Interpersonal Comm (213) Exam 2

How does Language shape our thoughts?

People's use of language affects our opinions of them, accurate or not. Vocabulary helps you have abstract thought with more in-depth and accurate connotations. Messages have deeper meaning, so viewing animal farm as an anthropomorphic animals or as a symbolism for communism.

Selective Listening

Listening that captures only parts of a message (those that are the most interesting to the listener) and dismisses the rest.

Moods

Low-intenisty states of mind that are not caused by particular events and typically last longer than emotions. Ex. Boredom, contentment, grouchiness, serenity.

High Context

Many possible interpretations. It's more on the situation, using non-verbal cues/clues in the situation. It's much more ambiguous. It's more intuitive.

Communication Plans

Mental maps that describe exactly how communication encounters will unfold. Ex. Before calling to complain about her telephone bill, Marjorie mental rehearses how she will explain her problem and what objections she might face.

Receiving

The first stage of the listening process in which a listener takes in information by seeing and hearing.

Listening Functions

The five general purposes that listening serves: to comprehend, to discern, to analyze, to appreciate, and to support.

Listening

The five-stage Process of receiving, attending to, understanding, responding to, and recalling sounds and visual images during interpersonal encounters.

Communication Accommodation Theory

The idea that people are especially motivated to adapt their language when they seek social approval, wish to establish relationships with others, and view others' language uses as appropriate.

Verbal Aggression

The tendency to attack others' self-concepts, their appearance, behavior, or character, rather than their positions.

Linguistic Relativity

The theory that languages create variations in the ways cultures perceive and think about the world.

Understanding

The third stage of the listening process in which a listener interprets the meaning of another person's communication by comparing newly received information against past knowledge.

Linguistic Determinism

The view that the language we use defines the boundaries of our thinking.

Honesty

Truthful communication, without exaggeration or omission of relevant information. Failing to tell someone something can be as dishonest as an outright lie.

Blended Emotions

Two or more primary emotions experienced at the same time. Ex. Melinda feels fear and anger when her daughter is not home after curfew.

Connotative Meaning

Understanding of a word's meaning based on the situation and the shared knowledge between communication partners (i.e not the dictionary definition) Ex. Calling someone slender suggests something more positive than the word skinny or scrawny does, though all three words mean "underweight."

Dialects

Variations on language rules shared by large groups or particular regions; this may include differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Ex. In various regions of the United States carbonated beverages are called soda, pop, or coke.

Constitutive Rules

Guidelines that define word meaning according to a particular language's vocabulary. Ex. Pencil is bleistift in German and Matita in Italian.

Regulative Rules

Guidelines that govern how we use language when we verbally communicate. That is, spelling and grammar as well as conversational usage. Ex. We know how to respond correctly to a greeting, and we know that cursing in public is inappropriate.

What are the 6 base emotions?

1. Happiness - first emotion to experience or show. 2. Sadness 3. Fear - ancestors gave us this, it's healthy, helps avoid physical and psychological harm. 4. Anger 5. Surprise 6. Disgust (Contempt is 7th)

TedTalk 5 Ways to Listen Better by Julian Treasure

60% of our communication time is listening. We retain 25% of what we hear. Listening as defined by making meaning from sound. It's a mental process, and a process of extraction. 1 method of extraction is pattern recognition. You learn to distinguish noise form signal, especially our name. Another method is differencing, so filtering out the noise that is constant we stop hearing it. We listen to differences. We discount sounds that remain the same. Filters take us from all of the sounds to what we pay attention to. Often it's unconscious, however you can force it, by paying attention to specific things. Sounds helps us understand where we are in space and in time. So you can hear the size of the room and the amount of people who are in it by listening to how far sound travels. Time is subjective listening is the only way we understand it. We are losing our listening because we have so many things that help us now we don't need to practice careful listening so much anymore, also the world is so much more noisy; it makes it tiring to listen to. Big public spaces are getting changed into tiny personal sound bubbles, where people are plugged in and not listening. Also because we are becoming impatient. We get information fast and easy like headlines and such that we don't take the time to learn and understand the article or the quiet more subtle things in life. It's bad to lose our listening because, listening is our key to understanding. Conscious listening will always lead to understanding. 5 Exercises to Improve Listening 1. Silence - spend 3 minutes a day being silent and in a silent space. This will reset your ears so you can hear what quiet is again. 2. Mixer - When in a noisy enviroment listen and see how many channels of sound can you identify. This improves the quality of your listening. 3. Savoring - try to enjoy mundane sounds. Listen and appreciate the sounds that your coffeemaker makes. 4. Listening Positions - the idea that you can move your listening position to what's appropriate to what you're listening to. Remember the filters, play with them and adjust them. Get more or less conscious about them. This changes the scale of your listening. Do what's appropriate for what situation. 5. RASA - sanskrit word for juice or essence. It stands for Receive (pay attention to the person). Appreciate (making nosies like 'oh' 'hmm' 'ok') Summarize ('so this is what you mean') Ask (after they are done ask questions)

