Idiomatic Communication and Interpersonal Solidarity in Friends’ Relational Cultures

This study examined the relationship of interpersonal solidarity to various aspects of idiomatic communication in friends’ relational cultures. A pilot study determined that the typology of idiom functions used in past investigations of romantic relationships could be extended to friendship. The idioms described functioned to name activities, emotional states, objects, and places; communicate affection; manage confrontations; accomplish greetings and goodbyes; reference the self, partner, or other individuals; issue requests and insults; and denote sexual matters. In the main study, 114 females and 117 males each identified a close same-sex friend, completed the Interpersonal Solidarity Scale, and filled out an idiom report form for each idiom that had emerged in the friendship. The majority of the 1,380 idioms reported were verbal, used in public contexts, and used in more than just the one friendship described. For both sexes, solidarity was positively correlated with five idiom categories: activities, affection, confrontation, nicknames for self, and objects. In addition, solidarity correlated positively with place, requests, nicknames for friend, and sexual references for females and with emotions, greetings/goodbyes, labels for others, and teasing insults for males. For both sexes, solidarity was related to the total number and breadth (diversity) of idioms reported, as well as to other features of friends’ idiomatic codes. A subset of the idiom variables collectively accounted for over one third of the variance in, solidarity. Support was also found for several hypothesized sex differences in the structure and use of idiomatic codes. Associations among idiom function, channel, patterns of use, and relational consequences were also explored.     

Memory,Cognitive Processing,and the Process of “Listening” A Reply to Thomas and Levine

In a recent issue of Human Communication Research, Thomas and Levine (1994) explored the “listening” construct, examining listening from both a cognitive and behavioral point of view. In so doing, they made several inaccurate statements about my own research and positions that I have taken concerning listening. Linear models of memory (first short-term memory, then intermediate storage, then long-term memory) do not describe listening. What I have written in the past is that, like memory, listening has short-term and long-term elements, that listening research ought to examine short-term processing more carefully than before, and that any general definition of listening ought to include all elements, including long-term elements. Additional misstatements appear concerning the role of memory in the assessment of listening. In addition to these misstatements, they ignored some extremely important constructs in listening, principally that of listener involvement. In addition, the model that they present as a causal explanation for listening behaviors has several serious flaws. Nonetheless, in focusing on some nonverbal indicators of listening, they have made a real contribution to the understanding of listening as a communication skill.     

THE ILLUSION OF SYSTEMATIC DISTORTION

This reply to Sypher argues that neither his data nor his analysis provide good evidence for confirming the systematic distortion hypothesis in general or showing that it is operative in the communicator style measure in particular. At best, Sypher's research provides additional construct validity for the communicator style domain. It is maintained that “difficult memory conditions” do not prevail for the self-report of style behaviors. Three studies are briefly reported supporting this conclusion. Finally, necessary conditions are identified in order for self-report data to be increasingly useful. Although the results of factor analyses (and related methods) of sets of ratings are often of immediate and intrinsic interest, there are few personality psychologists today who would claim that obtained factor structures represent inexorable verities (cf. Lykenn, 1971). It is now well recognized that by varying the mix of variables included in a clustering analysis, one can fundamentally alter both the number and nature of the summarizing dimensions subsequently obtained.     

Implications of a Person's Level of Cognitive Development for Cognitive Approaches to Counseling

Using a cognitive-developmental model of processing self-evaluations, this article presents specific counseling strategies at different levels of abstract thinking.