Leslie A. Baxter

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Dr. Leslie A. Baxter is an American scholar and teacher in communication studies, best known for her research on family and relational communication. Her work is focused on relationships: romantic, marital, and friendly. She is best known for her Relational Dialectics theory. She is a professor emeritus at The University of Iowa's department of Communication Studies. [1]

Contents

Background

Baxter stayed in Portland during her college years and attended Lewis & Clark College, where she studied communications. She received a bachelor's degree in 1971 and continued her studies with Speech-Communication at the University of Oregon, where she received her master's degree in 1972. In 1975, Baxter received a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in Speech-Communication. [2]

Baxter started her work as a professor at the University of Montana and served her time there from 1975 to 1976. From 1976 to 1989, she was a faculty member in the Communications Department at Lewis & Clark College, where she had received her undergraduate degree. During the last two years at Lewis & Clark, she was the Associate Provost. Baxter then moved to California where, from 1989 to 1994, she taught in the Rhetoric and Communication Department as well as the Human Development Graduate Group at the University of California-Davis. In 1994, she moved to Iowa where she started her career as a Communication Studies professor at the University of Iowa. From 2000 to 2010, she was the F. Wendell Miller Professor, where she held the maximum period of professorship. In 2004, Baxter was the secondary appointment in the College of Public Health, Department of Community & Behavioral Health at the University of Iowa. In 2012, she became a Collegiate Fellow in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. [2]

Scholarly work

Baxter's work focuses on researching family and relational communication. Relational Dialectics Theory, which was created by Baxter and Barbara Montgomery, has been mentioned in books and scholarly journals and received awards. Relational Dialectics Theory is recognizing that all communication is the interplay of differences.

In one of her published articles, "Problematizing the Problem in Communication: A Dialogic Perspective," Baxter discusses the problems within dialogue. She compares her thoughts on dialogue to Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism. She also compares her ideas with relational dialectics with an interview conducted by Em Griffin, an author of A First Look at Communication Theory. [3] She believes that differences in relationships are what give it a wholeness, where as Bakhtin’s reference to dialogue isn’t used in "the sense of a happy, pleasant experience".

For Baxter's study on family communication, "Topic Expansiveness and Family Communication Patterns" discovers individual's binary decision in engaging disclosure or avoidance within communication. The study used 122 parents and their children to find communication patterns of avoidance, like sexual issues and topics of drinking/drugs, money, and educational progress. The topics were relative to friendships and everyday activities that would change the dialogue. The four topics of adolescent dating, family relationship rules, family relationship concerns, and traditions were the final grouped topics. [4] "Parental Rule Socialization for Preventive Health and Adolescent Rule Compliance" looked into family rules rather than their communication pattern. Rules like nutrition, exercise, and sun protection in 164 families were examined. The outcome of this study showed that parents reported higher rule articulation than their children within the three topics. [5] In 2014, another study was published about family communication. The study "Discursive Constructions of the Meaning of "Family" in Online Narratives of Foster Adoptive Parents" examined normativity of families, seeing if shared genetics established as a legitimate family. The study showed that it was the importance of dialogue of families that defined a "family", rather than how the family is constructed. [6]

Further reading

Anderson, R., Baxter, L.A., & Cissna, K. N. (Eds.). (2004). Dialogue: Theorizing difference in communication studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Baxter, Leslie A. (2010). Voicing Relationships: A Dialogic Perspective. SAGE Publications. ISBN   978-1-4833-4264-1.

Baxter, Leslie A.; Babbie, Earl R. (2004). The basics of communication research. Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. ISBN   0-534-50778-6. OCLC   53992650.

Baxter, L.A., & Montgomery, B.M. (1996). Relating: Dialogues and dialectics. New York: The Guilford Press [Winner of the 1997 G.R. Miller Book Award, NCA]

Baxter, Leslie A.; Braithwaite, Dawn O., eds. (2008). Engaging theories in interpersonal communication : multiple perspectives. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. ISBN   978-1-4129-3851-8. OCLC   171049429.

Montgomery, Barbara M.; Baxter, Leslie A., eds. (2013). Dialectical Approaches to Studying Personal Relationships. Taylor and Francis. ISBN   978-1-135-45206-3. OCLC   865082132.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dialogue</span> Conversation between two or more people

Dialogue is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a philosophical or didactic device, it is chiefly associated in the West with the Socratic dialogue as developed by Plato, but antecedents are also found in other traditions including Indian literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikhail Bakhtin</span> Russian philosopher and literary theorist

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s.

