The study of human message making is broad and spans many academic disciplines, including art and literature, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience, to name just a few. Scholars in these various disciplines have at their disposal a wide array of methodological tools that they can employ. This entry primarily focuses on social scientific approaches to the study of message production. Specifically, this entry examines the concepts and methods that have proven most important and useful for scholars in the field of communication.