Communication In The Sitcom Friends

A study done at Brigham Young University by Professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad shows that friendship is good for you health. The study found that people have less stress, stronger defenses, and lived longer when they had a good network of friends. Although friends are essential and beneficial to your health, they can also cause problems. In this paper, I will demonstrate how the friends in the sitcom Friends use concepts of communication in their relationships. After a quick summary of the sitcom, I will show how the show demonstrates that communication is situated, the importance of seeking more information, the importance of being a good listener, and how kinesics can improve communication.
In short, Friends is about a group of friends and their lives together. It follows Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Ross, Chandler, and Joey and their daily activities living in New York. In season 3, episode 15; The One Where Ross and Rachel Take A Break; Ross and Rachel are fighting about their relationship. At the end of the fight, Rachel suggests that the two of them take a break; after doing so Ross gets drunk and sleeps with Chloe, a girl he met at the bar. Also in this episode, Phoebe goes on a date with a foreign diplomat and struggles to communicate with him because they do not speak the same language. The first concept shown in this episode is
Ross failed to be a good listener when he called Rachel. The book states that to be a good listener one must evaluate by separating facts from inferences; “Evaluating is the process of critically analyzing a message to determine its truthfulness, utility, and trustworthiness” (Verderber 111). When Ross called Rachel and heard that she was with a guy, he evaluated the situation wrong and made an incorrect inference about what was actually happening. The last concept of communication I will be explaining is