Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture: Discursive Struggles of Relating

Session Submission Type: Panel Discussion

Abstract

This year's Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture, "Discursive Struggles of Relating" will be presented by Leslie A. Baxter, F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor at the University of Iowa. Relating is a cacophony of disparate, often competing, discourses. Meaning-making emerges out of this dialogic agitation in which discourses bump up against each other in ongoing interplay. This view of relating is the central tenet of Relational Dialectics Theory, a theory of communication and relationships developed by Baxter and her colleagues and grounded in the philosophy of dialogism articulated in the 1930s by Russian literary and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Baxter will discuss the discursive struggles that animate relating in a variety of relationship types and will discuss, as well, some broader implications for how we can approach the study of communication from a dialogic lens.

Sub Unit

• NCA National Office

Chair

• Dawn O. Braithwaite, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Presenter

• Leslie Baxter, University of Iowa

Session Organizer

• Michelle Randall, National Communication Association