capstone paper draft

Analyze My Communication of Friendships by SPT, Interactional View and IDT

I am the type of person who is interested in interpersonal relationship, especially friendships. I value friendships a lot in my life, so I often think about my friendships deeply. Definitely, I wish all my friendships could be successful. During my seventeen-year-experience of building friendships (since kindergarten school), I summed up many rules that I think they are practical for establishing a better friendship. Of course I messed up some friendships in my past as well. However, since I learned many communication theories from the COMM 250, I realized that these professional theories could really help me explain, evaluate and test my friendships. Therefore, I would like to use Altman & Taylor’s Social Penetration Theory, Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson’s Interactional View, and David Buller & Judee Burgoon’s Interpersonal Deception Theory to analyze my success and failures of building friendships in my life.

            First of all, “[the] Social Penetration Theory explains how relational closeness develops” (Griffin 119). According to this theory I understand why I have a successful and continuous friendship with Maggie, but a short-lived friendship with Vivian, because the process of developing self-disclosure is quite different within these two friendships. Maggie is my best friend in Canada. We met each other since I came to Trinity. We were distributed to the same class in ESLI. We firstly didn’t really talk to each other, because she is from Taiwan and I am form the Mainland China. There are some issues between Taiwan and China as many people heard. She is nine years older than me. So at the beginning, there was really no common ground that could make us sit together and communicate. However, through a half semester, we seemed both have a sense of each other’s personality. Then we sometimes had lunch together, and chatted on MSN. We talk about our hometown, hobbies, our studies and so on. Little by little, the communication between us became smoother and more often. We went shopping together. We started to talk about our goals, dreams, and some general states of our family. Of cause our relationship kept developing. Later, we became close friends. I often went to her house and stay there for couple days. If her family needs help, she would ask me to help them. The state of close friends lasted for quite a long time. After that, we became sisters. We would like to share our secret of romance, conflicts in our family, defects in our past and so on. We also helped each other solve problems in life. We both were the best listener and consular for each other. We both were very loyal to our friendship. Currently we are keeping the friendship as sisters very well. We have been such good friends for three years. According to the text, “[we must] end up as best friends [because] we proceed in a ‘gradual and orderly fashion from superficial to intimate levels of exchanges a function of both immediate and forecast outcomes’”(Griffin 119). We basically followed each level of self-disclosure. Throughout the whole development of our friendship, I could easily see the model of the multilayered onion. We both are willing to share each other’s positive and negative experiences, not just enjoy the “happy hours”. So this makes our friendship more meaningful and stable (Griffin 121). In addition, because Maggie and I both are prudential person, we do have a baseline in our friendship. This does not mean we purposely try to prevent each other knowing a pure self. The baseline actually helps us to always respect and appreciate each other (McAllister).

            However, the friendship between Vivian and I is a total different story. We had a “depth without breadth” friendship (Griffin 122). She is my high school mate. More correctly I should say she is my father’s close friend’s daughter. Because of the connection of our family, we were set up to be good friends by our family. Good thing was we had almost similar personality. We became close friends right in the second. We stuck with each other every day except sleep. The high degree of closeness compelled us to talk about many privacy of ours. We seemed jump to the center of the onion. However, “penetration is rapid at the start but slows down quickly as tightly wrapped inner layers are reached” (Griffin 121). We started to realize that our friendship really lacked the base. We both repented of telling that much privacy to each other. So we stopped telling more. “Relationships are likely to terminate not in an explosive flash of anger but in a gradual cooling off the enjoyment and care” (Griffin 121). Finally, she immigrated to America with her family, and our friendship ended at that time. Therefore the friendship between Vivian and I is a typical example that “[fades] or [dies] easily after a separation or a slight strain” because we didn’t have “a stable intimate exchange” (Griffin 121).

