motions and distractions can also interfere with our clarity. Being aware of the varying levels of abstraction within language can help us create clearer and more “whole” messages.
Since I travel alot for work, I am always meeting new people. Speaking up clearly and loudly is something I've noticed I do not do very well. It seems the nerves get the best of me and I am unable to speak how I normally would. I will be focusing on this more as I grow in my communication journey
exam, that retains the same meaning. And last, we can form new words by blending old ones together. Words like breakfast and lunch blend letters and meaning to form a new word—brunch.
The language the kids are using now a days is just insane. "Skibity rizz' means you have charisma or charm. These are not just words used around friends, kids are saying these words in social context where there should be some level of respect. Language seems to be changing for the worst. Maybe I am just getting old but there seems to be a dumbing down of language with the younger generation.
“queer” movement of the 1980s and ’90s that reclaimed queer as a positive identity marker for some gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Even though some people embrace reclaimed words, they still carry their negative connotations and are not openly accepted by everyone.
Situations like this have always peaked some curiosity inside me. I've thought about this quite a bit, the LGBT community reclaimed this word and put a positive spin on, however referring to someone as queer if your not in that community is seen as derogitory. Even when just describing it. Why does language seem to get captured in different groups and only able to be used by those groups? Does society just generally agree that this is the case and we all accept it?
Some people are generally not good at or comfortable with receiving and processing other people’s feelings. Even those with good empathetic listening skills can be positively or negatively affected by others’ emotions. Expressions of anger can be especially difficult to manage because they represent a threat to the face and self-esteem of others
I remember being in a relationship where I was unable to express my emotions. If something bothered me it was an attack on the other person. I also see this alot in the workplace, they preach safety culture but as soon as you speak up about the unsafe practices you are attacking the company and the management. It is not healthy to live like that but unfortunatley thats the reality. Hopefully this course will teach me how to properly recieve the response and rebuttle it.
As we just learned, the relationship between the symbols that make up our language and their referents is arbitrary, which means they have no meaning until we assign it to them.
This is a tricky one because words in different regions of our own country have different meaning. For example when I moved to Tennessee for a couple years they use tabogins. I had to no idea what they were referring to, but turns out thats just a beanie. Moving to the south I had to basically learn a whole new vocabulary, Kinfolk which is family member or close friend. Holler, didint mean to yell but it means a valley or long road in the base of the hills where people live.
a farmer might have kept a pebble in a box to represent each chicken he owned. As further advancements made keeping track of objects-representing-objects more difficult, more abstract symbols and later written words were able to stand in for an idea or object. Despite the fact that these transitions occurred many thousands of years ago, we can trace some words that we still use today back to their much more direct and much less abstract origins.
I feel like language has become so complex that it is again becoming a thing for the pepople of power and status. Think about taxes, or Wall Street, the language they use is so complex but it boils down to such simple meanings. I think they do this to keep normal people from being able to play the game by making it so complicated that the average person just gives up. Language is being used as a form of war on the average people.
Second, most of the content on research databases has gone through editorial review, which means a professional editor or a peer editor has reviewed the material to make sure it is credible and worthy of publication.
My question would be, what expertise does the professional editor have. We have been living in a time where much of what we see has clear bias to it even from professionals. How can we determine who the experts are now a days. We have alot of comfirmation bias in our world and someone may be an expert but to someone else they are not.
Do preliminary research to answer basic questions. Many people and organizations have information available publicly. Don’t waste interview time asking questions like “What year did your organization start?” when you can find that on the website.
I used to sell real estate, and before I would go to a potential clients house I would always look them up. The amount of information that can be learned about someone just by a google search is scary. Its also not polite to take the time out of someones day, not be prepared and ask them basic questions that are readily available.
oogle Scholar is a separate search engine that narrows results down to scholarly materials. This version of Google has improved much over the past few years and has served as a good resource for my research, even for this book. A strength of Google Scholar is that you can easily search for and find articles that aren’t confined to a particular library database. Basically, the pool of resources you are searching is much larger than what you would have using a library database.
