This list of suggested essay topics is meant to help you get started in thinking about your term paper.  You are not bound to use one of these topics, but if you choose to take one of these suggestions to heart, you do not need to follow the topic with absolute fidelity.  In other words, use these topics as a way of sparking your own imagination.  Improvise.  Take what you find to be of value and leave the rest.  Most of the topics give you a fairly broad sense of what you might do in a particular field, so feel free to be creative.

1. Do men interrupt conversations more often than women? Do women use more "tag questions" than men (e.g., "I'll just run to the store, shall I?")? What are the differences, if any, between the way that men and women speak? Do these differences tell us anything about gender socialization, power relations, and politics, or are the sexes just innately different, born that way?

There is a wealth of recent information -- some of it very controversial -- on the subject of gender and langauge. One of the best and most recent overviews is Language and Gender, by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet. And Robin Lakoff's The Language War is an excellent collection of material on a variety of themes related to this topic.

2. A common Japanese saying is "The nail that sticks out must be hammered down." Edward Hall comments on the Japanese preference for conformity in his book, Beyond Culture. As Hall argues it, there are two ways we can distinguish between cultures in relation to their communication strategies: Collectivist cultures and Individualist Cultures. Japan is an illustration of a Collectivist culture; Canada epitomizes the values of the Individualist culture. In Individualist cultures self-promotion is viewed as a positive attribute, whereas in Collectivist cultures, self-promotion is eyed with distrust (the Chinese character for "I" looks very much like the word for selfish). A self-concept that includes "assertive" might make a Westerner feel proud, but in much of Asia it would more likely be cause for shame. What other relations between cultural style and communication follow from these kinds of distinctions? Is it really just a simple matter of the Japanese citizen wanting to blend in, and the Canadian wanting to stick out?

3. "I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’" Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don’t -- till I tell you. I mean ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’"
"But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’" Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that’s all."

This passage from Alice in Wonderland is frequently cited in communication texts, volumes on linguistics, and even in discussions in philosophy. The reason is that the conversation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty summarizes neatly the argument advanced by many writers that language is a form of power that enables us to control other people. "I fear we are not getting rid of God," the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, "because we still believe in grammar." By this Nietzsche referred to his belief that by naming something we assume that it has come into existence, that language, in other words, is the means by which we create the world. What do you think? Is Humpty Dumpty right in claiming that the master is the one who gets to decide what words will mean? George Orwell certainly suggested this in his book, 1984. Are there other non-literary sources that would make the same point?

4. "My wife says I don’t listen -- or something like that" - Bumper Sticker. What are the main features of active listening, and why has listening been so neglected as a field of study in communication studies? The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening, by Gemma Corradi Fiumara is a difficult but excellent book on the subject. She suggests that listening is a "feminized" practice, meaning that listening is seen as subordinate to speech and expression which she characterizes as "masculine." Does this make sense? How might this way of proceeding be extended to larger, cultural issues?

5. Is there really such a thing as 'Internet addiction', or do people use the expression too loosely?  Does it make sense to refer to players of online games like Everquest as addicts?  You might begin with Jeffrey Schaler's book Addiction is a Choice and Bruce Alexander's The Roots of Addiction in a Free Market Society..  Alexander's work can be read on-line at http://www.policyalternatives.ca/.  Just choose 'health' from the drop-down menu of topics.

6. In her book on video games, Marsha Kinder quotes her eight-year-old son: "A long time ago there were no toys and everyone was bored. Then they had TV but they were bored again. They wanted control. So they invented video games." Kinder’s son expresses nicely the idea that each generation sees its pastimes and its values as the culmination of human endeavor. But more than this, his comments raise questions about the nature of video games themselves, especially as they have been both praised and attacked in the popular media and scholarly press. What exactly is this debate all about? Do video games really place control in the hands of their users?

In addition, is the video game debate in any way related to the debates that occurred several decades ago with the arrival of television? Is it related to the debates that took place concerning zoot suits, jazz, rock and roll, and rap? Is it just a generational thing, or is there something different about video games? The expression moral panic is a useful one to look up in thinking about this topic.

7. In a book that caused some consternation several years ago, American media critic Neil Postman argued that as citizens of North America we are in danger of "amusing ourselves to death." According to Postman, entertainment has become so thoroughly entrenched in North American culture, that we no longer expect anything -- even education -- to be less than amusing. If something challenges us by way of its difficulty or tedium, we simply give up, and tune into the next available channel. Obviously, this argument rankled many people. But it also touched a chord with countless others who said that Postman was on to something: the destructive potential of the mass media in the modern world. What’s your take on this argument? (Amusing Ourselves to Death was followed by an equally controversial book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.)

8. The mass media entertainment industry promises us pleasure, but what exactly is pleasure, and what sorts of pleasure do these media deliver? The problem is that ‘pleasure’ is a deceptively simple term, replete with complexities of class relations, gender specificity, and generational biases. In a nutshell, pleasure is a political concept. But in what sense is that true? Can you prove it? How do the media of communication create specific kinds of pleasure?

