Relating

Presented by: EL YAKOUBI ABDELHAMID

 OUTLINE

 Definition

 The importance of language in relating

 The dialectic relationship between individual phenomena & social phenomena

 Two perspectives in conceptualizing relating

 Resources for studying relating in interpersonal pragmatics

 Methods for studying relating in interpersonal pragmatics

 Definition

Relating: is defined as the establishing and maintaining of connection between two

otherwise separate individuals = dyad relationship
 These relationships, or relating emerge through and occur in the actions of both
members of the relationship, the interpersonal communication, or interactions.
Therefore, relating has an interpersonal nature.
 Since then, a relationship is not a result of one’s actions, that is, of what you do
to create relationship. Nor is it just what the other person does during the
communication event...it is interaction created by both your actions and the
other’s action in concert with one another, and therefore has an interpersonal
nature
 The importance of language in relating

 Language is an essential component of human interactions, and its use is

inextricably linked to any phenomenon that involves human being in
relationship to one another
 Human language is not only a means of interactions in relationships, but a
means of creating and maintaining this relationships
 Human languages themselves the continuously evolving outcomes of countless
daily interactions among human beings
 The dialectic relationship between individual
phenomena & social phenomena

 Analyzing or conceptualizing human interactions presupposes analyzing the

relationship between two distinct, but interdependent phenomena: individual
and social phenomenon
 Individual phenomena and social phenomena are dialectically linked in that:

Identifying any human event as social phenomenon rests on

identifying two or more individuals linked in some relational state
1 Individuals do not exist as a human agents apart from the agency of
other humans
 Individuals as individuals are dependent upon the nexus that is the social
2
The social as social is dependent on individuals in nexus

These two example show that the individual and the social phenomena are
interdependent, but at the same time they are distinct and functionally
contradictory poles in that:

social activities cannot be accomplished solely through the agency of one

individual
3
Individuals can carry on many activities in isolation from others
 However:
Social activities cannot be accomplished in the absence of individuals
4
Individuals as human agents capable of performing human activities has its
basis in human sociality

These two opposite poles are then unified because what is social presupposes what
is individual and vise versa, and they entwine in Ying and Yang dialectical sense
Yin and Yang: is an Ancient Chinese philosophy that implies the existence of a
universal balance of opposite and complementary principles. It is a concept of
dualism , describing how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be
complementary, interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how
they may give rise to each other when they interrelate to one another
 Two perspectives in conceptualizing relating

1. The weak sense, summative perspective

• The conceptualizing of dyadic relationship involves assumptions that privilege
the individual pole of individual/social dialectic at the expense of the social
pole
• A relationship is understood to be the aggregate of the independent individuals
who comprise it
• The properties of the social entity is understood as the sum of the properties of
individuals
2- strong, non-summative perspective
• the conceptualizing of dyadic relationship rests on assumptions that privileges
neither pole
• A relationship is understood to be single integral system of interdependent
individuals
• The properties of the social entity is understood as the non-summative
properties that arise within that system, apart from the properties of individuals
• The non-summative properties of any system of two or more components arise
when the state of one component reciprocally linked to and conditional upon
those of other component (s) in space and time
 The weak sense, summative
strong, non-summative perspective
perspective

 Define what is social in terms  Defines relationship as social

of what is individual in phenomenon that involves
relationship individuals
 Resources for studying relating in
interpersonal pragmatics

 Werner and Baxter distinguished five broad orientations employed in theory

and research in interpersonal and relational communication:
Weak sense orientations
1. Trait orientation: focus on individuals and their psychological processes as
the unit of analysis, view individuals as largely independent of their context
and assume that the impetus for behavior resides within the individual
2. Situational orientation: assume that behavior is determined by both aspects
of individuals and aspects of the social and physical environment
 Strong sense orientations

3- Organismic orientation: assumes that the unit of analysis is the total system, and
individual unites cannot be studied apart from the whole
4- Transactional orientation: states that a system is a whole that cannot be broken up
into and is not made up of separate parts
5- Dialectical orientation: it shares all the commitments of the transactional orientation,
and focuses on the dynamic tensions between dialectically contradictions in explaining the
pattern or organization observed in the flow of events
 Methods for studying relating in
interpersonal pragmatics

 the methods vary depending on the type of relationship, but the methods the
analyst adopt for collecting data should always be consistent with the
theoretical and epistemological assumptions entailed in his conceptualization of
the phenomenon under investigation.
1. Encoding/decoding models: the psychological states or meanings and actions
of of the sender and the receiver are independent
2- Interactional achievement methods: the psychological states of or meanings
and actions of the sender and the receiver become interdependent as they engage in
talk/conduct in interaction
3- individually based, self-report methods: collection of data directly from the
relational partners