TALKING RELATIONSHIPS INTO BEING

When the study of relationships focuses on the dyadic level of analysis, it must also take account of the social context in which relationships come into being. That context is strongly bordered by talk and the rhetorical basis of normal (and scientific) discourse. Discourse and other actions typically reproduce the relationship in its own image on successive occasions, though they do not have to do so. The appearance of stability in relationships is thus the result of perpetually constructive activity of partners, not the result of 'the nature' of the relationship itself.