| Sumario: | The study examines the relationship between social class and style of marital communication. Style refers to the way in which messages are sent rather than their content. Four interaction styles are employed: conventional, controlling, speculative, and contactful. The relationship between style and class is observed at three levels: preference, imputation, and objective observation. The higher the class level of the couples, the more contactful style is preferred and the less conventional style is preferred. Despite these variations, all classes have the same general rank order with regard to styles suggesting that class differences are matters of degree rather than kind. Couples of higher class impute more contactful style to both the husband's and wife's communication behavior: likewise higher status couples see both spouses as less controlling and the wives as less conventional. But the majority of couples at all class levels believe that they usually deal with emotional issues in speculative and contactful style. In a tape-recorded discussion of an emotional issue, only the best educated couples were able to string together substantial numbers of speculative and contactful speeches while managing to inhibit the appearance of long strings of controlling speeches. However. no class group on the average turned in an outstanding performance relative to the other groups.
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