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6: Interpersonal Communication

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    135755

    • Anonymous
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                Think about the conversations you have with people throughout the day. You might see the person who delivers your mail and have a conversation with him or her about the weather. You might strike up a conversation with the person at your local grocery store about football. You may even direct message (DM) someone about a picture they posted because you like the way they look in the picture and you want to pay them a compliment. All of these conversations can be fun and even meaningful. However, these communications are not interpersonal. “Interpersonal communication involves interaction between people who are part of a close and irreplaceable relationship in which they treat each other as unique individuals” (Adler et al., 2019, p. 95). It is important to know what makes communication interpersonal (or not).

    The communication examples above can all lead to interpersonal communication over time by “listening to and sharing personal information with each other as unique individuals” (Adler et al., 2019, p. 95). This means that you must get to know someone “well enough to appreciate one another’s unique qualities” (Adler et al., 2019, p. 101). You may start talking to someone about football and enjoy the encounter so much that you ask the person for their phone number. This may lead to greeting each other every morning, via text. You may eventually ask each other about their favorite color and restaurant, via text, and agree to meet for lunch. That lunch can lead to several more lunches. Personal information may be shared on the second lunch date: marital status, family members, and even sexual preferences. At this point, it becomes interpersonal communication, because you have invested time and energy and shared personal information as unique individuals.

    This page titled 6: Interpersonal Communication is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Anonymous via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.