Advanced Interpersonal Communication: Managing Communication Goals

Built around the idea that we communicate with others to meet our needs and achieve our goals, Advanced Interpersonal Communication: Managing Communication Goals provides students with a practical approach to communicating with others and navigating everyday communication challenges. Students are presented with theoretical insights, up-to-date research, and the practical examples they need to make effective and appropriate choices to achieve their own interpersonal communication goals.

The text highlights the fundamental interconnections between communication theory and practice and supports student skill development through explorations of key interpersonal communication concepts. It includes discussion questions that challenge students to critically apply course content to their own experiences, and every chapter includes a featured research study that illustrates how theory and research can inform communication practice.

After an opening chapter that provides an overview of the nature of communication goals, each subsequent chapter focuses on managing a particular interpersonal goal. The first section of the book explores how we manage information goals, with chapters centering on disclosure and privacy, uncertainty, and gossip and rumors. In the second section, students learn about managing identity needs. Dedicated chapters cover impression management, social identity, and stigma. The remaining chapters center on managing relational goals with coverage of miscommunication, power, conflict, deception, social support, affiliation, forgiveness, and sexual communication.

Providing students with rich strategies to help them achieve their communication goals in everyday life, Advanced Interpersonal Communication is ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level courses in interpersonal communication.