ANALYSIS OF RELATIONAL COMMUNICATION IN DYADS: NEW MEASUREMENT PROCEDURES

TLDR

Relational communication focuses on control or dominance aspects of message exchange in dyads, treating messages as transactions and emphasizing symmetry, transitory, and complementarity of control. This paper reviews and critiques existing interaction analysis techniques and introduces new measurement procedures that capture both control and time‑varying aspects of dyadic interaction, concluding with a discussion of operationalizing major control themes in extended exchanges. The procedures first code each utterance by speaker based on grammatical format, then translate each message and response into a control code relative to its immediate predecessor, and finally convert these into transactional codes for analysis of symmetry, transitory, and complementarity. The new measurement procedures require minimal subjective judgment, particularly at the initial coding stage.

Abstract

Relational communication refers to the control or dominance aspects of message exchange in dyads, as distinct from an emphasis on the report or referential aspects of communication. In relational communication analysis, the focus is on messages as transactions, and the major theoretic concepts which emerge in this analysis are symmetry, transitory, and complementarity of control. This paper contains a brief review and critique of existing interaction analysis techniques, followed by a detailed discussion of new measurement procedures that capture both the control and processual (time-varying) nature of dyadic interaction. The first step in these procedures yields a code (by speaker) based on the grammatical format of each sequential utterance. The second step yields a translation of each message format and response made into a control code, based on the relationship between the message and its immediate predecessor. These codes are next translated into transactional codes, which can then be analyzed in terms of the three major theoretic concepts. These measurement procedures require minimal subjective judgment, particularly at the initial coding level. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways we are attempting to operationalize major “themes” or patterns of control in lengthy, ongoing dyadic exchanges.