Summary: In this book, Steve Duck challenges students to re-examine their assumptions about relationships. Duck shows that in order to understand relationships properly, students must understand the roles that society, language, our taken-for-granted assumptions, and other people who share those assumptions play in the conduct of relationships. Steve has focused on the development and decline of relationships from many different perspectives although he has also done research on the dynamics of television production techniques and persuasive messages in health contexts. Steve has written or edited 50 books on relationships and other matters (including Rethinking Relationships, forthcoming from SAGE), was the founder of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and its editor for its first 15 years. His 1994 book Meaningful Relationships: Talking, Sense and Relating won the G R Miller Book Award from the Interpersonal Division of the National Communication Association.
