I. A Relational Dialectics Perspective
1. Thinking Dialectically About Communication in Personal
Relationships
2. Dialectical Voices: Ours and Others'
II. Rethinking Communication in Personal Relationships
3. Rethinking Relationship Development
4. Rethinking Closeness
5. Rethinking Certainty
6. Rethinking the Open Self
III. Understanding Complex Dialectical Dialogues
7. The Complex Interplay of Selves, Relationships, and Cultures
8. Understanding Interactional Competence in Relationships
9. Dialogic Inquiry and the Study of Relational Dialectics
10. Some Final (But Unfinalizable) Dialogues
Leslie A. Baxter, Ph.D., University of Iowa
...an ambitious and important book... Scholars should take
seriously the implications of the relational-dialectics perspective
advanced by Baxter and Montgomery. --John Carl (University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Julia T. Wood (Communication Studies
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Contemporary
Psychology, 1997
This is an excellent work. It was a difficult undertaking and the
authors succeeded in presenting a dialogic approach which is
coherent, persuasive, and useful. Their review of alternative
perspectives and historical roots is both fair and concise (a
difficult combination)....This is a provocative and useful work. It
should stimulate considerable research and theory. --C. Arthur
VanLear, Department of Communication Sciences, University of
Connecticut
This is a superb book in every aspect...a tour de force that will
be standard work on the subject for years to come. No one in the
foreseeable future is likely to produce a work of this importance,
and I predict that it will be required reading for scholars and
students in the fields of communications, psychology, sociology,
family studies, and others....A fine piece of work that
accomplishes many things. It draws on an enormous body of
literature from many different fields, weaves them together in a
coherent whole, and addresses all of the key issues associated with
a dialectical orientation....The writing style is excellent, holds
the reader's attention, is gentle but substantive, and nicely
reflects the personalities and intellectual style of the
authors....This book is and will be a classic. --Irwin Altman,
Department of Psychology, University of Utah
The authors of Relational Dialectics articulate the common
assumptions of all dialectical perspectives, examine the
differences among various dialectical perspectives, and elaborate a
particular approach to dialectics, a dialogic approach, based on
the work of Bahktin. The authors provide a thorough discussion of
basic issues regarding communication and personal relationships,
including relational development, intimacy or closeness, certainty
of predictability, and openness or self-disclosure, from a
dialectical perspective. The authors provide a basis for
understanding, comparing and contrasting, and evaluating current
dialectical perspectives provide the necessary foundation for
future theory and research on communication and personal
relationships from a dialectical perspective. The authors achieve
their goal of stimulating a dialogue whose goal is to rethink
fundamental issues in the study of communication and personal
relationships. --Kathryn Dindia, Associate Professor of
Communication, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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