Documenting Your Theory of Intimacy—The Essay
Based on your intimate reflection, comparative research, and photographic instillation, you will need to write an 4-5 page essay (minimum) that forwards your theory of intimacy and supports it through an analysis of your and your relational partner’s communication. In particular, your essays should include the following:
• A title page,
• An introduction that sets up and forwards your theory of intimacy,
• A body that develops your theory by offering:
• An analysis of your intimate relational communication processes using specific, concrete examples, and
• Makes connections to the existing literature on intimate relational communication,
• A conclusion that revisits your theory and synthesizes your analysis,
• A reference section for your cited sources, and
• An appendix that includes your typed list of relational communication processes with definitions and examples.
Your essay should be well referenced, formatted in proper APA style, and free of grammatical and punctuation errors.
Some helpful suggestions regarding the essay:
• Although your photographic instillation contains approximately pictures of various intimate relational communication processes, you may wish to focus on 3-5 that, in your opinion, are the most important to constituting your intimacy. In your introduction, you can acknowledge that your theory asserts that there are more process, but you are focusing on 3-5 of the most important processes. You can direct your readers to your appendix for a complete list of processes.
• For the body and analysis portion of your paper, use your photographs to drive to this. Each is a snapshot of an intimate process with its accompanying story and evidence that fleshes it out. Capitalize on that point of synergy.
• If you are having trouble making meaningful connections to course materials and/or outside readings, consider positioning your theory in relation to one of the other theories or models described in chapter 7: how does your theory shed light on something that we’re missing, or how does your theory address an important weakness in a model?