Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Communicative Predictors Of A Shared Family Identity: Comparison Of Grandchildren’S Perceptions Of Family-Of-Origin Grandparents And Stepgrandparents, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

From an intergroup perspective on family relationships, the current study investigates family-of-origin grandparents and stepgrandparents to determine similarities and differences in communication and relational dimensions. Participants (N = 88) completed questionnaires on family-of-origin grandparents and stepgrandparent relationships. From the perspective of young adult grandchildren, the research explores the role of supportive communication, reciprocal self-disclosure, nonaccommodative communication, and parental encouragement in predicting a sense of shared family identity with each grandparent type. Results are discussed in terms of implications for intergroup research, grandparent-grandchild communication, and stepfamily relationships.

Rhetorical Counterinsurgency: The Fbi And The American Indian Movement, Casey Ryan Kelly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In 2007, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents Joseph H. and John M. Trimbach published a tell-all book to expose the crimes of American Indian Movement (AIM) and dispel contemporary myths about Bureau conspiracies against Indian activists. The book provides an insiders’ account of the agents’ participation in the investigation of AIM and attempts to correct what they characterize as popular revisionist history accusing the FBI of gross injustices against Indian Country. The agents argue that as far as AIM is concerned, in the halls of academia, “There is a market for blurring the historical lines between fact and fiction” (2007, …

Types Of Communication Triads Perceived By Young-Adult Stepchildren In Established Stepfamilies, Leslie A. Baxter, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Leah A. Bryant

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study was an analysis of the kinds of residential parent-stepparent-stepchild triadic communication structures expressed in interviews with 50 college-aged children from established stepfamilies. In an interpretive analysis of the interview transcripts, four communication structures were identified. In the linked triad the stepchild relied on indirect communication with the stepparent through his or her residential parent. The outsider triad was characterized by the stepchild communicating primarily with the residential parent with limited awareness of interdependence with the stepparent. In the adult-coalition triad the stepchild perceived that the residential parent and stepparent had formed a coalition, leading to cautious and distrustful …

Perceived Understanding As A Mediator Of Perceived Teacher Confirmation And Students’ Ratings Of Instruction, Paul Schrodt, Paul Turman, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study tested two theoretical models of perceived understanding as a potential mediator of perceived teacher confirmation and students’ ratings of instruction. Participants included 651 under-graduate students who completed survey measures. Results of structural equation modeling provided greater support for the confirmation process model, whereby students’ perceived under-standing partially mediated the effects of perceived teacher confirmation on both teacher credibility and evaluations. Further, perceived teacher confirmation accounted for 64% of the variance in perceived understanding, and both confirmation and understanding accounted for 70% and 72% of the variances in teacher evaluations and credibility, respectively. Among the more important implications of …

The Divorce Decree, Communication, And The Structuration Of Coparenting Relationships In Stepfamilies, Paul Schrodt, Leslie A. Baxter, M. Chad Mcbride, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Mark A. Fine

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Using Giddens’s (1984) structuration theory, this study explored the communicative processes surrounding the divorce decree in coparenting relationships in stepfamilies. Participants included 21 adults who were coparenting children in stepfamilies who completed diary entries of all interactions with coparents over a 2-week period, and who completed follow-up interviews. Results revealed two structures of signification with respect to the divorce decree that enabled and constrained coparenting interactions. The first signification structure was one in which the decree was framed as a legal document, dictating the rights and responsibilities of parenting, especially with respect to child access and financial issues. The second …

Forum: In Memory Of Fred Jablin: What Might Have Been And Still Might Be, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

I begin my term as forum editor by honoring the memory of Fred Jablin, an early leader in the field of organizational communication. I am quite certain that Fred would like to be remembered less for the tragic circumstances of his death than for the considerable contribution of his early work and the promising new directions in which his work was headed. Fred was, perhaps, best known for his early work in the area of superior-subordinate communication and then his later work in organizational socialization and communication. For at least a decade, his agenda-setting pieces on communicative issues in organizational …

“You’Re My Parent But You’Re Not”: Dialectical Tensions In Stepchildren’S Perceptions About Communicating With The Nonresidential Parent, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Leslie A. Baxter

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The nonresidential parent plays a role in the lives of stepchildren and in stepfamily households. The focus of the present study was on the interaction between the nonresidential parent and his/her child who resides as part of a stepfamily household. Grounded in relational dialectics theory, the researchers performed an interpretive analysis of 50 transcribed interviews with college-aged stepchildren. Stepchildren’s perceptions of communication with the nonresidential parent were animated by two contradictions: parenting/nonparenting and openness/closedness. These two contradictions form a totality, interwoven with one another. The parenting/nonparenting contradiction reflected stepchildren’s ambivalence over parenting attempts of nonresidential parents. Stepchildren wanted nonresidential parent …