Dialogic refers to the use of conversation or shared dialogue to explore the meaning of something. The word "dialogic" relates to or is characterized by dialogue and its use. A dialogic is communication presented in the form of dialogue. Dialogic processes refer to implied meaning in words uttered by a speaker and interpreted by a listener. Dialogic works carry on a continual dialogue that includes interaction with previous information presented. The term is used to describe concepts in literary theory and analysis as well as in philosophy.

The dialogical self is a psychological concept which describes the mind's ability to imagine the different positions of participants in an internal dialogue, in close connection with external dialogue. The "dialogical self" is the central concept in the dialogical self theory (DST), as created and developed by the Dutch psychologist Hubert Hermans since the 1990s.

Relational dialectics is an interpersonal communication theory about close personal ties and relationships that highlights the tensions, struggles and interplay between contrary tendencies. The theory, proposed respectively by Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery in 1988, defines communication patterns between relationship partners as the result of endemic dialectical tensions. Dialectics are described as the tensions an individual feels when experiencing paradoxical desires that we need and/ or want. The theory contains four assumptions, one of them being that relationships are not one dimensional, rather, they consist of highs and lows, without moving in only one direction. The second assumption claims that change is a key element in relational life, in other words, as our lives change, our relationships change with it. Third, is the assumption that, “contradictions or tensions between opposites never go away and never cease to provide tension,” which means, we will always experience the feelings of pressure that come with our contradictory desires. The fourth assumption is that communication is essential when it comes to working through these opposing feelings. Relationships are made in dialogue and they can be complicated and dialogue with similarities and differences are necessary. Relational communication theories allow for opposing views or forces to come together in a reasonable way. When making decisions, desires and viewpoints that often contradict one another are mentioned and lead to dialectical tensions. Leslie A. Baxter and Barbara M. Montgomery exemplify these contradictory statements that arise from individuals experience dialectal tensions using common proverbs such as "opposites attract", but "birds of a feather flock together"; as well as, "two's company; three's a crowd" but "the more the merrier". This does not mean these opposing tensions are fundamentally troublesome for the relationship; on the contrary, they simply bring forward a discussion of the connection between two parties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dialogic learning</span> Learning through egalitarian dialogue

Dialogic learning is learning that takes place through dialogue. It is typically the result of egalitarian dialogue; in other words, the consequence of a dialogue in which different people provide arguments based on validity claims and not on power claims.

In the social sciences, coordinated management of meaning (CMM) provides an understanding of how individuals create, coordinate and manage meanings in their process of communication. Generally, CMM is "how individuals establish rules for creating and interpreting the meaning and how those rules are enmeshed in a conversation where meaning is constantly being coordinated", and where "human communication is viewed as a flexible, open and mutable process evolving in an ongoing joint interaction, which enables movement, shifts and evolving ways with each other". CMM embodies this vision and allows interpersonal connection and open conversation among individuals or groups, and can be applicable across multiple academic fields and social scenarios.

Judee K. Burgoon is a professor of communication, family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, where she serves as director of research for the Center for the Management of Information and site director for the NSF-sponsored Center for Identification Technology Research. She is also involved with different aspects of interpersonal and nonverbal communication, deception, and new communication technologies. She is also director of human communication research for the Center for the Management of Information and site director for Center for Identification Technology Research at the university, and recently held an appointment as distinguished visiting professor with the department of communication at the University of Oklahoma, and the Center for Applied Social Research at the University of Oklahoma. Burgoon has authored or edited 13 books and monographs and has published nearly 300 articles, chapters and reviews related to nonverbal and verbal communication, deception, and computer-mediated communication. Her research has garnered over $13 million in extramural funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Counterintelligence Field Activity, and the National Institutes of Mental Health. Among the communication theories with which she is most notably linked are: interpersonal adaptation theory, expectancy violations theory, and interpersonal deception theory. A recent survey identified her as the most prolific female scholar in communication in the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheila McNamee</span> American academic

Sheila McNamee is an American academic known for her work in human communication and social constructionism theory and practice. She is a Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire and founding member, Vice President and board member of the Taos Institute. She has authored numerous, books, chapters, and journal articles. Her work focuses on appreciative dialogic transformation within a variety of social and institutional contexts including psychotherapy, organizations, education, healthcare, and local communities. She engages constructionist practices in a variety of contexts to bring communities of participants with diametrically opposing viewpoints together to create livable futures.

