Communication holds the potential for rupture, and centrifugal discourses, while removed from the centripetal center, can never be completely silenced. RDT argues, however, that it is effortful for parties to sustain authoritative discourses. If, over time, one discourse is reproduced again and again, it becomes authoritative. For example, parties can privilege one discourse at a given moment and thereby mute all discursive rivals. Some constructed meanings function to elide, or skirt, the struggle of discourses to the extent possible. In either case – reproduction or production – meaning-making is envisioned as ongoing communicative work that results from discursive struggle. But meanings are also fluid in subsequent interactions, relational parties might jointly construct meanings that reproduce the old meanings, or they could jointly produce new meanings. Meanings emerge in any given interaction moment, and in this sense, they are, at least momentarily, synchronically fixed. The second proposition is that the interpenetration of discourses is both synchronic and diachronic. Existing research has, for the most part, been centered in the first proposition, to the relative neglect of the other two propositions. For example, stepfamily communication is often characterized by the discursive struggle of stepparent-as-parent with and against stepparent-as-outsider. Other discursive struggles are specific to particular relationship types. Third, the communication activity of relationship parties is rendered intelligible by a discourse of certainty and predictability in play with a discourse of uncertainty, novelty, and spontaneity. Second, relationship parties navigate the discursive struggle between a discourse of openness, candor, and honesty on the one hand, and a discourse of discretion and privacy on the other hand. First, relationship parties give voice to a discourse of individualism that interpenetrates with a discourse of connection. Three dialogues appear common across a wide range of relationship experiences. To date, RDT-informed researchers have identified a variety of competing discourses in romantic, marital, and familial relationships. RDT seeks to reclaim discursive conflict in relating, adopting a radical skepticism of relational monologues. Meaning-making becomes calcified when only one discourse occupies the centripetal center and all other systems of meaning have been rendered mute. Bakhtin’s lifelong intellectual project was critical of monologues of all kinds – authoritative discourses that foreclose the struggle of competing discourses by centering a single discursive point of view. To Bakhtin, all meaning-making can be understood as a dialogue – the interplay of different, ideologically freighted discourses. Everyday dialogue presupposes difference in the unique perspectives of the interlocutors. Following Bakhtin, all of meaningmaking can be understood metaphorically and literally as a dialogue. The first proposition is that meanings emerge from the struggle of different, often opposing, discourses. The theory can be summarized in three core propositions. Further, RDT moves from subjective sense-making of individuals to focus on discourse. Unlike many interpretive theories, however, relational dialectics theory (RDT) challenges interpretivism’s focus on consensual, unified meanings, emphasizing instead the fragmented and contested nature of meaningmaking. It relies primarily on qualitative methods with a goal of rendering a rich understanding of the meaningmaking process. Formally articulated in 1996 by Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery, the theory is grounded in the philosophy of dialogism articulated by Russian language philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. Relational dialectics is an interpretive theory of meaning-making in familial and non-kin relationships.
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