Passion

A blended emotion of joy and surprise coupled with other positive feelings like excitement, amazement, and sexual attraction.

Chronic Hostility

A persistent state of simmering or barely suppressed anger and constant negative thinking.

Jefferson Strategy

A strategy to manage your anger that involves counting slowly to 10 before responding to someone who says or does something that makes you angry.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

A therapy developed by psychologist Albert Ellis that helps neurotic patients systematically purge themselves of the tendency to think negative thoughts about themselves.

Reappraisal

Actively changing how you think about the meaning of emotion-eliciting situations so that their emotional impact is changed. Ex. Though previously fearful of giving a speech, Luke reduces his anxiety by repeating positive affirmation and getting excited about the chance to share what he knows.

Provocateurs

Aggressive listeners who intentionally bait and attack others in online communication. Ex. A group member stirs up trouble in a chatroom by criticizing the study group leader and then humiliates other respondents.

Venting

Allowing emotions to dominate your thoughts and explosively expressing them, such as shrieking in happiness or storming into an office in a rage.

Paraphrasing

An active listening response that summarizes or restates others' comments after they are finished.

Listening Style

An individual's habitual pattern of listening behaviors, which reflects one's attitudes, beliefs, and predispositions regarding the listening process.

Emotion

An intense reaction to an event that involves interpreting the meaning of the event, becoming physiologically aroused, labeling the experience as emotions, attempting to manage your

Emotion Management

Attempts to influence which emotions you have, when you have them, and how you experience and express.

"You" Language

Communication that states or implies the pronoun 'you' to place the focus of attention on blaming others. Ex. "You haven't done your share of the work on this project."

"I" Language

Communication that uses the pronoun 'I' in sentence construction to emphasize ownership of your feelings, opinions, and beliefs. Ex. "I'm frustrated because I think I'm doing more than you are on this project." Instead of "You are really underperforming on this project."

"We" Language

Communication that uses the pronoun 'we' to emphasize inclusion. Ex. "We need to decide what color to paint the living room." Instead of "I need you to tell me what color you want for the living room.

Misunderstanding

Confusion resulting from the misperception of another's thoughts, feelings, or beliefs as expressed in the other individual's verbal communication.

How does Language shape our feelings?

Content, Context and how it is said (tone, rate, pitch) dictates how you feel.

Naming

Creating linguistic symbols to represent people, objects, places and ideas.

Display Rules

Cultural norms about which forms of emotion management and communication are socially desirable and appropriate. Ex. Customary ways to show grief range from stoic reserve to open weeping to exaggerated wailings.

High-Context Cultures

Cultures that presume listeners share extensive common knowledge and therefore rely more on the context of a conversation than on the words themselves for meaning. Ex. After asking to purchase two theater tickets, a Japanese person might hear, "Sorry, very difficult," and immediately understand this as a subtle, indirect response meaning, "I am embarrassed that I can't provide you with what you wish, but the performance is sold out." Usually you have shared context and history. This is a sliding scale between high and low context.

Low-Context Cultures

Cultures that rely on words themselves, rather than on the conversational situation, to convey meaning, resulting in direct verbal communication. Ex. In the United States, we prefer directness and clarity rather than what we view as vague hints. Use lots of language, spells everything out. Doc in class is low context. Asking questions and getting feed back and making understandings, she assumes that we haven't read the book or started studying for the exam. If she was high context she would assume that we already started the cheat sheet and read the books.

