Building Interpersonal Relationships:
Communication takes many forms:
 Simple and direct.
 Complex and eloquent.
 Between two people or among thousands.
 A small group of friends or in an impersonal bureaucracy.
Communication is the act of creating and sharing meaning. Communicators MUST
share meaning with one another and is an interpersonal process because of this. It is
common to reserve the label “interpersonal” for intimate communication between
two people in face-to-face interaction, but all communication is interpersonal.
Interpersonal communication allows us to form close personal relationships.
**What is interpersonal communication?
 Depends on the approach you take.
 Situational approach: Defined in terms of its external characteristics; look
at factors such as number of people involved and their physical proximity.
 Developmental approach: Defined in terms of its content; look at the kind
of information people exchange and how well they know each other
 Situational is most common way to distinguish interpersonal from other
forms of communication.
Situational approach to interpersonal communication:
 Intrapersonal communication: when we are alone, our communication is
quite different from our communication when we are with others; more
disconnected and repetitive and less logical than other forms; examples: any
time you daydream, fantasize, consider a difficult personal problem, or try to
make sense of the world around you – you are both the sender and receiver
of your message.
 Interpersonal communication: communication between two people,
generally face-to-face; also known as dyadic communication; generally
spontaneous and informal; participants receive maximum feedback from
each other; partners alternately act as senders and receivers; examples:
when you sit down with a friend to recall old times, ask a professor what will
be on a test, or have a serious discussion with someone you love.
 Small-group communication: happens as soon as a third person joins an
interaction; size of the group can vary but it must be small enough that
everyone can interact freely; communication is not destroyed when the link
between two of the members is cut; examples: students working on a class
project together, cabinet members setting government policy, sports teams,
and social clubs.
 Organizational communication: occurs in complex organizations; strongly
defined hierarchy; experience a relationship to the organization itself and to
the bureaucracy that organizes and runs it; roles are more specialized and
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differentiated; rules for behavior are more formalized; examples: large
businesses and industries and government institutions.
Face-to-face public communication: when a single speaker addresses a
large group of individuals simultaneously; speaker doesn’t know audience
members personally so must compose message for hypothetical receiver;
mutual interaction is impossible due to size of audience; speaker acts as
sender while audience takes on more passive receiver role; clear
organization, careful planning, and a fairly formal, non-conversational style
are hallmarks of public communication; examples: political candidate on
whistle-stop tour, evangelist exhorting a congregation, lecturer in a massenrollment course.
Mediated public (or mass) communication: when speaker and audience
become separated in both space and time and indirect ways of sending and
receiving messages must be used; messages must be stored until they can be
received by their intended audience; whenever “a medium replicates,
duplicates, and disseminates identical content to a geographically
widespread population”; examples: radio and TV broadcasts, newspaper and
magazine articles, and recorded music.
As we move from intrapersonal to mass communication, the following
elements change:
o The number of interactants.
o Their physical proximity.
o Their ability to deliver and receive feedback immediately.
o The level of formality of communication roles.
o The ability of interactants to adapt messages to others’ specific needs.
o The degree to which communicative goals and purposes are planned
and structured.
Communication can take many forms.
o This doesn’t mean it is always easy to figure out what kind of
communication is going on.
o Communication contexts often blend into one another or rapidly
change back and forth.
o When new technologies are involved, it’s difficult to know whether
the communication you’re engaging in is interpersonal, group, or
mass communication.
o Think of all communication as having an interpersonal element.
o Situations overlap, and when they do communication may take on the
characteristics of both situations.
The Developmental Approach to Interpersonal Communication:
 The situational approach focuses our attention on external factors.
o Initial interactions start out as impersonal; only over time do they
develop into interpersonal interactions.
 Most dyadic communication is not interpersonal at all.
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Very general information that applies to all members of a given culture is
called cultural level data.
When people identify one another based on the reference or membership
groups to which they belong, they use sociological level data.
Psychological level data provide the most information of all.
o They are data based on unique, personal attributes.
When individuals operate at the cultural or sociological levels they are
engaged in “noninterpersonal communication.”
o Only when predictions are based primarily on a psychological level of
analysis are the communicators actually engaged in interpersonal
communication.
Because moving to an interpersonal level requires the ability to see others as
unique individuals and to appreciate differences, rigid or dogmatic people
have great difficulty communicating interpersonally.
Some forms of dyadic communication are deeper and more profound than
others.
Interpersonal communication refers to dyadic communication in which two
individuals, sharing the roles of sender and receiver, become connected
through the mutual activity of creating meaning.
The Role of Interpersonal Communication in Relationships:
 What is a Relationship?
o Relationships have been defined in several ways:
 As constellations of behaviors.
 As cognitive constructs.
 As mini-cultures.
 And as collections of contradictory forces.
o Relationships as constellations of behaviors – a relationship is
equivalent to the interdependent actions of two people.
 Relationships are all the things two people do when they are
together.
o Relationships are more than behaviors.
 Relationships as cognitive constructs that exist in our minds
when we think about one another.