9. Is there any reason to be concerned about privacy with the growth of digital technologies? We sometimes hear it said that each of us is now leaving "digital footprints" as we go through our daily affairs, using our credit card here, our debit card there, our air miles card in this store, our points card in another. But is there any valid reason to be concerned? Is privacy even all that much of an issue? In several articles and books, Oscar Gandy has suggested that digital surveillance is actually a form of hi-tech discrimination, a curious argument indeed. Do you think we are making too much of the surveillance/privacy question? Haven’t concerns about privacy been along for a long time anyway? Why all the furor over the data profiles of each of us currently being assembled with the assistance of the Canadian government? I mean, the government would never do anything to jeopardize democratic freedom, would it?

10. In the book Media and Health, author Clive Seale cites research showing the college students believe that tornadoes are more frequent killers than asthma, despite the fact that you are 20 times more likely to die from asthma than in a tornado. Students also thought that you are 356 times more likely do die in an automobile accident than you are to die of diabetes. In fact, you are only 1.4 times as likely to die of diabetes than in a fatal automobile crash. So why the discrepancy between what people think about risk factors in the world and the actual numbers? The answer, according to Seal, is the media. We get most of our health information from television, newspapers, and other other media outlets, and those sources tend to focus only on certain kinds of health risks while ignoring others. Beginning with Seale's book, what explains the way that actual health risks are distorted by the main media outlets?

11. "The individual feels fulfilled through fashion, but this fulfillment is ultimately a social and not an individual one. In this sense, it could often be argued that fashion bears little resemblance to any reasonable aesthetic judgment or individual taste" (Consumerism as a Way of Life, Steven Miles). We all know that clothes are a form of communication, but are they, as Miles suggests in the passage cited here, really a communication about our place in the social order? Are there truly no individualistic impulses in regards to our fashion choices? The book, The Signs of Our Times by Jack Solomon has a chapter that would be useful for a paper on this subject.

12. How has communication studies contributed to our understanding of the idea of the self? To think about this topic, you might look at the complete text of Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, and Gergen’s The Saturated Self. The conventional view of the self is explained in a number of books, including Texts of Identity edited by John Shotter and Kenneth Gergen.

13. Perhaps you are interested in writing about popular film. How do film makers communicate with their audiences, and how does a filmmaker’s style distinguish his or her work from that of his or her colleagues? Is there something specific about Tarantino’s work that enables him to communicate in a style that challenges or extends traditional film making techniques?For an essay of this sort you could provide a semiotic analysis of a particular film (or cycle of films) or you could look at the work of a particular filmmaker.  There are many excellent books to help you get started including Graeme Turner's Film as Social Practice, Martin Barker's From Antz to Titanic: Reinventing Film Analysis, Thinking About Movies, by Peter Lehman and Willian Luhr, and Henry Giroux's Breaking in to the Movies: Film and the Culture of Politics.

14. Did you know that department-store customers exposed to muzak shop 18% longer than customers who enter the same store when muzak isn’t playing? Did you know that the muzak inundated customer spends 17% more? Did you know that office workers make 25% fewer typing misteaks (oops! I guess I better turn the music up) when muzak is being piped into their workstations?

So what’s going on here? How does information about which we are generally unaware exert so profound an effect on our behavior? This is a huge subject to investigate. Marketers now refer to "atmospherics," a term they use to refer to the sorts of changes that they can initiate in the commercial or working environment to enhance the sort of behavior they are trying to encourage (like shopping and faster work habits). For a few starting ideas, check out Philip Kotler’s work in the Journal of Retailing, and look up "atmospherics" in some communication/marketing databases. 

15. You’ve probably heard of postmodernism, but perhaps the term is still a bit confusing. Why not un-confuse it in an essay examining the relationship between postmodernism and communication? The word gets thrown around quite a bit, but trying to figure out just what it means can be tricky. In Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-modernity and Intellectuals, Zygmunt Bauman (one of my favorite authors) offers several clear-headed accounts of postmodern that you would find useful. Even the little volume Postmodernism for Beginners is pretty good.

16. We know that the alphabet is a technology, and we know that the radio is a technology also. So is the computer. But what is really puzzling at times is that fact that so many writers seem to take such a critical view of technology. Why do you think this is? Or perhaps the issue is more complicated than that? Try looking through William Leiss’s book Under Technology’s Thumb for some ideas. You might also read Ursula Franklin’s book The Real World of Technology. The Philosophy of Technology by Don Ihde isn’t the easiest read, but it also contains some very useful information. In fact, Ihde’s essay in the book Technology and the Politics of Knowledge edited by Andrew Feenberg has some really interesting material on what Ihde calls "imaging technologies" like photography and television. Naturally, the rest of Feenberg’s book is good, too.

17.  Does art communicate?  If so, how?  What have writers said about the communicative potential of works of art?  If art is essentially ambiguous, doesn't this work against the claim that it can be understood as a form of communication?  Or does it work the other way around, and is the fundamental ambiguity in art part of its communicational power?

18.  There has been a growing interest in scholarly circles on the subject of consumerism and the so-called consumer society.  But what is the nature of the critiques of consumerism, and what sorts of remedies do critics propose?  Along with the book mentioned above, Consumerism as a Way of Life, by Steven Miles, you might also consult the excellent collection edited by Juliet Schor and Douglas Holt entitled The Consumer Society Reader.