Trends In Organizational Communication Research: Sustaining The Discipline, Sustaining Ourselves, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This paper began as a keynote address delivered at the 16th annual Organizational Communication Mini-Conference hosted by Western Michigan University. In it, I identify topical trends in organizational communication research, noting ways in which these trends are flexible, enduring, diverse, and problem-centered. I go on to invite current doctoral students to join us in developing these trends further. Specifically, I discuss how we might engage research in ways that sustain the vitality of the discipline as well as our own personal vitality. I conclude by offering a list of key articles that could serve as starting points in the ongoing …

Shooting Kennedy: Jfk And The Culture Of Images [Book Review], Kristen Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Forty years after his assassination, the memory of President Kennedy continues to grip the popular imagination. Recently, media and scholarly attention to the memory of John F. Kennedy has been evidenced in television documentaries and books that have recalled his presidency, his personal life, and his assassination. In Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images, David M. Lubin explores photographs of Kennedy to understand Kennedy’s popularity with the American public. Lubin, a professor of art, argues that Kennedy was significant not only for his political role as president but because he became an icon of twentieth-century postwar America. …

Stepchildren’S Perceptions Of The Contradictions In Communication With Stepparents, Leslie A. Baxter, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Leah E. Bryant, Amy Wagner

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This interpretive study, framed in relational dialectics theory, sought to identify stepchildren’s perceptions of the contradictions that animate communication with the stepparent in their household of primary residence. In-depth interviews were conducted, producing 802 pages of double-spaced interview transcripts, which were analyzed inductively for commonly experienced contradictions of stepchild-stepparent communication. Three underlying contradictions were identified. First, stepchild-stepparent communication was perceived to be characterized by a dialectic of integration, characterized by both closeness and distance. Second, stepchild-stepparent communication was perceived to be characterized by a dialectic of parental status, in which the stepparent was, and was not, granted legitimacy in a …

“If You Hit Me Again, I’Ll Hit You Back”: Conflict Management Strategies Of Individuals Experiencing Aggression During Conflicts, Loreen N. Olson, Dawn O. Braithwaite

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In interpersonal relationships characterized by aggression, the negotiation of conflict is especially significant. The present study examined the conflict management strategies used by 31 individuals who had experienced verbal and/or physical aggression during conflicts with their partners. Sillars’ (1986) conflict tactics coding system was used as a framework to analyze 960 pages of transcribed data. The results of this deductive content analysis indicated that the participants reported using primarily Distributive conflict strategies. Analytic induction was also used to interpret nonverbal forms of conflict management, revealing three common tactics: crying, nonverbal avoidance, and aggression. Implications for using these conflict strategies in …

Press Controls In Wartime: The Legal, Historical, And Institutional Context, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

News coverage of warfare poses a dilemma for social systems with a free press, such as the United States. In an era of high-tech weaponry and nearly instantaneous global communications, conflict is inevitable between the obligation of the press to inform the general public and the obligation of the military to successfully conduct war. The importance of secrecy to the conduct of warfare heightens the issue in the current counterterrorism operations. The competitive advantage of live coverage raises the stakes in a crowded media market. The military’s control over newsgathering during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War set off a controversy …

“Parent Teams” And The Everyday Interactions Of Co-Parenting In Stepfamilies, Dawn O. Braithwaite, M. Chad Mcbride, Paul Schrodt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Family scholars have yet to explore substantially the day-to-day interactions of stepfamily systems. Our focus was on the everyday interactions of parent teams, adults who are co-parenting within different stepfamily households, describing the characteristics of their communication. Twenty-two parents, stepparents, and partners (N = 22) kept diaries for two weeks, each time they interacted with an adult in the other household. Results detail the frequency, timing, location, and length of interactions; initiator, channel, and topics; and reasons for interaction. Interactions were short, everyday encounters rather than extended, planned meetings. The majority of the interactions were via telephone, followed by …

Professional Wrestling: From Sport To Sports Entertainment, Ryan Diesem

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

How People With Disabilities Communicatively Manage Assistance: Helping As Instrumental Social Support, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Nancy J. Eckstein

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

While social support is often conceptualized as a temporary need in crisis situations, people with visible physical disabilities face an ongoing challenge of balancing the need for instrumental social support against receiving unwanted help on a daily basis. Our goal was to study instrumental support interactions from the perspective of support recipients; in this case, people who are disabled, focusing on how physical assistance is communicatively managed with strangers and newer acquaintances. A qualitative/interpretive analysis was carried out on transcripts of in-depth interviews with 30 participants who had visible physical disabilities. Participants and interviewers discussed how help was communicated and …

Perceptions Of Communication In A Family Relationship And The Reduction Of Intergroup Prejudice, Jordan Soliz, Jake Harwood