 A relationship is the way we think about our behaviors.
o Relationships are not individual views but shared understandings.
 Relationships as mini-cultures.
 People who come from a given national culture share common
perceptions about the world and agree to abide by common
codes of conduct in order to live together in harmony.
o People feel conflicts about their connections with one another.
 Relationships as collections of contradictory forces.
 Dialectical approach – dialogues between opposing “voices,”
each expressing a different and contradictory impulse.
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o All relationships are made up of contrasting dialectics that pull us in
different directions.
 In a sense, a relationship is the way a couple comes to terms
with these opposing forces.
o The four views we’ve looked at are not contradictory.
 They each have something important to say about what
relationships are and how they work.
The Characteristics of Relationships:
o Interpersonal relationships begin with awareness.
o Interpersonal relationships develop through coordinated interaction.
o As relationships unfold, we begin to analyze and evaluate them.
 Memory organization packets (MOPs): changing mental
models consist of scenes from the relationship.
 MOPs help stabilize our relationships.
 Relational prototype consist of three things:
 Natural language label.
o Consists of the word or words we use to describe
a relationship.
 Criterial attributes.
o The characteristics that a relationship must have
to be classed by a given natural language label.
 Communicative indicators.
o The behaviors that display an attribute.
o Our relationships are influenced by outside forces.
o Our relationships can control us as much as we control them.
o Relationships are constructed and maintained through
communication.
Relational Paths: Intimacy and Distance:
 Private vs. Public Relationships:
o Two general kinds of relationships:
o Private relationships:
 Close, personal relationships.
 Over time they become more and more personal and unique.
 We make sense of each other by using unique, particularistic
information about each other.
o Public relationships:
 The members of a public relationship are related in impersonal
ways and very little change occurs over time.
 Members are substitutable.
o The two types of relationships we have described are extremes, and
many variations are possible.
o Over time, relationships will fluctuate and change.
o Different skills and sensitivities are needed for different kinds of
relationships.
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o Relational profiles are negotiated over time.
 Content messages are about the topic at hand.
 Relational messages are messages about the relationship itself.
Independence vs. Conformity:
o Private relationships allow us to exhibit uniqueness and
independence while public relationships stress conformity and social
solidarity.
o People have a need for distance as well as closeness.
 Public relationships are designed to give us that distance.
o Public relationships have certain advantages.
 They affirm social order.
 They actually allow us to develop a sense of separateness.
 Save us a great deal of psychological investment.
o The tension between the need for closeness and distance, the need to
be recognized as a unique individual, and the need to be part of a
social collective is fundamental.
What Does it Take to be Relationally Competent?
 There’s a pervasive myth in our society that relationship should just happen
o In many people’s minds, relationships that take work are not good
relationships.
 The process of building healthy relationships is called relationshipping.
 Communication Competence and Relationships:
o We need interpretive competence to understand and monitor our
relationships.
o In addition to interpretive competence, we need goal competence as
well.
o Role competence is another ability that helps us build and maintain a
relationship.
 Minimally competent individuals are inflexible.
 They can’t modify current roles or take on new ones.
 Instead they either force their partners to take on a
particular role, or they “altercast.”
 People who value flexibility, and who are willing to change if
they sense the willingness is reciprocal, are called
satisfactorily competent.
 They know when to adapt and when not to.
 They handle relational problems creatively and
effectively.
o Message competence is also necessary in interpersonal relationships.
o The final kind of individual competence that can help us build
relationships is self-competence.
 Some Characteristics of Healthy Relationships:
o In a healthy relationship, there is a shared vision of where the
relationship is and where it is going.
o In a healthy relationship, there are clear rules that have been mutually
negotiated and that work to the benefit of the relationship itself.
o In a healthy relationship, there is a shared work ethic.
o In healthy relationships, metacommunication is valued.
Process to Performance:
 What is interpersonal communication?
o There are two ways to define interpersonal communication:
 Situational view: Interpersonal communication occurs
whenever two people, sharing the roles of sender and receiver,
become connected through the mutual activity of creating
meaning.
 Developmental view: Interpersonal communication occurs
only after two people get to know one another deeply, by
exchanging information at the psychological level.
 How is interpersonal communication different from other kinds of
communication?
o Interpersonal communication differs from other forms of
communication because it involves two (or at most three) people in
direct or close proximity.
o Feedback is immediate, communication roles are informal, messages
can be specifically adapted to the needs of receivers, and goals and
purposes are usually unstructured.
 How are relationships formed?
o Interpersonal communication is important because it is the way that
we form relationships.
o Relationships begin with awareness and develop through coordinated
interaction, that as relationships unfold, participants analyze and
evaluate them, and that relationships are influenced by outside forces.
o People’s relationships control them as much as they control their
relationships, and that relationships are constructed and maintained
through communication.
 What are the characteristics of healthy relationships?
o Healthy relationships – partners share a vision of where the
relationship is and where it is going, they follow clear rules that work
to the benefit of the relationship itself, they are committed to working
on the relationship, and they value metacommunication