Revisiting the Relational Communication Perspective: Drawing upon Relational Dialectics Theory to Map an Expanded Research Agenda for Communication and Instruction Scholarship

Abstract

Abstract Extant research utilizing the Relational Communication Perspective has provided important insights concerning the student–teacher relationship. However, we believe that there is a wider epistemological terrain for communication and instruction scholarship to explore than has been to date. This essay draws upon Relational Dialectics Theory (RDT) to highlight how studying the sociocultural and contextual elements of relational communication can complement existing research programs. We first review past instructional communication literature concerning immediacy, affinity-seeking strategies, and teacher misbehaviors and show how each relies primarily upon deterministic, efficient-cause, and teleological logics (respectively). Second, we describe praxiological, formal-cause, and indeterminate logics and explain how incorporating each can promote new ways of teaching through and researching about relational communication. Third, we offer that a holistic account of students' and teachers' relational communication is a crucial step toward cultivating dialogic communication in educational spaces. Finally, we argue that the expanded epistemological scope of relational communication research should encourage scholars to engage in issued-based and methodologically pluralistic inquiries concerning the communicative phenomenon that are unique to educational spaces. Ultimately, we hope that this essay serves as an impetus for communication and instruction scholars of different paradigmatic loyalties to work together to forge rigorous, holistic, and politically hopeful research. Keywords: Critical Communication PedagogyDialectical TheoryInstructional CommunicationMethodological Pluralism Acknowledgments They would like to thank Keith Nainby, Sandra Pensoneau-Conway, Jennifer Freitag, and Benny LeMaster for their assistance with earlier drafts of this manuscript. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the Central States Communication Association. Notes We use the term "communication and instruction" following the example of the recent Sage Handbook of Communication and Instruction. We believe the term is inclusive to the multiparadigmatic orientation that is vital to the future success and vitality of the field. We are not advocating that scholars of communication and instruction should simply use RDT in all of their investigations. Rather, we are saying that RDT provides a different epistemological language for scholars than has been traditionally utilized and, as such, points to a wider epistemological terrain than has been studied to date. These programs of research were chosen because they were included in the RCP section of the Handbook of Instructional Communication (Mottet, Richmond, & McCroskey, Citation2006). Furthermore, each has generated decades-long research agendas in communication and instruction scholarship. Their importance and heurism in the field suggests that they can offer crucial insights into the mainstream research practices of communication and instruction scholarship. The central argument of this article is that current research practices and the theoretical argument that we make are complementary rather than competitive. We are not saying that scholars should abandon the study traditional outcome variables (e.g., affective learning). However, if we study learning without asking "What are students learning for?" then scholars run the risk of teaching and research in ways that merely indoctrinate students into the logics of the present (see Freire, Citation2000). Additional informationNotes on contributorsC. Kyle Rudick C. Kyle Rudick (MA, West Virginia University) and Kathryn B. Golsan (MA, Kent State University) are doctoral students at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale.