Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) is a general communication theory. SCT explains that meanings, emotions, values, and the motives for action are in the rhetoric that is co-created by people trying to make sense out of a common experience, such as university life. SCT posits that students talk about their shared experiences, like a professor they have had in class. During such discussions, a rhetorical fantasy might chain out about a professor that will bring the teacher into dramatic life acting in a classroom scene, often in humorous ways. A professor might be called "The Red Pheasant" because he has red hair and bobs his head like a pheasant going down a corn row. Or the professor might be called "The Candy Lady" because she brings treats to class.
SCT is a general communication theory because it explains that such fantasy-chaining by people about a common experience produces a rhetorical vision in all communities. Just as students co-create university dramas, so, too, do marines, police officers, firefighters, and members of any organization. SCT argues that people inherently co¬create their own symbolic reality (in the Lacanian sense) into a stable rhetorical form that can be studied and understood. SCT calls these stable forms of viewing the world (that evolve through human talk), rhetorical visions. These rhetorical visions contain one of three underlying or under-girding master analogues (Righteous, Pragmatic, and Social).
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