COMM 3140 Class Notes: 11/5/13
**Disclaimer: I was absent from class this day – I got these notes from a friend. They are not my own, but I
got them from her so I knew what I missed.
When your boss comes in to exam you what do you do or how do you act?: If you put your best foot
forward you run the risk of keeping that standard high for the rest of the time frame. However, if you do not
have good work ethics or you do not behave well you are lazy and you are not impressing those who you
should be impressing. The narrative that we want to produce as in employers is Excellence every day. That
way you are reducing dangers to dangerous liaisons.
In organizations policies are used to punish NOT to direct behavior.
Tactics are particular activities you take to achieve strategy.
Sometimes what you feel, emotionally triumphs what course you should actually take strategically.
However, in dangerous liaisons we learn that we should ALWAYS strategies our actions that we take.
Definition of Relationships: A relationship is a recognizable enactment between two or more subject
positions in ahvited by one or more agents (spouses, friends, neighbors, BFFs, facebook friends,
memberships, strangers). Each relationship type carries rights and privileges as well as responsibilities and
obligations established in cultural mores and societal disciplines. Each relationship type makes use of
culturally, societally defined frameworks of discourse and action. Each relationship is expressed through
lines of action performed through local practices (we do not invent the things that we do, we enter in to the
things that we do). These practices are supervised and adjudicated by relational members, embedded
memberships, and societal authorities.
Local Practices: Composed of routines, enactments, and performances. Routines - the sign of what is being
done. Enactments and performances are the actualized routines and lines of action (Doing it well and doing
it right, also turning points and marker events).
Maintained through structurations and burdened by sedimentations - Structurations. Sedimentations change
the topography of enactment. (It is not that you only get to be but that you have to be).
Intimacy: Shared experience - Experience and its narration create a unique text accessible only by
relational members. It also creates unique opportunities for additional action and talk.
Shared co-orientation to the relationship and beyond - Have a relationship (someone from work, church,
school), In a relationship (my friend, spouse, partner, neighbor).
Shared exchange history - Rehearsed and repeated communications.
Shared experience, co-orientation, and exchange history creates enlarged field of action and understanding
- Creates relational consciousness, Can do things in the relationship that cannot be done elsewhere,
Consider the value of exclusivity, Increased complexity of the self, interdependence, resource. One of the
things about relationships is that they give you things that you can not have outside of a relationship. They
are very valuable to you!
Why is exclusivity an important marker to a relationship? Inside the boundary, exclusivity means that you
are more likely to be co-oriented and have experiences with one another that no one else will have outside
of your exclusive relationship. In the middle of exclusivity stands resistance for something or someone.
Relational Problematics: Disconnects - Culture, memberships, other relationships, naturalized practices.
Strategies and tactics - Different goals and techniques to achieve them. Violations and repairs Violations are inevitable, Concepts of grace, Timely effective repairs. Subject to resistance - Part of every
relationship, Relationship creates both the opportunity and obligation to be, act and say, also denies what
could be.
The problem that we tend to have in relationships is that we assume that what we think is right, is actually
right.
Who are We?: Relationships involve orientation of the relational partners one to another, co-orientation to
the material and ideational world, and coordination of presence, resources and activity. Relationships
greatly increase the capacity of the self. Remember the self is an expression not an essence. The
relationship defines the interaction )enactment of the relationship) and the relational members.
Relationships are always at risk. Relationships survive through grace.