            Secondly, Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson’s Interactional View specifically focus on how the relational context acts on interpersonal relationship. By understanding this theory, I came to know more about my communication style in friendships. I usually like to use an instructional tone when I am talking to my friends. I like to use imperative, such as “you should do….” I guess I internally assume my role as a teacher and my friends as students. I also like to play power in communications. I like to reframe interaction as well. All of there can be good and bad depending on different situations (Antaki). The positive side would be I do have a lot of friends who like to rely on my opinions and always trust me. My friends Yu Zhou would be the most typical one. We are friends for more than six years She is a very innocent and unsophisticated girl. She does not like to think about her life and the society deeply. Whenever, she meets a problem or a bewilderment, she chronically comes to ask me. She once told me that she thought my tone sounds like her mom or her teacher; and I am always able to reframe interaction that she could not occur.  She is willing to accept my opinions and learn the way that I am thinking. During the communication between Yu and I, we are using the complementary way. We have unequal power through our conversations (Griffin 180). Therefore, in this case, the way I communicate works well in the system.

            However, the negative side would be more obvious. Many times, I found my communication style does not contribute to the system. Typically I found although I did nothing wrong to someone, they just dislike me even hate me. For example, when I was in ESLI, I used to have lunch with other classmates. But I mostly talked to my good friends in my way during the lunch. After a period of time, I received suggestion form one of my friends. He wanted me to be warmer and more friendly, because the way I spoke really upset someone who did not know me very well. They thought I was very overbearing and bossy. They interpreted my purpose was to reframe interaction was to stand out. Honestly, they might misunderstand me in certain way, but their thinking was quite reasonable. Communication includes content and relationship (Griffin 178). Sometimes, even though “the content is about the same, the assumed relationship is quite different” (Strom Lecture 9). Therefore, by using the Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson’s Interactional View to analyze my own communication experience, I learned that I should notice the relationship that my verbal implies. In other word, I should be humble (Strom 95-97).

            Lastly, David Buller & Judee Burgoon’s Interpersonal Deception Theory focuses on dealing with truth. This theory sheds light on my success in friendships. The success could be interpreted into two aspects: the way that I deliver truth to my friends and the way that I receive the truth from them. According to the text, people decide to lie or to not tell the complete truth is because they want to “”avoid hurting or offending another person, to emphasize their best qualities, to avoid getting into conflict, or to speed up or slow down a relationship”” (Griffin 97). By this we can see that in most cases, people hold very kind consideration to select what to tell. Basically, they all want to keep healthy and good relationships. Therefore, whenever I deliver information either from others or myself to my friends, I would think about the consequence and the reflection of the receivers. I believe that not telling anything or telling incomplete truth is better than lying. Even thought “[some] theorists list the massage characteristics that reflect strategic intent” (Griffin 102), people still can not avoid human nature. For example, when people are not saying the truth, they “won’t look [the listener] straight in the eye”(Griffin 98). I think firstly it is not very suitable to tell one’s business to another without permission. Moreover, it is not possible for me to record the false information that I have said. I think I will probably forget the details soon and I am not able to repeat the same message. I do not want to make myself in trouble. So if I really want to keep the truth secret, I will not tell anything to anyone at all. Of cause there are some situations that force me to tell something. Then I would say something relevant in order to satisfy my friends. The way that I deal with the truth works very well among my different friendships. I believe everyone wants an honest friend.

            In addition, I also pay attention to the authenticity of the information that others give to me. I chronically “doubt [my] ability to detect deception” (Griffin 107). The thing is once I eventually find out my friend lie to me; I talk to myself that I should be clam and it is not necessary to get angry. I should think about their purpose of lying and try to understand them. Everyone has the right to choose telling or not telling. They probably think lying is a better choice in that situation. They might consider my feeling as well. They might just want to keep privacy (Scott). My experience is to understand their purpose is more efficient than sticking on finding out the truth, because one’s purpose of lying usually implies the real relationship between friends.

            In conclusion, I highly appreciate Altman & Taylor’s Social Penetration Theory, Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson’s Interactional View, and David Buller & Judee Burgoon’s Interpersonal Deception Theory. These three theories effectively enlightened me on my way of dealing with friendships. I became more aware of my communication style between friends. Therefore, I could apply these theories to my future communication in order to build better friendships and maintain my current friendships.