research, cultural discourse analysis,” according to Scollo. In a review of the book for the journal Discourse Studies, Wang (2019) adds, “overall, the book offers massive implications for research in culture and communication” (p. 113).
The book includes contributors from 16 different countries—ranging from graduate students, to professors emeriti, to practitioners in the field—all of whom helped honor the career of communication scholar Donal Carbaugh. Carbaugh and the contributors work within the ethnography of communication (EC), a research program that uses ethnographic methods to examine communication in local contexts of use and in cross-cultural perspective. Carbaugh has been developing a theoretical and methodological framework called “cultural discourse analysis (CuDA)” over the past three decades as part of EC, which forms the basis of the book.
The book uses this framework to analyze practices ranging from the Singlish term “heaty” as an indigenous way of heating and cooling the body for wellbeing in Singapore to emotion expression in African American funerals, from environmental and educational practices among the Ojibwe, Winnebago, and Blackfeet, to work with the United Nations on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its role in social programs for child soldiers in Nepal, to “digital placemaking” among refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong. Of special note is a chapter Dr. Scollo co-authored with Saila Poutiainen on the communicative development of romantic relationships in the United States and Finland that examined potential cultural bias in a well-known interpersonal communication theory, the model of interaction stages of relationships. Alumna Jaclyn Hahn ’18 assisted Dr. Scollo with data collection for the U.S. case.
This is a sample of the numerous cultural and intercultural communication cases in the book, all of which employ the CuDA framework. The introduction by Dr. Scollo and Trudy Milburn and epilogue by Carbaugh feature the latest explanation and new expansions of the CuDA framework. Coupled with the 16 data-based chapters in which contributors use the CuDA framework in critical, applied, and pedagogical contexts, the book enables students, scholars, and practitioners to deepen their understanding of CuDA and its innovative uses, so they may learn how to conduct this important work.
About the National Communication Association
The National Communication Association advances communication as the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media, and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific, and aesthetic inquiry. The association serves the scholars, teachers, and practitioners who are its members by enabling and supporting their professional interests in research and teaching. Dedicated to fostering and promoting free and ethical communication, the National Communication Association promotes the widespread appreciation of the importance of communication in public and private life, the application of competent communication to improve the quality of human life and relationships, and the use of knowledge about communication to solve human problems. For more information, visit natcom.org.
About the University of Mount Saint Vincent
Founded in 1847 by the Sisters of Charity, the University of Mount Saint Vincent offers nationally recognized liberal arts education and a select array of professional fields of study on a landmark campus overlooking the Hudson River. Committed to the education of the whole person, and enriched by the unparalleled cultural, educational, and career opportunities of New York City, the College equips students with the knowledge, skills, and experiences necessary for lives of professional accomplishment, service, and leadership in the 21st century.