| Literature on communication has heavily emphasized how the genders talk differently, and scholars have largely argued that men's and women's languages are so dissimilar that cross-gender communication results in misunderstanding. Even amongst those studying marital relationships, there exists a widespread theory that miscommunication is common, and according to some, seemingly inevitable. Through the use of individual and joint interviews with married couples, I attempted to address two important sociological uncertainties in the area of gender and marital communication. First, although the genders may speak differently, I explored whether the meaning of good or bad marital communication also varied by gender. Second, because the institution of marriage is unique in that it is dependent upon communication as well as the building of consensual understanding, I examined whether married couples indeed created a shared reality over time. While participating husbands and wives did exhibit some communicative differences, married men and women generally had complementary perspectives on the meaning of good communication. Specifically, openness, honesty, immediacy and resolution, two-way communication, support, respect, humor, and nonverbal communication emerged as the principal components of good communication, and these facets of good marital talk were equally emphasized and valued by both genders. While husbands and wives may be approaching the marital dialogue from alternate communicative angles, they appear to be seeking common communicative goals. Within this research I also uncovered strong evidence that couples actively work to accomplish a consensual reality. By engaging in a learning process, practicing empathy, clarifying meaning, and adapting communicative behavior, spouses facilitate the creation of a common ground upon which marital communication occurs. The process of forging disparate definitions of reality appears to be strongly linked to the duration of the marriage for the depth and breadth of consensus was remarkably high amongst spouses in longer marriages. This analysis suggests that researchers' conceptualization of marital communication has been incomplete. The research presented here improves the current sociological understanding of marital communication and also indicates that future research on this topic must acknowledge the uniqueness of the marital communicative environment and remain open to the possibility of similarity as well as difference. |