A dialogue journal is an ongoing written interaction between two people to exchange experiences, ideas, knowledge or reflections. It is used most often in education as a means of sustained written interaction between students and teachers at all education levels. It can be used to promote second language learning and learning in all areas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interpersonal communication</span> Exchange of information among people

Interpersonal communication is an exchange of information between two or more people. It is also an area of research that seeks to understand how humans use verbal and nonverbal cues to accomplish several personal and relational goals. Communication includes utilizing communication skills within one's surroundings, including physical and psychological spaces. It is essential to see the visual/nonverbal and verbal cues regarding the physical spaces. In the psychological spaces, self-awareness and awareness of the emotions, cultures, and things that are not seen are also significant when communicating.

Communication privacy management (CPM), originally known as communication boundary management, is a systematic research theory developed by Sandra Petronio in 1991. CPM theory aims to develop an evidence-based understanding of the way people make decisions about revealing and concealing private information. It suggests that individuals maintain and coordinate privacy boundaries with various communication partners depending on the perceived benefits and costs of information disclosure. Petronio believes disclosing private information will strengthen one's connections with others, and that we can better understand the rules for disclosure in relationships through negotiating privacy boundaries.

"Communication Theory as a Field" is a 1999 article by Robert T. Craig, attempting to unify the academic field of communication theory.

Dialogical logic was conceived as a pragmatic approach to the semantics of logic that resorts to concepts of game theory such as "winning a play" and that of "winning strategy".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Dallmayr</span>

Fred Reinhard Dallmayr is an American philosopher and political theorist. He is Packey J. Dee Professor Emeritus in Political Science with a joint appointment in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame (US). He holds a Doctor of Law from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and a PhD in political science from Duke University. He is the author of some 40 books and the editor of 20 other books. He has served as president of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP); an advisory member of the scientific committee of RESET – Dialogue on Civilizations (Rome); the executive co-chair of World Public Forum – Dialogue of Civilizations (Vienna), and a member of the supervisory board of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute (Berlin).

Feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis (FPDA) is a method of discourse analysis based on Chris Weedon's theories of feminist post-structuralism, and developed as a method of analysis by Judith Baxter in 2003. FPDA is based on a combination of feminism and post-structuralism. While it is still evolving as a methodology, FPDA has been used by a range of international scholars of gender and language to analyse texts such as: classroom discourse, teenage girls' conversation, and media representations of gender. FPDA is an approach to analysing the discourse of spoken interaction principally.

Marianne Dainton is a scholar of interpersonal communication and a Professor in Communication at La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dainton has made substantial contributions to the communication field with several publications concerning relationship maintenance and personal relationships. In addition to her research, Dainton has contributed to mainstream press stories for the CBS Morning Show, Wall Street Journal, and The Philadelphia Inquirer concerning relationship maintenance. As an author, she is widely held in libraries worldwide.

The twentieth century Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin wrote extensively on the concept of dialogue. Although Bakhtin's work took many different directions over the course of his life, dialogue always remained the "master key" to understanding his worldview. Bakhtin described the open-ended dialogue as "the single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life". In it "a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium."

Tamara Dawn Afifi is a communications scholar who focuses on topics such as family communication, stress, and communication. She is one of the creators of the Theory of Resilience and Relational Load (TRRL) and is currently a professor in the department of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the editor of Communication Monographs. As of June 2020, Afifi has an h-index of 25.

Caryl Emerson is an American literary critic, slavist and translator. She is best known for her books and scholarly commentaries on the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. She has translated some of Bakhtin's most influential works, including Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics and The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Emerson was Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature at Princeton University from 1988 until her retirement in 2015. From 1980 to 1987 she was a professor of Russian Literature at Cornell.

References

  1. "Leslie Baxter | Communication Studies | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | The University of Iowa". clas.uiowa.edu. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  2. 1 2 "Baxter's CV" (PDF).
  3. Griffin, Em. "Interview transcript, AFirstLook.com, January 2014" (PDF). A First Look.
  4. Baxter, Leslie A.; Akkoor, Chitra (2011-01-14). "Topic Expansiveness and Family Communication Patterns". Journal of Family Communication. 11 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1080/15267431003773523. ISSN   1526-7431. S2CID   144311253.
  5. Bylund, Carma L.; Baxter, Leslie A.; Imes, Rebecca S.; Wolf, Blanca (2010). "Parental Rule Socialization for Preventive Health and Adolescent Rule Compliance". Family Relations. 59 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3729.2009.00583.x. ISSN   0197-6664. JSTOR   40663907.
  6. Suter, Elizabeth A.; Baxter, Leslie A.; Seurer, Leah M.; Thomas, Lindsey J. (2014-01-02). "Discursive Constructions of the Meaning of "Family" in Online Narratives of Foster Adoptive Parents". Communication Monographs. 81 (1): 59–78. doi:10.1080/03637751.2014.880791. ISSN   0363-7751. S2CID   145703702.