Identity Management in Interpersonal Relationships: Contextualizing Communication as Central to Research on Emerging Adulthood

The idea for this issue began with a simple question—what role does communication play in emerging adulthood? Most emerging adulthood scholarship does not center on communication. At best, communication is a variable or an implied afterthought cast as secondary to larger issues of life stage and transition. Although interdisciplinary approaches to emerging adulthood are expanding, communication has yet to become part of these larger academic discussions. The radical suggestion that communication perhaps constitutes and even structures emerging adulthood centers our approach in this issue. What about this particular period of life impacts communication skills? How does emerging adulthood shape communication patterns? What is distinctive about emerging adulthood from a communication perspective? If children and adolescents are no longer allowed the kind of agency and direction afforded in previous generations, and parents play a larger role in shaping and defining behavior until emerging adulthood, it makes sense that today’s emerging adults may be lacking important communication skills. Cote (1996) situates emerging adulthood within cultural tensions between modern and late-modern sensibilities, observing that identity for emerging adults has become increasingly image oriented. Identity as image oriented directs emerging adults toward a process of ‘‘reflexively and strategically fitting oneself into a community of ‘strangers’ by meeting their approval through the creation of the right impressions’’ (p. 421). The idea that identity is a process warrants a subsequent link to communication—emerging adults utilize specific communicative strategies in order to manage their identity. Emerging adulthood thus becomes the training ground for navigating interpersonal relationships with family, romantic partners, friends, and potential employers. In fact, emerging adulthood may be the most important time developmentally for the establishment of positive (or negative) interpersonal communication patterns that continue throughout the life course. The articles assembled for this issue examine communication as central to emerging adulthood. These projects are methodologically diverse, highlighting the value of multiple paradigmatic perspectives. Our authors identified three major topics where communication plays a central role in identity management for emerging adults; relationships with peers, relationships with parents, and the use of technology. Communication plays a pivotal role in the establishment, management, and dissolution of interpersonal relationships in emerging adulthood. Arnett (2004) observes that for emerging adults, ‘‘the late teens and early twenties become a time for exploring their options, falling in and out of love with different people, and gaining sexual experience’’ (p. 73). Emerging adults are also navigating transitions from high school to college or the workforce, and as a result, their day-to-day interpersonal relationships are changing as well. Knight (2014) examines friends with benefits relationships (FWBRs) and the communication patterns that emerge in this interpersonal context. Perhaps her most intriguing finding is that participants identified communication as work—a process of constant image management wherein individuals were positioning themselves in relationship to their partner as well as in reference to their own (and cultural) expectations about FWBRs. In a different context, Kerrick and Thorne (2014) examine relational talk within close friendships, specifically noting that identity positioning at the micro level of communication is common during emerging adulthood. What these studies indicate is that much more needs to be done on conceptualizing how communication functions interpersonally as part of social relationships and, in particular, how rich qualitative approaches to emerging adult research will enhance our understanding of communication at this life stage. Moreover, it is clear that the parent–child relationship continues to play a crucial role in emerging adulthood. The articles in this issue indicate that parents’ communication exerts an important influence on their children (e.g., Carlson,