Colloquy Racing Toward the Millennium: Twenty-Five Years of Research on Communication in Relationships

Abstract

t has been 25 years since the founding of Human Communication Research, a journal dedicated to expanding our knowledge and I understanding of human symbolic transactions. A strong latent focus in the research published from the very first, however, has been on communication in social and personal relationships. The first article published in this journal treated affection and reciprocity in self-disclosing communication (Pearce, Wright, Sharp, & Slama, 1974. Pearce and his colleagues considered how disclosing information about oneself to another affected the formation and function of interpersonal relationships, especially friendships. In the next issue, the lead article by Berger and Calabrese (1975) proposed a developmental theory of interpersonal relationships based on the reduction of uncertainty through communication. This early work was dedicated to developing a communication science of relationships. And, as we rush toward the millennium, the articles in this issue of Human Communication Research continue this fine tradition. Each adds to the accumulation of systematic knowledge, builds on previous theory, and develops new methods to test predictions.I began my doctoral studies in the same month that the first issue of Human Communication Research appeared. I had the opportunity to work with a stellar group of scholars from whom I learned to have a deep respect for research motivated by theory and informed by data. I thought of myself as a student of communication theory with a strong interest in the study of interpersonal communication. The contemporaneous focus on persuasion and the construction of messages for a mass audience did not match my interest in communication between people. Luckily for me, I M a y Anne Fitzpatrick

Gleaning Atomic and Molecular Structure from Oscillator Strengths Needed in Astrophysics

“…With an f -value of order 1, the absorption lines of the 3s-3p doublet [15] found that this led to a branching fraction differing from the 2 : 1 ratio expected from LS-coupling rules. Subsequent analyses of interstellar spectra [16,17] and computations [18] confirmed our values for oscillator strength and branching fraction -see Table I. The astronomical analyses were based on the abundance obtained from the damping wings of the strong doublet and then on adjustments to the f -value and branching fraction of the weaker set of lines until the synthesized profiles fit the observed spectra.…”

Firm–employee relationship strength—A conceptual model

“…Communication receives frequent exploration as a key construct in the examination of relationships (Anderson and Narus, 1990;Dwyer et al, 1987;Fitzpatrick, 1999;Lewis, 1998;Perella, 1999;Wilson and Vlosky, 1997). For example, Reichheld (2001, p. 149) states that "longterm relationships require honest, two-way communication".…”