There are many issues with using google and the internet in general. We have become so divided, it is almost impossible to know what is real. Research the researchers and dig deep to see if they are a credible source.
Perhaps you have a reputation for being humorous, being able to translate complicated information into more digestible parts, or being interactive with the audience and responding to questions.
This is interesting to me because I feel that when I get up to give a speech, which I avoid like the plague, I lose my humor. I try to craft the speech as someone im not, and it adds so much more pressure to me. I try to write speeches without humor and it always felt so stiff. Reading this in the book has given me some reassurance that I can play to my strength even if it a small joke here and there.
In terms of credibility, you want the audience to see you as competent, trustworthy, and engaging
I feel like this goes back to what we leanred in chapter one, with perception and first impressions. I think it is much easier to gain credibility with a newer audience vs one who knows you. In a new audience with professionals, you have to upper hand becuse you are on stage at the same event they are at. You must have some credibility to be on that stage. The credibility becomes yours to keep or yours to lose based on the supporting information you provide.
t is likely that you have more in common with that reality TV star than you care to admit. We tend to focus on personality traits in others that we feel are important to our own personality. What we like in ourselves, we like in others, and what we dislike in ourselves, we dislike in others (McCornack, 2007). If you admire a person’s loyalty, then loyalty is probably a trait that you think you possess as well. If you work hard to be positive and motivated and suppress negative and unproductive urges within yourself, you will likely think harshly about those negative traits in someone else. After all, if you can suppress your negativity, why can’t they do the same? This way of thinking isn’t always accurate or logical, but it is common.
To me this has never even registered in my head. I am going to focus on this the next time my girlfriend is watching reality tv. I know that I am most aware that I tend to root for the underdogs in most scenarios. I want the one who was counted out to win. I wonder how that relates to my personality. I know I always admire the extroverts, but I felt like that was because I am not very extroverted and wanted to be like them. Intersting self observation for me to try in the coming days.
his simple us/them split affects subsequent interaction, including impressions and attributions. For example, we tend to view people we perceive to be like us as more trustworthy, friendly, and honest than people we perceive to be not like us (Brewer, 1999).
I am currently working on a construction site here in Boise. I am from Tennessee and all my coworkers are from Kentucky. One day a coworker told me the superindentent didnt like me. Obviously confused since we had only been working together for 3 days, I asked, Why? My coworker told me simply for the fact that I am not from Kentucky, he did not trust me or think I was a capable worker because of where I grew up. I know its not fair but the only thing I can do is prove him wrong and help him recognize his inherant bias is not always correct.
Thus the self-serving bias is a perceptual error through which we attribute the cause of our successes to internal personal factors while attributing our failures to external factors beyond our control. When we look at the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving bias together, we can see that we are likely to judge ourselves more favorably than another person, or at least less personally.
The mentality of “I hit the game winning shot because I’m the best” vs “I missed the game winning shot because you didn’t get me the ball fast enough” Fascinating to see these examples from life be put into a structured explanation.have a coworker who, if there is a mistake, will always be the last to get back to the office and then proceed put the blame on someone else. If the job is completed on time, looks good and mistake free he will be the first one in the office reporting to the boss how good he did on the job.
fundamental attribution error, which refers to our tendency to explain others’ behaviors using internal rather than external attributions (Sillars, 1980).
This fundamental attribution error seems to be a rabbit hole our society is falling down. I had always referred to it as victim culture. We as a society are unable to see how our external attribution to a situation plays a role in the outcomes in life. Everything bad that happens to us is because somebody else is bad and out to get me. It is much easier to blame someone else, for reasons your assuming, then it is to realize the mistakes that were made.
We’ve all been in a similar situation at some point in our lives, so we know that revising our schemata can be stressful and that such revision takes effort and usually involves some mistakes, disappointments, and frustrations. But being able to adapt our schemata is a sign of cognitive complexity, which is an important part of communication competence. So, even though the process may be challenging, it can also be a time for learning and growth.
