Composing Relationships : Communication in Everyday Life (06 Edition)

COMPOSING RELATIONSHIPS is the first textbook to address what relationship scholars have long recognized as central to human relationships: the routine, everyday communication that serves as the "glue" that holds relationships together and interweaves people's lives in personal, social, and workplace relationships. Most communication textbooks emphasize communication that is unusual, dramatic, and extraordinary?betrayals in friendship, conflicts between coworkers, breakups of romantic relationships, organizational crises, and so forth. While these remarkable kinds of communication matter, they are not the basis of most relationships. Indeed, the very fact that they are unusual tells us that they are not what typifies relationships. Rather, it is the routine interaction that we have day-in, day-out that most decisively shapes our identities and the quality and durability of our relationships. In other words, relationships grow primarily out of so-called small talk between friends and romantic partners, rituals in families, and commonplace norms in organizations. The goal of this book is to call attention to the importance of everyday communication?the kind of talk that we seldom notice, but that does such a great deal of work.

Where most communications textbooks about personal, social, and workplace relationships focus on talk that is unusual, dramatic, and extraordinary, Wood (U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) and Duck's (U. of Iowa) text emphasizes the importance of small talk in the routine, day-to-day interactions that most decisively shape our identities and the quality and durability of our relationships. Featuring contributions by 22 academics from the U.S. and New Zealand, the text combines narrative conversations with analyses to explore everyday communication in close personal relationships, less intimate social relationships, and workplace relationships.
Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The routine interactions we have day-in, day-out are the ones that most decisively shape our identities and the quality and durability of our relationships. In COMPOSING RELATIONSHIPS: COMMUNICATION IN EVERYDAY LIFE (WITH INFOTRAC) you'll see how relationships grow primarily out of so-called small talk between friends and romantic partners, rituals in families, and commonplace norms in organizations.

Julia Wood is a Professor of Communication Studies and the Lineberger Professor of Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has authored 17 books, edited seven others, and published more than 70 articles and book chapters. Her research and teaching focus on gender and communication, interpersonal relationships, and intimate partner violence. Steve Duck (Ph.D., University of Sheffield, UK; M.A. and B.A., Pembroke College, Oxford, UK) conducts work on communication in relationship development and disintegration and focuses particularly on everyday communication in the context of personal relationships, especially variation in experience and communication during the day. He won the University of Iowa's first Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award in 2001. In 2004 he won the Robert J. Kibler Memorial Award from NCA, which "recognizes NCA members who have demonstrated dedication to excellence, commitment to the profession, concern for others, vision of what could be, acceptance of diversity, and forthrightness." Duck has published many research papers and chapters and has written or edited 46 books on relationships and other matters. He was the founder of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (SAGE) and its editor for its first 15 years. His 1994 book, Meaningful Relationships: Talking, Sense and Relating, won the G R Miller Book Award from the Interpersonal Division of the National Communication Association. His introductory book Human Relationships has run to four editions and his most recent works are Dragon and Duck, Understanding Relationship Research: A Text with Readings (2005, SAGE Ltd); Kirkpatrick, Duck, and Foley, Relating Difficulty: Processes of Constructing and Managing Difficult Interaction (2006, Erlbaum); and Wood and Duck, Composing Relationships: Communication in Everyday Life (2006, Wadsworth).

Preface. Acknowledgments. Introduction: Composing Relationships: Communication in Everyday Life, Julia Wood and Steve Duck. Part I: Everyday Communication in Personal Relationships. 1. Play, Playfulness and Players: Communication Between Spouses, Steve Duck. 2. Chopping the Carrots: Creating Intimacy, Moment by Moment, Julia Wood. 3. Cat Walk Conversations: Everyday Communication in Dating Relationships, Marianne Dainton. 4. "He started it!" Everyday Communication in Parenting, Tim Muehlhoff. 5. Mother Always Liked You Best: Sibling interaction, John Nicholson. 6. The Cat Puzzle Recovered: Composing Relationships Through Family Ritual, Carol Bruess and Anna Hoefs. Part II: Everyday Communication in Social Relationships. 7. Hanging Out and Doing Lunch: Enacting Friendship Closeness, Sandra Metts. 8. Shopping for and With Friends: Everyday Communication at the Shopping Mall, Dawn Braithwaite and Jody Koenig Kellas. 9. : Everyday Communication with Relational Technologies, Walter Carl. 10. Relational life in the 21st century: Managing people, time, and distance, Erin Sahlstein. 11. He Has Two Mommies: Constructing Lesbian Families In Social Conversation, Beth Suter. 12. Sorority Sisters Speaking Social Support, Megan Foley. Part III: Everyday Communication in Workplace Relationships. 13. Cabbages and Headache Cures: Work Stories within the Family, Cheryl Cockburn- Wootten and Ted Zorn. 14. Communicating Race at Weigh Co., Brenda J. Allen. 15. Mentoring Through Everyday Communication, Michael Hecht and Jennifer Warren. 16. Constructing Masculinity and Femininity in the Workplace, Dennis Mumby. 17. Relational Communication and Work: Three Minutes at Work with Vin, Harty Mokros. 18. Who am I Right Now? Negotiating Familial and Professional Roles, Leah Totten.