About the Book
The Sixth Edition of "Together: Communicating Interpersonally" (A Social Construction Approach) brings lead author John Stewart together with award-winning colleagues Karen Zediker and Saskia Witteborn to continue the book's traditional emphasis on contact while adding two additional emphases: ethics and culture. Previous editions emphasized culture as part of an individual's world of meaning and featured an underlying ethical standpoint. The new edition integrates culture and ethics into every aspect of interpersonal communication. Written in student-friendly, conversational language, "Together" incorporates and applies social construction approaches to interpersonal communication. The text addresses virtually all topics common to basic interpersonal courses and its conceptually unified approach makes the material coherent and easy to grasp. "Together" lays out a simple but powerful model of interpersonal communication that focuses on communication as collaborative meaning-making. The Sixth Edition features significant improvements, starting with a change in the basic form of the book from a traditional text to a text with readings.
A brief "In Other Words" reading has been added to each of the book's twelve chapters, offering alternative voices to the particular chapter's key ideas. Most chapters have been substantially revised, and a new chapter on relationships in cyberspace has been added. Another feature is the way in which Stewart, Zediker, and Witteborn acknowledge their own collaborative process and pique students' interest in the material. Throughout the book, the authors offer personal insights and examples as models for students. Furthermore, real-world questions and comments from former students are incorporated into each chapter to provide additional voices and to respond to the questions raised most often by students. Each chapter closes with an "Applying What You Know" section that encourages students to further integrate the material in relevant ways.
Table of Contents:
PART I: UNDERSTANDING COMMUNICATION Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Authors and the Text Provides the reader with the opportunity to meet the authors, emphasizing the notion of "the personal" which grounds the text. It also previews the content and format of the book. Chapter 2: Communication and Meaning Presents the central concepts of contact, ethics, and culture. The chapter also outlines the social constructionist model of communication that grounds the text. "Worlds of meaning," identities, the importance of conversation, and "nexting" are introduced as central topics. In Other Words: Fadiman, "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures." Chapter 3: Interpersonal Communicating Chapter 3 responds to the questions: "What is interpersonal communication?" and "Why should I study it?" The reader is introduced to the impersonal-interpersonal continuum, the five features of the personal, and the concept that quality of life is directly related to quality of communication. In Other Words: Covarrubias, "Of Endearment and Other Terms of Address: A Mexican Perspective." Chapter 4: Constructing Identities Students learn how identities are collaboratively constructed in com-munication. Response options are presented and students are encouraged to explore the relationship between their communication choices and the degree of interpersonal contact they experience. In Other Words: Wood and Reich, "Gendered Speech Communities." PART II: INHALING AND EXHALING Chapter 5: Inhaling: Perception Part II employs a breathing metaphor to treat its four central elements. Chapter 5 identifies perception as an interpretive process and describes the selecting, organizing, and inferring process stages. Ethical and cultural challenges of person perception, including attribution, inferences, and stereotypes are addressed. In Other Words: Duncan, "A Whole Lot of Milk with a Drop of Chocolate: An African American Woman's Story." Chapter 6: Inhaling: Listening This chapter discusses challenges to effective listening and offers suggestions for responding to them. Analytic, empathic, and dialogic listening are described and exemplified. Students learn to understand and practice specific skills that improve their listening. In Other Words: Leonard, "With Open Ears: Listening and the Art of Discussion Leading." Chapter 7: Exhaling: Verbal Dimensions of Talk The authors distinguish among verbal, oral, nonverbal, and nonoral communicating. They identify and describe the concept of language as a way of being that implicates ethics and culture. Issues of "politically correct" language and the verbal performance of gender are linked to the effects of language on perception. Practical guidelines for language use are provided. In Other Words: Rodriguez, "Aria." Chapter 8: Exhaling: Nonverbal Dimensions of Talk Chapter 8 provides an overview of significant nonverbal features of communication. Interpretations of paralinguistics, facial expressions, eye contact, space, gestures, and touch are addressed in relation to verbal dimensions of talk and the concept of the "worlds of meaning." In Other Words: Lozano, "The Cultural Experience of Space and Body." PART III: RELATING TOGETHER Chapter 9: Relationship, Development, and Dissolution Chapter 9 introduces the theory and practice of relationship formation, maintenance, and dissolution. Students explore how "inhaling" others and "exhaling" self work to form, reshape, and collapse relationships. The authors describe three models for understanding the development and decay of friend, family, and intimate relationships. In Other Words: Dixson and Duck, "Understanding the Relationship Process." Chapter 10: Relating Interpersonally Through Problems The authors discuss how problematic relationships are collaboratively constructed. They describe responsibilities all communicators have when deception, betrayal, aggression, and violence are present in a relationship. Readers are encouraged to avoid fault and blame and to actively consider ways that relational problems, as well as successes, are collaboratively constructed. In Other Words: Shook, "Ho Oponopono: Contemporary Uses of a Hawaiian Problem-solving Process." Chapter 11: Relating Interpersonally in Conflict Chapter 11 defines interpersonal conflict, identifies risks and benefits of engaging in conflict, and provides an overview of conflict-style theories. It also balances theoretical insights and practical strategies, enabling readers to manage conflicts that inevitably occur. Perception and listening skills, the ability to communicate verbally and nonverbally, an understanding of response options, and differences in worlds of meaning are all important to developing competence in conflict management. In Other Words: Lang, "Sulha Peacemaking and the Politics of Persuasion." Chapter 12: Relating Interpersonally in Cyberspace The study of interpersonal communication is applied to issues of relational development on-line. This chapter reviews the variety of forms of mediated communication that can influence the readers' communication in the future. Current research on interpersonal communication in cyberspace is introduced and students are guided to reflect on the ways meaning, identities, and relationships are constructed in this context. In Other Words: Bruckman, "Christmas Unplugged."
Review :
The coverage is very good, and with the inclusion of new topics the book offers a strong representation of the topics and fields it seeks to introduce... The conversational tone remains an advantage of the Stewart et al. book." --Steve Duck, University of Iowa "Consistent with the social constructionist perspective, this book celebrates 'multivocality.' Stewart et al. incorporate student voices, alternative voices, cultural insights, and ethical lenses--giving students the exposure to multiple voices and the opportunity to wrestle with these alternative voices, as compared to their own. This reinforces the metaphor of tensionality that the authors offer throughout the text and invites the students into a more complex relationship with the concepts and ideas presented." --Kimberly Pearce, De Anza College
