ABSTRACT
When communicating love, what is the right thing to do or say, when, where, by whom, and to whom? This chapter focuses on how love is expressed across culture and time. Following a review of definitions of love (including the questions of prototypicality, universality, and social construction), the chapter details historical and contemporary practices, in particular communication variables (such as mode, context, and gender), cultural dimensions, and recent changes in the use of verbal love expression in a number of cultures. The chapter concludes by grounding the prevailing understandings of love within the dialectics of expression versus restraint, autonomy versus unity, and role versus personal.