Since I was younger I’ve known that we have beliefs that are instilled dingo us, knowingly and unknowingly. The part that is always difficult for me is how do I notice them, and how do I change them. One of the Schemata I have realized is the way I perceive money. I have always felt like I never had enough, and it was going to run out. However, after 10 years of working, I have never gone without, been homeless or starved. I recognize the schema now I am focused on changing that database.
The thing attracting our attention can be abstract, like a concept, or concrete, like an object
There is something similar in the psychology realm called Baader-Meinhoff. This is the phenomenon where you buy something, say a new silver Toyota Camery. All of a sudden it feels like every car you are seeing on the roads is a silver Toyota Camery. This happened to me when I bought my new truck, it made me think I made a good decision because of how many other people had the same truck. I wasn’t looking for the truck but it seemed like it was the only vehicle on the road that ever caught my attention.
Almost half of the students in my latest communication research class wanted to do their final research projects on something related to social media. Many of them were interested in studying the effects of CMC on our personal lives and relationships. This desire to study and question CMC may stem from an anxiety that people have about the seeming loss or devaluing of face-to-face (FtF) communication.
I can speak from personal experience on the issue of CMC related anxiety. About 3 years ago I decided to delete my instagram from my phone. In the first few days after I realized I was opening my phone about every 20 minutes to check my instagram, only to remember I had deleted it. This was almost a nervous habit for me. After about 3 months without the app i decided to re download it, and after opening Instagram, I had immediate anxiety. All my friends lives looked perfect, they had done so much, been so many places, good relationships, and I was immediately comparing my life to theirs. I instantly deleted it again from my phone, and have not gotten it back since.
one-way process in which a sender intentionally transmits a message to a receiver (Ellis & McClintock, 1990). This model focuses on the sender and message within a communication encounter.
I have never thought of communication as being so intentional. This simple section made me stop and reflect about how I am communicating. What message do i try and get across as I am speaking. There has not been a time I can remember where I stopped and intentionally processed what I was going to say. I have always seen myself as an “off the cuff” person but I’m starting to rethink that mentality.
Goal-oriented communication at the group level usually focuses on a task assigned to the whole group; for example, a group of people may be tasked to figure out a plan for moving a business from one office to another.
As someone who is returnng back to school after being in the workforce for 10+ years I see this play out all the time. Although it is a group project and a common goal is shared, there must be someone who can communicate within the group to delegate tasks. If you are not good with communication, active listening, problem solving, you will be passivley participating in the group and seen as dead weight. Being able to direct and communicate effectively can be the difference between the best group project, or a flat out nightmare.
others focused on coaching the performance and delivery aspects of public speaking (Keith, 2008). Instruction in the latter stressed the importance of “oratory” or “elocution,” and this interest in reading and speaking aloud is sustained today in theatre and performance studies and also in oral interpretation classes, which are still taught in many communication departments.
As someone who has massive stage fright, I can attest that seperating public speaking and communication is a necessary. I do exceptionally well in a group of 2-5. I realize that being a good public speaker you have to be able to communicate, but being able to conduct small meetings and get a message across is needed in the workforce. These are two very different skill sets, but at the foundation is communication. So, thank the National Communication Association for seperating the performance aspect of communication.
The evolution of communication media, from speaking to digital technology, has also influenced the field of communication studies. To better understand how this field of study developed, we must return to the “Manuscript Era,” which saw the production of the earliest writings about communication. In fact, the oldest essay and book ever found were written about communication (McCroskey, 1984)
I find it fascinating that all history before us was done in Manuscript and here we are as a society with this new form of technology. This digital communication style has been interesting to watch unfold, but it seems we always revert back to the Manuscript era for guidance. We are living in an uncharted time as far as communication goes, and we are lucky to be on the forfront of societial changing technology. It will be interesting to see if we stay the course or revert to the old way of communicating.