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

From a contact theory perspective, links between variation in young adults’ perceptions of communication with their grandparents and attitudes toward older adults are examined. The analysis pays particular attention to variation in communication with multiple grandparents and finds links be-tween that and perceived variability in the older adult population as a whole. More variation in perceptions of communication with grandparents is associated with perceptions of older adults as more heterogeneous. However, variation in grandparent relationships is associated with more negative attitudes toward older adults on measures of attitudinal central tendency. The results are dis-cussed in terms of intergroup communication processes, …

Reframing Rhetorical Theory And Practice Through Feminist Perspectives (Book Review), Kristen Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In Feminist Rhetorical Theories, Karen Foss joins Sonja Foss and Cindy Griffin to provide deeper insight into the origins of their critique of rhetoric and their advocacy of invitational rhetoric by reviewing the backgrounds of and arguments made by several feminist theorists who suggest that patriarchal values are embedded within the core tenets of traditional rhetorical theory. The first two chapters of the book review the core concepts of rhetoric, feminism, and theory and provide a brief overview of feminist scholarship that has been published within communication studies over the past thirty years. Following these introductory chapters, Foss, Foss, …

Monstrous Youth In Suburbia: Disruption And Recovery Of The American Dream, Kristen Hoerl

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Although the American Dream myth idealizes youth who grow up in suburbia as culture types of imminent success, the Columbine High School shootings demonstrated that all not suburban youth will grow up to succeed. The extensive news media coverage of the tragedy reflects broader anxieties about the declining status of the suburbs in American society. In the wake of the shootings, the news media created a myth of monstrous youth in suburbia that functioned to repair suburbanites’ waning faith in the myth of the American Dream.

Contradictions Of Interaction For Wives Of Elderly Husbands With Adult Dementia, Leslie A. Baxter, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Tamara D. Golish, Loreen N. Olson

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The researchers used a dialectical framework to examine interviews with wives whose elderly husbands experienced adult dementia from Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders (ADRD), centering on how wives coped communicatively with their husbands’ illness. These “married widows” experienced a primary contradiction between their husbands’ physical presence and cognitive/emotional absence. Interwoven with the presence-absence contradiction were three additional contradictions: certainty-uncertainty, openness-closedness, and past-present. Results describe the ways these wives communicatively negotiated the web of contradictions as they interacted in the present with husbands they once knew. Applications for practitioners and caregivers working with ADRD patients and their wives, including formal and …

“The Policy Exists But You Can’T Really Use It”: Communication And The Structuration Of Work-Family Policies, Erika L. Kirby, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Although work-family benefits are increasingly important organizational policies, limited research addresses the impact of communication on benefit utilization. However, communication is significant because the perceived appropriateness of work-family benefits emerges through interaction. For example, when coworkers complain about “picking up the slack” for those using family leave, their discourse may impact future decisions of other workers regarding whether they utilize the work-family benefits available to them. We apply Giddens’ (1984) Structuration Theory to examine organizational members’ discursive responses to conditions (and contradictions) present in utilizing work-family benefits in a governmental organization. We argue the daily discursive practices of individuals can …

Performing Marriage: Marriage Renewal Rituals As Cultural Performance, Leslie A. Baxter, Dawn O. Braithwaite

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This interpretive study examined how the marriage renewal ritual reflects the social construction of marriage in the United States. Two culturally prominent ideologies of marriage were interwoven in our interviews of 25 married persons who had renewed their marriage vows: (a) a dominant ideology of community and (b) a more muted ideology of individualism. The ideology of community was evidenced by a construction of marriage featuring themes of public accountability, social embeddedness, and permanence. By contrast, the ideology of individualism constructed marriage around themes of love, choice, and individual growth.

“Married Widowhood”: Maintaining Couplehood When One Spouse Is Living In A Nursing Home, Dawn O. Braithwaite

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

When a marital partner moves to a nursing home, how do community-dwelling spouses, labeled “married widows,” adapt and cope with changes in the relationship and their own marital roles? The first goal of this study was to explore the role additions and deletions for community-based wives whose husbands moved to a nursing home. The second goal was to examine how these women discursively represent their own self-identity and the relationship they have with their husband who is living in a nursing home. Data were drawn from in-depth, face-to-face interviews with 21 wives whose husbands resided in a nursing home. A …

Bending The Rules Of “Professional” Display: Emotional Improvisation In Caregiver Performances, Jayne M. Morgan, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Organizational norms of emotional expression are open to negotiation through improvised performances, as employees may bend or break emotion rules to gain more leeway in expressiveness and participate in the development of their own role identities in the workplace. In this ethnographic study, a dramaturgical perspective is used to analyze the processes and outcomes of emotional improvisation as observed among nurses, technicians, and physicians in a cardiac care center. It was found that the emphasis on maintaining a “professional” appearance in caregiving largely constrains actors to perform along their scripted roles. Results are discussed in terms of practical implications for …

2001 Presidential Address: Do More With More, Dawn O. Braithwaite

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

As I have listened to, and recently reread the addresses of our WSCA Presidents, I have been moved and challenged by their words and their wisdom. And their speeches are challenging. They have exhorted us to embrace quality discourse, to welcome change, to maintain the centrality of communication in the university of the 21st century, and to avoid becoming out-of-touch whiners. I wondered, what can I add to their words in my own address?

