Family Communication 1 Running Head: THEORY OF FAMILY COMMUNICATION Toward a Theory of Family Communication

In this manuscript, we develop a theory of family communication that is based on the schematic representation of relational knowledge. We first discuss pertinent issues surrounding family communication and then develop a general model of the role of relational schemas for interpersonal communication. Taking the specific environment of family communication into consideration, we then develop a theory of family communication that is based on family relationship schemas and describe the schema’s location, content, and role in family communication. Family Communication 3 Introduction Researchers and theorists who study the family generally agree that the values, social constraints, and behaviors that affect family structures have changed a great deal over the past two decades. The ability of families to survive these changes suggests that families are flexible and that their flexibility is aided by how family members communicate. Furthermore, although a number of the functions of the family have been delegated to other social agencies, families are expected to nurture one another and provide caregiving and support. Whether conceived of as a process of making facts mutually manifest (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) or of developing and sustaining definitions of reality in relationships (Berger & Kellner, 1994), communication plays a central role in the family. Despite this obvious importance of family communication, there are no theories of family communication per se, although there is a growing body of excellent, theoretically driven research on various topics in this arena (Fitzpatrick & Vangelisti, 1995). The purpose of this manuscript is to attempt to fill this lacuna by developing a theory of family communication that builds on the advances made in the area of the schematic representation of relational knowledge in human cognition and that takes the unique family communication environment into consideration. To that end, we first provide some background concept explication work on the key terms and come to a couple conclusions about the relevance of intersubjectivity and interactivity for family communication theories. We then explore relational theories that employ relationship schemas and develop a general theoretical model of communication that is based on the mental representation of relational knowledge and propose a set of axioms for that general theory. Finally, based on the general theory and under consideration of the specific communication environment faced by families, we formulate our own theory of family communication. Family Communication 4 Conceptual Terrain Theoretical work on communication is important for understanding the dynamics of the modern family. Because the family is in many ways a unique context for human communication, theorists are forced to examine a broad range of issues, starting with a consideration of the meaning of the terms “family” and “communication.” Both of these terms are infamously broad ones: because everyone knows what they are, everyone has a different idea of how they are defined. Family. In the past few decades, numerous social changes have caused us to reconsider our definitions of the family. Noller and Fitzpatrick (1993) extensively discuss and elaborate upon classes of definitions of the family noted by Wamboldt and Reiss (1989). In some scientific investigations, there has been a gradual advance from structural to transaction based definitions. In other words, rather than see the family as comprised of individuals connected primarily through legal and biological ties, the family is increasingly defined as a group of intimates who generate a sense of home and group identity, and experience a history and a future. This transactional definition opens up the boundaries of the family and allows the researcher to include a variety of different family types and forms in the analysis (Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1993). The changing definition of family, however, not only has implications for the breadth phenomena researchers investigate, but also for the theories they develop. In effect, transactional definitions are only a reflection of the tremendous variance of how families define themselves. This variance, then, requires a maximal flexibility in how family is conceptualized in theories of family communication. Not only because theories that are based on more restrictive assumptions, for example, that families are composed of two heterosexual adults and their children, exclude a significant number of differently composed families, but also because they are operating with a definition of family that has little ecological validity. As a result, the validity of the entire theory