Demographers have repeatedly confirmed that the nuclear family is on the decline. Yet when Americans are asked about their ideal family, the nuclear family emerges as the most valued kind of family. Members of families that do not match this cultural ideal face a discursive burden to legitimate their identity as a «family.» This volume gathers together communication scholars who are working on the many kinds of alternative family forms, from, among others, grandfamilies, diasporic immigrant families, and military families to in (voluntarily) childless families and stepfamilies. The organizing question for the volume focuses on resistance, reconstruction, and resilience: how is it that alternatives to the traditional family are constructed and sustained through communicative practices? Several chapters adopt a global perspective, thereby framing the issue of legitimation of «family» in a broader cultural context. None of the family forms described in this volume meets the ideological «gold standard” of the nuclear family, and in this sense they all represent a remaking of the family in profound ways.

Product Description: Offering insights from a Who's Who of scholars in interpersonal communication "A highly beneficial contribution to the field with chapters that are clear and concise and illuminate the interesting and important aspects of interpersonal communication...read more

Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies is the first anthology of work on dialogic approaches to communication that offers a state-of-the-art collection of original essays in this emerging research area. Editors Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter, and Kenneth N. Cissna have gathered the most respected scholars in the field to describe their research projects, discuss critical elements of dialogue, and anticipate the evolution of the study of dialogue. With a foreword by Julia T. Wood, contributors include James R. Taylor, Stanley Deetz and Jennifer Simpson, Sheila McNamee and John Shotter, and Mark McPhail.    

Product Description: Combining the time tested classical work of Earl Babbie with the insights of one of the most recognized and respected names in speech communication research, THE BASICS OF COMMUNICATION RESEARCH is the book for the Communication research methods course...read more

Product Description: This book draws on the dialogism of social theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to develop a new approach which the authors term "relational dialectics" to the study of interpersonal communication. Emphasizing a social self instead of a sovereign self, multivocal oppositions instead of binary contradictions, and indeterminate change instead of transcendent synthesis, chapters examine and critique prevailing approaches to interpersonal communication...read more