A critique of conventional approaches to communication research, the authors argue that the impact of gender on research practives has been ignored. By exploring gender issues, and conducting applied research in the areas of mass and interpersonal communication, therapeutic interaction, and rhetoric, they critique traditional scholarship and offer novel alternatives. The authors take intact theories and methods and show their applicability (or lack thereof) to the study of women's communication. The adaptations allow researchers to conduct more accurate, sensitive, and theoretically sound analyses of womens' communication than those promoted by traditional paradigms.

Spitzack (communication, Tulane U.) draws on contemporary dieting and weight-loss literature, and on both informal conversations and in-depth interviews with women to examine women's construction of a self-image in the context of cultural values and relationships. She finds that women are required t