Abstract

In using a community model of communication based on consensus, we adopt a double-edged notion that encompasses both harmony and coercion within the community. But the possibility that any one of us might engage in coercion and/or terror when we intend to create harmony is something we would rather not acknowledge. So we use the metaphor “community” only in its benign aspect, in its possibility of harmony, to describe communication. This article explores how ideas of harmony and coercion play out in the metaphor of community and suggests four dimensions as continua along which communities could be described: choice/chance, time/space, abstract/concrete, affinity/proximity. If we break up the clearly bounded, either/or approach to modeling community, we can better accommodate the ambiguity we intuitively understand as an important part of communication.