Uniqueness of Family Conflict Communication

Family conflict communication is a specific type of family communication and therefore subject to the same general principles that gov­ern family communication. Family communi­cation can be broadly defined as all interactive behaviors of family members that establish family roles, maintain family rules, accom­plish family functions, and sustain behavioral patterns in families (Vangelisti, 2004)—that is, all verbal and nonverbal behaviors by which family members affect one another and enact their interpersonal relationships with each other.

The first and probably the most important of these properties is that family communica­tion is a function of both psychological and interpersonal behavioral processes (Koerner, 2007; Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2002a, 2004). This means that family communication has an unequivocally empirical component in family members’ behaviors that is observable by fam­ily members as well as by outsiders, such as researchers or counselors. In addition, family communication also has a psychological com­ponent residing within each family member’s cognition that is neither observable nor con­trollable by others. As a consequence, each family member aware of an interpersonal behavior can determine the meaning of that interpersonal behavior individually, regard­less of any intentions by the actor or any interpretations of the behaviors by others. Every interpersonal behavior can have mul­tiple meanings in the family context. Family members respond to the behavior of others at least partially based on the meaning that they assign to it. Thus, ambiguity of, or dis­agreement about, meaning makes coordinated behavior difficult for family members, unless families develop strategies to address the inherent ambiguity of meaning.

To acknowledge that the meaning of com­munication is inherently ambiguous is to accept at least three consequences for family conflict communication, which can be sum­marized as follows. First, any conflict behav­ior enacted within the context of a family relationship might or might not be meaningful to family members aware of the behavior. Thus, any given conflict behavior might or might not be meaningful for the actor, might or might not be meaningful for the target of the behavior, and might or might not be mean­ingful for other family members. Second, there can be no certainty about the exact meaning that any given conflict behavior has within the family. It is possible that family members agree about the meaning of a behavior, but it is also possible that different family mem­bers assign very different or even contradict­ing meanings to the same behavior. Third, however, because family functioning requires at least a basic understanding (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2004; Rueter & Koerner, 2008) and cognitive process exist that motivate family members to agree with one another, families spend a considerable amount of time and energy establishing a shared social reality by negotiating the meaning of their behaviors.

This ultimately gives the family a key role in determining the meaning of communication behavior, including conflict (Koerner, 2007; Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2006a).

To reiterate, families deal with the inher­ent ambiguousness of the meaning of their behaviors by establishing a shared social real­ity (Koerner, 2007; McLeod & Chaffee, 1972, 1973; Rueter & Koerner, 2008). This shared social reality allows them to interpret the behaviors of family members consistently and to predict how their own behavior is inter­preted by other family members. Shared social reality allows family members to assign simi­lar meanings to their behaviors, to understand one another, and, ultimately, to coordinate their behaviors. Even though family shared social reality is never perfect in the sense that all family members share an identical social reality and there is always an element of idio­syncrasy and uncertainty about meaning that may lead to misunderstandings and difficulties in family relationships, it has a tremendous impact on how conflict behaviors are inter­preted in the family context. Ultimately then, family conflict cannot be understood without understanding the relational context of the family (Sillars & Canary, 2012) and the fam­ily communication that underlies their shared social reality.