Communication studies are in the mainstream of modern philosophy. "Communicative turn" led to the emergence of various perspectives, connected with the research of communication in all humanitarian disciplines. Each researcher tries to give his own answer to the question of what communication is and what is not, and thanks to the diversity of the proposed answers, the situation is even more confusing. It is not easy to understand what communication is by itself, and the question “what is the communication?” takes on very many additional dimensions. The epistemic complexity is arising such more that any attempt to see the “forest behind the trees” or to discover the thread of Ariadne in the constantly created labyrinth of intellectual searches becomes relevant.
The aim of the dissertation is to analyze communication research strategies in the context of paradigm influences that are experienced by various researchers.
A terminology construct “research strategy” has further developed in this dissertation. It allows speaking about personal choice in situations of polyparadigmality thinking. Thereby a certain research position, which allows us to keep a balance between different vectors of meaning attractions, becomes possible. It is concluded that the subject-researcher, due to the entry into the observation situation in the first reflexion level state, experiences dissociation and then dispersion. The dissertation shows how the classic researcher has transformed into the continuously reassembled integrity of its own communicative conditions held by auto-communication at the second-level reflexion state. One type of this reflexion is “decentralized reflexion” that becomes an important tool for paradigm analysis because it allows us to consistently take the place of every researcher, analyze the influences that he is experiencing, and to live from the inside various research angles and personal choices that form an individual strategy.
The work develops further the concept of paradigm analysis as the process of identifying the bases on which the researcher relied under the gravitation of various paradigmatic (epistemic) influences. The metaphor of the surfer researcher, which slides along the waves created by the centers of paradigmatic attraction, is used. Surfer has to keep away all these centers because he wants to be independence from them. Another way he can lose his philosophy reflexive position.
The dissertation considers ideas of communication that have developed in different directions of thinking (the paradigm of complexity, the system paradigm (N.Luhmann’s version), the network paradigm, the paradigm of “communicative rationality”, etc.).
It is concluded that paradigms and research strategies complement each other. The paradigm prescribes exactly how the research should be built in order to meet the scientific criteria established in this discipline in this scientific community at one time or another. The research strategy is the path chosen by a particular researcher in which various epistemic, paradigmatic, and methodological influences can be combined. At the same time, the strategy reveals the author's creativity, his own contribution.
A terminological construct “knowledge body” introduced into scientific use. It can be explained as a complex of knowledge that entered “into flesh and blood of researcher”, became a peculiar analog of a body grown not from protein matter, but from the paradigms and scientific knowledge of the community.
The concept of the paradigm was developed as a kind of synthesis of research constructs, arising and constantly re-assembling in the communication of the scientific or philosophical community.
Paradigms, episteme, methodological approaches, influenced by community members, are metaphorically compared with the communicative states of a community, the composition of them predetermines the communication of its members.
It was proposed the concept of communication as a “research construction” that each researcher “assembles” to solve his own scientific and philosophical problems. This dissertation contains an interpretation of communication as a driver of event-time, capable of changing the configuration of established connections and associations between actors, creating conditions for reassembling systems or networks and being a conductor for contingency in the situation “here and now”.
Keywords: research strategy, subject-researcher, assembly, communication, paradigm, constitutive elements of a paradigm, decentralized reflexion, knowledge body, research construct.
