Jimmie Manning

Researching interpersonal relationships : qualitative methods, studies, and analysis

Preface Introduction: Embracing a Full Spectrum of Interpersonal Communication Research 1. Understanding Personal Relationships through an Interpretivist-Oriented Lens 2. Method and Analysis in Qualitative Relationships Research 3. Interviews, Emotion Coding, and a Family Communication Study 4. Focus Groups, Values Coding, and a Romantic Relationships Study 5. Open-Ended Surveys, Taxonomic Coding, and a Friendship Study 6. Ethnography, Dramaturgical Coding, and a Sexuality Study 7. Discourse Analysis, Thematic Analysis, and a Study of Computer-Mediated Communication 8. Narrative Inquiry, Crystallization, and a Study of Workplace Relationships 9. Writing and Presenting Qualitative Interpersonal Communication Studies References Index

Making meaning of meaning-making research Using qualitative research for studies of social and personal relationships*

Qualitative research continues to have a larger presence in the interdisciplinary field of relationship studies. This essay presents the basic tenets of interpretive theory, the basis for many qualitative relationship studies, as well as four revelations that can occur from examining data through a qualitative lens. It also introduces the essays included in, “Qualitative studies of relationships: Prevailing norms and exciting innovations,” a special issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

A Constitutive Approach to Interpersonal Communication Studies

The future of interpersonal communication research and theory is no doubt constitutive. Scholars have made this argument (e.g., Baxter, 2004; Manning, 2013), focusing on how communication is not a mere tool for expressing social reality but is also a means of creating it. As such, interpersonal communication scholars should continue to expand inquiry into how relationships, identities, and tasks are in the communication (‘‘constituted by it’’) rather than simply continuing our current dominant focus on the communication in the relationships or between two or more people (‘‘containing it’’). To not do so limits a full range of interpersonal communication scholarship and minimizes the very aspect that makes communication a unique discipline of inquiry. Although such a constitutive view of communication studies ostensibly appears to favor a social constructionist perspective (Myers, 2001), Craig (1999) points out that a constitutive approach to communication studies is not a totalizing, explanatory theory or model that makes a singular attempt to explain how communication occurs. Rather, it engages metatheoretical aspects of communication to consider how different theories and models across communication’s many different contexts and research traditions—as disparate as they might seem—can productively work together to allow larger understandings about communication that one theoretical tradition alone might not allow. This view is compelling because it takes what is perceived as a limitation by some— that communication as a discipline is fragmented and plagued by too many theoretical camps—and transforms it into a productive dialectical-dialogic tension. Pointing to a Constitutive Model of Communication as Metamodel, Craig (1999, 2007) notes eight dominant theoretical traditions at play in the field of communication: rhetorical, semiotic, phenomenological, cybernetic, sociopsychological, sociocultural, critical,

Paradoxes of (Im)Purity: Affirming Heteronormativity and Queering Heterosexuality in Family Discourses of Purity Pledges

Queer theory, seldom used to critique heterosexuality, is used to examine discursive themes from interviews with 13 families who enacted purity pledges. Thematic analysis, values coding, and emotion coding reveal four salient themes: parents should want the best for their children; sex is terrifying; sex is a beautiful gift; and girls have no sexual agency. Results illustrate families use purity pledges and rings to mark a pure heterosexuality that contrasts with a more dominant impure heterosexuality.

Positive and Negative Communicative Behaviors in Coming-Out Conversations

This essay features typographic analysis of 258 coming-out narratives from 130 diverse lesbian, gay, or bisexual participants. Two typologies of coming-out conversations, one exploring positive communicative behaviors and another exploring negative, are offered. Positive behaviors for all members of the conversation include open communication channels, affirming direct relational statements, laughter and joking, and nonverbal immediacy. Negative behaviors for those coming out included nervous nonverbal behavior, indirectly approaching the topic, and lack of preparation. Negative behaviors for receivers include expressing denial, religious talk, inappropriate questions or comments, shaming statements, and aggressive statements. Future studies and research implications are considered.

Construction of Values in Online and Offline Dating Discourses: Comparing Presentational and Articulated Rhetorics of Relationship Seeking

This manuscript compares presentational rhetorics in online personal advertisements to articulated rhetorics generated through interviewing sessions to understand rhetorics of online dating. Online self-presentation literature is reviewed and an argument for a rhetorical-epistemological approach to studies of online dating is presented. 30 online daters from a metropolitan region of the Midwestern United States mostly white, aged 25-35, gender diverse provided a copy of their online personal advertisement and participated in an interview. Personal advertisements and interview transcripts were analyzed separately using values coding to consider rhetorical dimensions. Results indicate ethos is a primary concern of online daters and limits what can be stated in online profiles. Discussion explores implications of articulated and presentational rhetorics as well as potential future studies.

Qualitative Approaches to Dyadic Data Analyses in Family Communication Research: An Invited Essay

This essay reviews interpretive approaches to dyadic analysis using qualitative data. After reviewing classic approaches to dyadic analysis of qualitative data, we explore some of the benefits these classic approaches offer family communication studies. We then look to three new approaches to dyadic analysis—multiadic analysis, affective analysis, and collaborative autoethnography—that can be of benefit to those who study families. We close with thoughts about observing family interaction and building theory across research paradigms.

Exploring Family Discourses About Purity Pledges: Connecting Relationships and Popular Culture

This study explores connections between popular culture and family interaction. Multiadic interview data were collected from families who enacted purity pledges. Using contrapuntal analysis, results indicate how competing familial discourses about popular culture serve as both centrifugal and centripetal forces. Fathers rejected many sexual values in popular culture texts, but they also appreciated that popular culture makes purity rings intelligible to others. Mothers expressed frustration at portrayals of teenage pregnancy on television. Children indicated that their parents did not understand how they saw popular culture, in competition with the aforementioned parental discourses, but appreciated that their parents cared. They also articulated parental disapproval of a current generations popular culture choices as ongoing ritual, thus allowing the competing discourses to operate in a centripetal fashion. Overall, it is apparent that distal popular culture discourses inform proximal, constitutive family discourses about sex and sexuality.

Heteronormative bodies, queer futures: toward a theory of interpersonal panopticism

ABSTRACT This essay examines the policing of sexual bodies via interactive online technologies. We draw from scholarly discourses regarding surveillance, queer theory, and affect to construct what we call interpersonal panopticism. Interpersonal panopticism serves as a theoretical account of the fluid nature of watching and being watched in relationships, especially in consideration of how intimate relationships and sexualities are surveilled and controlled in a digital era. To articulate the utility and potentials of this theoretical approach, we offer five cultural propositions that serve as a basis for interpersonal panopticism. Collectively these propositions illustrate the utility and potentials of unpacking the interplay of surveillance, heteronormativity, and affect through an interpersonal panoptic lens.

Examining Health and Relationship Beliefs in Family Discourses About Purity Pledges: Gender, Faith Values, and the Communicative Constitution of Reality

This research draws from multiadic interview data with 13 purity-pledge families to explore parental roles in sex education. The use of values coding reveals that participants present their beliefs in three ways: as research-oriented facts about sex and sexuality; as common-sense logic; and as informed by personal lived experience. These beliefs are both health- and relationship-oriented. Implications include how knowledge is selected and applied by parents in family talk about sex, gendered ways parents share sexual history, and problematic aspects of purity pledge talks. The study also adds to a larger cultural discourse regarding faith and the politics of science.