Relational Dialectics (Leslie Baxter & Barbara Montgomery)

Relational Dialectics

"Social life is a dynamic knot of contradictions, a ceaseless

interplay between contrary or

opposing tendencies."

Contradiction

Three Dialectics in Relationships

1. Integration and Separation

No relationship can exist by definition unless the parties sacrifice some individual autonomy. However, too much connection paradoxically destroys the relationship because the individual identities become lost.

2. Stability and Change

3. Expression and Nonexpression

Second generation of Dialectics

Dialogues are conversations that define and redefine relationships

as they emerge in actual situations over time.

This approach to communication ask how communication defines

or constructs the social world, including ourselves and our personal

relationships.

Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM)

"Persons in conversation co-construct their own social realities

and are simultaneously shaped by the worlds they create."

2. Dialogue as Dialectical Flux

A momentary sense of unity through a profound respect for the disparate voices in dialogue.

An expressive link that's only one of many communication links

forming a dialogic chain.

An obligation to critique dominant voices.

Leslie Baxter & Barbara Montgomery

1. Dialogue as a Constitutive Process

Communication creates and sustains relationship.

External Dialectic

Internal Dialectic

(between couple & community)

(within relationship)

Inclusion - Seclusion

Connectedness - Separateness

Integration-

Separation

Stability-

Change

W. Barnett Pearce & Vernon Cronen

Certainty - Uncertainty

Conventionality - Uniqueness

Revelation - Concealment

Expression-

Nonexpression

Openness - Closedness

Typical Dialectical Tensions experienced by Relational Partners

4. Dialogue as Utterance

3. Dialogue as an Aesthetic Moment

5. Dialogue as a Critical Sensibility