Rhetoric and its alternatives as bases for examination of intimate communication

1 January 1976

journal article
research article
Published by Taylor & Francis in Communication Quarterly

Vol. 24 (1) , 11-23
https://doi.org/10.1080/01463377609369205

Abstract

“Interpersonal communication” is an abstraction that includes too much. Intimate communication between friends and lovers represents a special case of exchanged discourse that has had little attention devoted to it. Both behaviorists and humanistic psychologists have attempted such study but their work has resulted in a mythology which is counter‐productive. A study of 511 intimate relationships demonstrates some particular consistencies which appear to represent intimacy as a type of rhetorical situation. Examining such relationships by using a set of rhetorical heuristics appears to be functionally productive in theory‐building and application.

Keywords

This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:

Rhetorical sensitivity and social interaction
Speech Monographs, 1972
The emerging concept of communication as dialogue
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1971
Strategies of psychotherapy.
Published by American Psychological Association (APA) ,1963