A Dialectical Analysis of the Tensions, Functions, and Strategic Challenges of Communication in Young Adult Friendships

This monograph synthesizes selected findings from an ongoing program of empirical and theoretical research regarding the nature and functions of communication in young adult friendships. It argues that friendship involves inherent dialectical tensions as a specific category of interpersonal relationship within American culture, in the actual communicative practices of friends, and within and across developmental periods of the life cycle. First are delineated four basic elements of the dialectical perspective employed to analyze the communication of friends: totality, contradiction, motion, and praxis. Next, an extensive examination of dialectical principles inherent in the communicative management of friendship occurs. The principles are then used to develop an intelligible frame for the practices and predicaments of managing young adult friendships communicatively with particular attention to gender, marriage, and work exigencies. Implications for the study of interpersonal communication in general and friendship in particular are discussed.