The Sixth Edition of Together: Communicating Interpersonally brings lead author John Stewart together with award-winning colleagues Karen Zediker and Saskia Witteborn to continue the book's traditional emphasis on contact while adding two additional emphases: ethics and culture. Previous editions emphasized culture as part of an individual's world of meaning and featured an underlying ethical standpoint. The new edition integrates culture and ethics into every aspect of interpersonal communication.
Written in student-friendly, conversational language, Together incorporates and applies social construction approaches to interpersonal communication. The text addresses virtually all topics common to basic interpersonal courses and its conceptually unified approach makes the material coherent and easy to grasp. Together lays out a simple but powerful model of interpersonal communication that focuses on communication as collaborative meaning-making.
The Sixth Edition features significant improvements, starting with a change in the basic form of the book from a traditional text to a text with readings. A brief "In Other Words" reading has been added to each of the book's twelve chapters, offering alternative voices to the particular chapter's key ideas. Most chapters have been substantially revised, and a new chapter on relationships in cyberspace has been added.
Another feature is the way in which Stewart, Zediker, and Witteborn acknowledge their own collaborative process and pique students' interest in the material. Throughout the book, the authors offer personal insights and examples as models for students. Furthermore, real-world questions and comments from former students are incorporated into each chapter to provide additional voices and to respond to the questions raised most often by students. Each chapter closes with an "Applying What You Know" section that encourages students to further integrate the material in relevant ways.