Over this past year, I have thought about my life as a communication professor. How are my times similar and different from those who have come …

Exploring The Emergent Identities Of Future Physicians: Toward An Understanding Of The Ideological Socialization Of Osteopathic Medical Students, Lynn M. Harter, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This project brings contextual factors to the forefront of socialization research by investigating how medical ideology relates to the formation of the identities of students of osteopathic medicine. In particular, we investigate their attitudes toward, the role of communication in, and the expression of emotion in health care delivery. Through in-depth interviews with students about their vocational development experiences, we began exploring their emergent identities as future practitioners of osteopathic medicine. Three themes emerged from a constant comparative analysis of data, including (a) selecting osteopathic medicine, (b) encountering osteopathy, and (c) students’ emergent identities. These themes, and their respective subthemes, …

The Boundary-Spanning Role Of A Cooperative Support Organization: Managing The Paradox Of Stability And Change In Non-Traditional Organizations, Lynn M. Harter, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This project provides an interpretation of how one cooperative support organization, the Nebraska Cooperative Council, discursively functions to help its constituent cooperatives consolidate resources in order to better intersect with organizations in a larger bureaucratic system. In analyzing qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews, surveys, and organizational documents, we found the paradox of stability and change a revealing prism through which to make sense of participants’ experiences. We work toward locating and describing how the Council, through its boundary-spanning activities, helps cooperatives manage the paradox of stability and change while protecting their core participatory ideologies. By providing networks of learning, …

“Becoming A Family”: Developmental Processes Represented In Blended Family Discourse, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Loreen N. Olson, Tamara D. Golish, Charles Soukup, Paul Turman

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

We adopted a process-focus in order to gain a deeper understanding of how (step) blended family members experiencing different developmental pathways discursively represented their processes of becoming a family. Using a qualitative/interpretive method, we analyzed 980 pages of interview transcripts with stepparents and stepchildren. We studied the first four years of family development, using the five developmental pathways developed by Baxter, Braithwaite, and Nicholson (1999). Three salient issues identified in the family experiences were boundary management, solidarity, and adaptation. While the negotiation of these issues varied across the five trajectories, there were commonalities across family experiences that helped determine whether …

Younger And Older Adults’ Schematic Representations Of Intergenerational Communication, Jake Harwood, Jordan Mckee, Mei-Chen Lee

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The current paper examines younger and older adults’ cognitive representations of intergenerational conversations. In interviews, younger and older adults were asked to imagine various types of conversations with older and younger targets. They were prompted to provide a wide variety of information about the targets and the conversations. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed to uncover types of conversations commonly reported. Through a combination of coding and hierarchical cluster analysis, a hierarchical arrangement of types of conversations emerged in younger and older adults’ descriptions. Each of the types is described in detail. In a second study, exemplars of each type …

Overcoming The Dichotomy: Cultivating Standpoints In Organizations Through Research, Debbie S. Dougherty, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Feminist standpoint theories are seldom used by researchers. One possible reason is the ongoing debate between postmodern theorists and feminine standpoint theorists. The debate has been constructed in bipolar terms such that the issues are perceived as mutually exclusive. However, bipolar assumptions are damaging to women, both in general and in organizations. We contend that feminist standpoint theories should theorize similarities, material reality, and communal agency while being sensitive to differences, multiple realities, and individual agency. A study of academic women is used to illustrate how standpoints can develop around similarities while respecting differences. Using a creative narrative, participants’ organizational …

Women Managers And Gendered Values, Diane Kay Sloan, Kathleen J. Krone

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In this study we interviewed 30 women managers to better understand ways in which they experience gendered values and behavior in organizational leadership and their responses to those experiences. The results, based on a constant comparison, thematic analysis, indicate the emergence of surprisingly strong and similar perceptions among the 30 women that there are distinct feminine and masculine power orientations in leadership communication with corresponding sets of gendered values: (a) open/closed and (b) supportive/intimidating. Their most common responses were: (a) rejection of masculine power, (b) self-doubt and blame, (c) competence, (d) confrontation, (e) isolation, and (f) resignation. These women judge …