‘‘Opening the Door’’: The History and Future of Qualitative Scholarship in Interpersonal Communication

I was fortunate to start college during the earlier days of interpersonal communication classes being taught. From the first class, I was hooked. One of the best things about working in this area is being able to teach and study concepts and practices that make a difference in people’s lives. The theme guiding my work was adapted from a phrase Wayne Brockriede used— helping people expand their repertoire of communicative choices. This is the great joy and challenge of being an interpersonal communication (IPC) scholar. I am honored to share this forum with such outstanding scholars. My article represents a personal reflection on my experiences navigating the waters of IPC research for 30 years. Given the brief nature of this article, I cannot review much literature; however, I will advance two arguments. First, to fathom the present and future of IPC, we must understand our historical roots. Second, to best address the challenges confronting us, IPC needs to open the doors to the breadth of perspectives and scholars. ... In the end, I am arguing that it is incumbent on IPC to be open, welcoming, and relevant. There is so much about human communication we need to know. We need all excellent minds, research, and teaching of interpersonal communication to make a difference. If we can do this, I believe our future is bright indeed

‘‘Opening the Door’’: The History and Future of Qualitative Scholarship in Interpersonal Communication

I was fortunate to start college during the earlier days of interpersonal communication classes being taught. From the first class, I was hooked. One of the best things about working in this area is being able to teach and study concepts and practices that make a difference in people’s lives. The theme guiding my work was adapted from a phrase Wayne Brockriede used— helping people expand their repertoire of communicative choices. This is the great joy and challenge of being an interpersonal communication (IPC) scholar. I am honored to share this forum with such outstanding scholars. My article represents a personal reflection on my experiences navigating the waters of IPC research for 30 years. Given the brief nature of this article, I cannot review much literature; however, I will advance two arguments. First, to fathom the present and future of IPC, we must understand our historical roots. Second, to best address the challenges confronting us, IPC needs to open the doors to the breadth of perspectives and scholars. ... In the end, I am arguing that it is incumbent on IPC to be open, welcoming, and relevant. There is so much about human communication we need to know. We need all excellent minds, research, and teaching of interpersonal communication to make a difference. If we can do this, I believe our future is bright indeed

Instructional Communication Strategies for Adapting to a Multicultural Introductory Course

No educator is surprised to hear that college enrollment for members of racial and ethnic groups is continuing to rise (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1990). However, this increase was particularly striking for us after we began teaching in the southwestern United States. We had moved from Minnesota, where the proportion of college students who are minority-group members is only 4%, to New Mexico where the proportion of college students who are minority-group members is 35%, the highest for any state in the continental United States (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1990). We now look out into multicultural classrooms that will increase in cultural diversity year after year. As a result of this increase in cultural diversity, one question facing those responsible for teaching communication courses is: What changes, if any, are needed in the instructional strategies for teaching in a multicultural introductory communication course? Many of us often forget that our teaching is also grounded in a theoretical perspective. Exploring and making our theoretical perspective explicit functions to help us deal with problems and changes occurring in the classrooms and allows us to respond to changes in a systematic manner. For us, the best way to answer the question about how to adapt to multicultural classrooms is to take a theoretical perspective that is grounded in the ethnographic literature. An ethnographic approach to communication education focuses on the use of situationally grounded studies and the comparative analysis of cultures. The concepts, methods, and resources that take an ethnographic perspective on communication will prove fruitful for improving our courses and help us deal with the multicultural classrooms we now face or will face in the near future. To begin to answer the question about teaching in the multicultural introductory communication course, we examined current literature, analyzed situations occurring in our own classrooms, and surveyed students about their perceptions of the courses in which they were enrolled. Based on our investigations, we will describe several instructional communication strategies we argue may be used to adapt communication courses to an increasingly diverse student population. We will present strategies in four general areas of teaching in the introductory communication course: a) Expanding the parameters of culture, b) Language, c) Assignments, and d) Resources. Finally, we will discuss issues of evaluation of teaching effectiveness in the multicultural classroom

Coparental communication, relational satisfaction, and mental health in stepfamilies

This study tested a series of actor–partner interdependence models of coparental communication, relational satisfaction, and mental health in stepfamilies. Participants included 127 couples (N = 254). Results revealed 2 actor-oriented models whereby parents’ and stepparents’ coparental communication quality positively predicted their own (but not their partners’) satisfaction and mental health. A final model revealed that parents’ relational satisfaction mediated the effect of coparental communication on their own mental health. A similar pattern emerged for stepparents, although coparental communication continued to have a direct, positive effect on stepparents’ mental health. Importantly, parents’ coparental communication produced an inverse partner effect on stepparents’ mental health, highlighting the potential stress stepparents may experience as they are called upon to help raise their spouse’s offspring

