Preface
Greetings! Welcome to Introduction to Interpersonal Communication. This is a special book because it is made specifically for Utah Tech Students by your very own professors! That’s right, not only is the book completely free of charge, but it was crafted by professors who have spent years working with UT students and how (hopefully) know how to reach out to you with entertaining, useful, applicable content.
One important thing to consider as you move through this text is the book’s personality. Much in the way that your COMM 2110 instructor has crafted lesson plans, discussions, and activities to make you want to go to class, so too have we, as the authors of this book, attempted to write things in a way that makes you want to read it. Each chapter is loaded with stories, media, and materials that both teach and entertain. If ther’s one thing we believe as your professors, it’s that retention of information is directly linked to enthusiasm for the topic – we’re going to do our best to encourage that enthusiasm.
As for the book itself, there are three main sections for you to consider, we’ll call them “chunks” of info. Each chunk has four chapters (thats 12 total, for those counting), and is organized in such a way that, well, it’s not chronological, but it does sort of follow a timeline. We call it they macro-micro strategy. essentially, the first chunk of chapters is designed to get you familiar with the most basic elements of communication. If you’ve taken classes like COMM 1020, COMM 1270, and COMM 1010, you’re going to see familiar information. It’s important to establish a baseline understanding of what communication is (and isn’t) before talking about how it works. That includes learning about ourselves (identity) and others (culture), and it also means tackling the role that technology plays across most, if not all of our interpersonal relationships.
The second chunk is all about the doing of communication: from listening to speaking, and everything in between. This includes a chapter on emotions as well because, as we’ll see, the regulation of emotions is an incredibly important part of listening and speaking. It’s an even more important part of communicating nonverbally, which is one of the most important elements to understand in the realm of communication.
Lastly, we’ll tackle intimate relationships. From friendships to family, romance, and beyond. The final chapter of the book focuses entirely on what we call the “dark side” of communication. It’s a fun and interesting chapter, but we won’t be ready to approach it until we’ve covered everything else. That’s why we consider the progression of this book chronological in a way – because learning about relationships won’t make sense if you don’t first learn about the mechanisms of communication that exist in those relationships. Similarly, those mechanisms won’t mean much if you don’t first have an understanding of what communication is and how it relates to humans.
All that to say, we do hope you both learn from and enjoy this book. We worked really hard on it, so even if you don’t like it maybe pretend like you do? Oh, and speaking about you all liking the book. If there are examples, relevant pieces of information, or studies that you know of that you think could improve the book, please tell your professor! This book is a living, breathing text and it can (And will) be edited every year! Okay, that’s enough for us, enjoy learning all about interpersonal communication!
Warmly,
Dr. James B Stein
Dr. Shariq Sherwani
Dr. Héngjùn Lín
Dr. Robert Hall
Dr. Shelley Rawlins