“If you hit me again,I'll hit you back:” Conflict management strategies of individuals experiencing aggression during conflicts

In interpersonal relationships characterized by aggression, the negotiation of conflict is especially significant. The present study examined the conflict management strategies used by 31 individuals who had experienced verbal and/or physical aggression during conflicts with their partners. Sillars’ (1986) conflict tactics coding system was used as a framework to analyze 960 pages of transcribed data. The results of this deductive content analysis indicated that the participants reported using primarily Distributive conflict strategies. Analytic induction was also used to interpret nonverbal forms of conflict management, revealing three common tactics: crying, nonverbal avoidance, and aggression. Implications for using these conflict strategies in interpersonal relationships characterized by aggression are discussed.     

Discursive Struggles in Families Formed through Visible Adoption: An Exploration of Dialectical Unity

This study is the first to provide best practices exclusively for communication about crises that involve issues of culture, ethnicity, and/or race from expert crisis managers' perspectives. Using complexity theory as a framework, this study provides an in-depth, theoretically grounded understanding of managing issues and crises involving culture, ethnicity and/or race through the experiences of 34 senior crisis communicators. Complex insider perspectives suggest that responsibility for crisis management must move beyond any managerial bias to become more organic, normative, inclusive, and community spirited. First, issues and crises involving culture, ethnicity, and/or race are defined, laying a foundation for future theory development on ways these issues can become or exacerbate crises. Second, research participants’ stories coalesce to produce best practices and a useful decision-making framework for practical application in organizations.     

Centered but not Caught in the Middle: Stepchildren's Perceptions of Dialectical Contradictions in the Communication of Co-Parents

The researchers adopted a dialectical perspective to study how stepchildren experience and communicatively manage the perception of feeling caught in the middle between their parents who are living in different households. The metaphor of being caught in the middle is powerful for stepchildren and this metaphor animated their discourse. A central contribution of the present study was to understand the alternative to being caught in the middle and what this alternative means to stepchildren. Reflected in the discourse of stepchildren is that to feel not caught in the middle is to feel centered in the family. Stepchildren's desire to be centered in the family was animated by the dialectic of freedom–constraint, which co-existed within the contradictions of openness–closedness and control–restraint. These contradictions are detailed in the analysis, along with advice to parents from the perspective of stepchildren. Implications for the interaction of stepchildren and their parents are discussed.     

An Examination of Privacy Rules for Academic Advisors and College Student-Athletes: A Communication Privacy Management Perspective

HOW TO MAKE BETTER SPEECHES. By William G. Hoffman. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1948; pp. 266. $3.00.

YOU AND YOUR SPEECHES. By E. C. Buehler. (Revised edition) . Lawrence, Kansas: Allen Press, 1949; pp. 266. $3.00.

ESSENTIALS OF COMMUNICATIVE SPEECH. By Robert T. Oliver, Dallas C. Dickey, and Harold P. Zelko. New York: The Dryden Press, 1949.

FUNDAMENTALS OF SPEECH. A Text‐Handbook of Principles and Methods. By Roy C. McCall. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1949; pp. 240. $12.50.

PRACTICAL DEBATING. By Luther W. Courtney and Glenn R. Capp. New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1949; pp. xii: 308.

THE ART OF ACTING. By John Dolman, Jr. New York: Harper &; Brothers, 1949; pp. xx + 313. $3.50.

LIVING LITERATURE FOR ORAL INTERPRETATION. By Moiree Compere. New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts, Inc., 1949; pp. xii + 451. $3.00.

HANDBOOK OF RADIO PRODUCTION. By Erik Barnouw. Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1949; pp. xii + 324. $3.25.

VOICE AND DICTION. By Victor A. Fields and James F. Bender. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1949; pp. ix + 368. $4.00.

SPEECH METHODS IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. By Carrie Rasmussen. New York: The Ronald Press, 1949; pp. 340. $3.50.

SPEECH IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. By Lorna Shogren Werner. Evanston, Illinois: Row, Peterson and Co., 1947; pp. 222. $2.00.     

Contradictions of interaction for wives of elderly husbands with adult dementia

The researchers used a dialectical framework to examine interviews with wives whose elderly husbands experienced adult dementia from Alzheimer's disease and related disorders (ADRD), centering on how wives coped communicatively with their husbands' illness. These "married widows" experienced a primary contradiction between their husbands' physical presence and cognitive/emotional absence. Interwoven with the presence-absence contradiction were three additional contradictions: certainty-uncertainty, openness-closedness, and past-present. Results describe the ways these wives communicatively negotiated the web of contradictions as they interacted in the present with husbands they once knew. Applications for practitioners and caregivers working with ADRD patients and their wives, including formal and informal support, understanding, and managing contradictions, and ways to more effectively interpret ADRD patients' communication, are discussed.