Interpersonal Communication: A Comparitive Research On Symbolic Interactionism With Social Exchange Theory

Interpersonal communication is one important part of communication research.As a subject, it was formed in late 1960's. Man lives in communication all daylong.We can not break away from communication all the time. In post-industrysociety, interpersonal relations become the most important lifeworld contradiction.Observing interpersonal relations and researching interpersonal communication hasgood enlightening guidance for us to understand the interpersonal communicationstraits and make friends with others.Interpersonal communication research has a background of multi-subject, resultingplenteous and complicated achievements. At the cross of this multi-subject, theresearch in this thesis was designed to study the interpersonal communication fromthe social psychology. The related theories contain symbolic interactionism and socialexchange theory. The former thinks that interpersonal communication is in a process,where the related A and B parts provide or exchange resources each other. The latterthinks that interpersonal communication focuses on the communications betweenperson and person, which are commonly under the face-to-face or closed-door. Byusing of the symbol and self-project, people often exert influences on thecommunicated processes.The social exchange theory pays more attentions in outside hehavior of a person,which emphasize resources' exchange and advantages' realization. The symbolicinteractionism is high on person's subjective process, which lays emphasis onsymbolic interaction and self-realization. However, the center problem of theinterpersonal communication research concemed what factor is influencing thedevelopment of social interaction. The thesis tries to comb related contents of twotheories, same origin traditions but entirely different contents, and analyze the mainmode of interpersonal communication. It is expected to comprehend interpersonalcommunication better, to provide onstructive theoretic suggestions on interpersonalcommunication and social running.The full thesis is divided into three parts, the first part's introduction source ofresearch: current research status, possibility and significance. The second part is a textpart: the Chapter 1 is to research the springboards of two theories. The Chapter 2 is to compare the two theories' comprehension in the area of interpersonal communication.The interpersonal relations, conflict and performance are studied carefully. TheChapter 3 is to discuss whether two theories could describe the Chinese interpersonalcommunication. Symbolic phrase "face", "right" and "personality" in Chinese localcondition were analyzed to find out the place that the two theories agree with, and theChinese special features interpersonal communications. The conclusion parts give thesimilarities and differences between two theories. More importance is how thesegenres reached consensuses. Regarding the interpersonal communication theory as aprocess of statement and issue about academic directions, the different theories is justto discuss interpersonal models, and every model has its own advantages and limits.The conclusion of this dissertation is as follows: Man can not understand himself,others and society, unless he makes communication with others. The formation anddevelopment of heart, self and society can not be short of interaction, especiallyinteraction through symbol. Although ideal communication is Eutopia, we mayunderstand each other in virtue of the theory of communicative action.