“You’re My Parent but You’re Not”: Dialectical Tensions in Stepchildren’s Perceptions about Communicating with the Nonresidential Parent

The nonresidential parent plays a role in the lives of stepchildren and in stepfamily households. The focus of the present study was on the interaction between the nonresidential parent and his/her child who resides as part of a stepfamily household. Grounded in relational dialectics theory, the researchers performed an interpretive analysis of 50 transcribed interviews with college-aged stepchildren. Stepchildren’s perceptions of communication with the nonresidential parent were animated by two contradictions: parenting/nonparenting and openness/closedness. These two contradictions form a totality, interwoven with one another. The parenting/nonparenting contradiction reflected stepchildren’s ambivalence over parenting attempts of nonresidential parents. Stepchildren wanted nonresidential parent involvement and parenting, and at the same time they resisted it, often finding communication to be awkward and challenging. In addition, stepchildren wanted open and intimate communication with their nonresidential parents, yet they found openness to be problematic and managed these contradictory demands via segmentation. Implications of these findings are discussed, along with insights to guide professionals working with stepfamilies and adults co-parenting children to better understand and interact in ways that promote healthy stepfamilies

Grieving together and apart: Bereaved parents’ contradictions of marital interaction

The researchers adopted relational dialectics theory (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996) to examine the discourse of 37 bereaved parents. Research questions guiding the study were what dialectical contradictions do bereaved parents experience when communicating with their marital partner after their child’s death and how do bereaved parents and their marital partners communicatively negotiate the dialectical contradictions they experience? Our analysis revealed that bereaved parents experienced a dialectical contradiction between trying to grieve their child’s death together as a couple and apart as individuals. Likewise, parents experienced a contradiction between being both open and closed when talking with one another about their child’s death. Results describe how parents negotiated these contradictions, and implications for professionals are discussed

Discursive Struggles in Families Formed through Visible Adoption: An Exploration of Dialectical Unity

Grounded in the interpretive paradigm and framed by relational dialectics theory, the present study addressed the question: What discourses interpenetrate to reflect dialectical unity as parents communicate about their child’s adoption? Interviews with 40 parents across 31 visibly adoptive families—families with an obvious lack of biological connection—highlighted four instances of dialectical unity resulting from the following discursive struggles: (a) pride and imperfection; (b) love, constraint, and sacrifice; (c) difference, pride, and enrichment; and (d) legitimacy, expansion, similarity, and difference. Each struggle contains seemingly disparate discourses that, in combination, contribute to how parents discursively make sense of adoption. Practical implications of these findings are discussed to provide insight to researchers, educators, and members of visibly adoptive families

“If You Hit Me Again, I’ll Hit You Back”: Conflict Management Strategies of Individuals Experiencing Aggression during Conflicts

In interpersonal relationships characterized by aggression, the negotiation of conflict is especially significant. The present study examined the conflict management strategies used by 31 individuals who had experienced verbal and/or physical aggression during conflicts with their partners. Sillars’ (1986) conflict tactics coding system was used as a framework to analyze 960 pages of transcribed data. The results of this deductive content analysis indicated that the participants reported using primarily Distributive conflict strategies. Analytic induction was also used to interpret nonverbal forms of conflict management, revealing three common tactics: crying, nonverbal avoidance, and aggression. Implications for using these conflict strategies in interpersonal relationships characterized by aggression are discussed

Discursive Struggles in Families Formed through Visible Adoption: An Exploration of Dialectical Unity

Grounded in the interpretive paradigm and framed by relational dialectics theory, the present study addressed the question: What discourses interpenetrate to reflect dialectical unity as parents communicate about their child’s adoption? Interviews with 40 parents across 31 visibly adoptive families—families with an obvious lack of biological connection—highlighted four instances of dialectical unity resulting from the following discursive struggles: (a) pride and imperfection; (b) love, constraint, and sacrifice; (c) difference, pride, and enrichment; and (d) legitimacy, expansion, similarity, and difference. Each struggle contains seemingly disparate discourses that, in combination, contribute to how parents discursively make sense of adoption. Practical implications of these findings are discussed to provide insight to researchers, educators, and members of visibly adoptive families