March Blog Post

Amy Windmiller

Comm 160

March 30, 2017

In Chapter 10 I enjoyed reading about interpersonal relationships and how context and how we view ourselves influences our interpersonal relationships. A sentence that stood out to me was “all contexts are marked by time, our identities, our perceptions, and the power relations that affect how we build and sustain our relationships” (Warren and Fassett, 2015). I think this sentence stood out to me because I was able to apply it to everything else we have learned about so far. Everyone has a different context which leads to different meanings, perceptions, and ideas for each different person. Which is why understanding these is critical to any relationship. The book also talks about our idea of our self and how we chose to show either the front stage or back stage depending on who we are with. Based off of our different contexts how we reveal ourselves to others greatly depends on the person. The front stage is just a show put on for people, that doesn’t go in depth. However, the back stage is where are the real stuff is going on and is far more private. This is influenced so much in interpersonal relationships because in order for a relationship to work we have to understand each other. In the lecture the term relational dialectics was brought up. This means our relational lives are constantly in flux. Which to me means that we are never really the same, and our ideas and contexts can change. Just like our context is marked by time, which seems to mean that we will be different in other stages of our lives, the context will never stay the same.

Warren, J. T., & Fassett, D. L. (2015). Communication A Critical/Cultural Introduction (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.