Deception

Deliberately using uninformative, untruthful, irrelevant, or vague language for the per pose of misleading others.

Mnemonics

Devices that aid memory. For example Roy G. Biv so you can recall the 7 colors of the rainbow.

Emotion-Sharing

Disclosing your emotions to others.

Preventing Emotions

Encounter avoidance. - Ex. Avoiding downers, or knowing it's an unpleasant situations. You don't want to deal with people. Helps the other person out because you won't have a good interaction with them. Encounter Structuring - Ex. When you connect up with a person, but you might want to void certain topics. Like don't talk politics with grandparents. Attention Focus - Where yo decide that you are going to be listening. Maybe you decide someone has been in the situation is super irritating so you can focus your attention elsewhere. Deactivation - You shut down. You say that's enough. This is overwhelming so you don't deal with it.

Maximize Facilitative Emotions

How to make happy moods happier and last longer. Contemporary Scholars maintain that fostering positive emotions is just as important as minimizing negative ones. We think about how to take care of bad situations but we need to create good ones for ourselves. Do that by: - Learned Optimism - learning how to be optimistic; looking at the glass half-full. - Positivity - being positive - Pollyanna Principle - Doc is often seen as a Pollyanna, someone who is always happy. It's not all about suppressing negativity but it's about making happiness happen by actively working and paying attention for it.

Ted Talk 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation by Celeste Headlee

How to talk and listen: Forget all of the previous advice you were told because there is no point in learning how to show you are paying attention if you actually are paying attention. 10 Basic Rules 1. Do not multitask. Not only setting down your phone but also being present in that moment, thinking about what the conversation is about and nothing else. 2. Don't pontificate. State your opinion as just that, an opinion. Allow for a response, pushback or growth in the conversation. Assume that you have something to learn. 3. Use open-ended questions. Start your questions with who, what, when, where, why or how. Complicated questions get simple answers. "Were you scared?" vs "How did that feel?" How did that feel will get you a more interesting response. 4. Go with the flow. Thoughts might come into your mind and you need to let them go. Just go with the flow of the conversation. Don't circle back. Often the reason people circle back is because they weren't listening. 5. Say you don't know if you don't know. Don't claim to know a lot or be an expert in something if you don't know it throughly. Err on the side of caution. 6. Don't equate your experience with theirs. For example. They are talking about how they just lost a family member, don't talk about the time you lost yours. They are talking about work issues, don't talk about how much you hate your job. It's never going to be the same because all experiences are individual and not about you. Don't prove how amazing you are or how much you have suffered. Conversations are not a promotional opportunity. 7. Try not to repeat yourself. In a conversation that can be condescending and boring. If we have a point to make we keep rephrasing it over and over. Don't. 8. Stay out of the weeds. Don't care about the years, names, dates, and all those minor details you are struggling to remember. They don't care. They care about you, what you are like, what you have in common. Forget the details, they are unimportant. 9. Listen. This is the most important one. Really listen. Don't speak up or over them. Just pay attention to what they are saying and doing. We often don't listen to each other because we'd rather talk, we like to be in control, and be the center of attention, bolstering our own identity. 10. Be brief. A good conversation is like a miniskirt. Short enough to retain interest, but long enough to over the subject. All of this goes back to the idea of being interested in other people. Go out, talk to people, listen to people, and, more importantly, be amazing by what they have to offer.

Defensive Communication

Impolite messages delivered in response to suggestions, criticism, or perceived slights. Ex. When Stacy asks Lena to slow down her driving, Lena snaps back, "I'm not going that fast. If you don't like the way I drive, ride with someone else."

Suppression

Inhibiting thoughts, arousal, and outward behavioral displays of emotion. Ex. Amanda stifles her anger, knowing it will kill her chances of receiving a good tip.

Grief

Intense sadness that follows a substantial loss, such as the death of a loved one.

Eavesdropping

Intentionally listening in on private conversations.

Primary Emotions

Six emotions that involve unique and consistent behavioral displays across cultures: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise.

Symbols

Items used to represent other things, ideas, or events. Ex. The letters of the alphabet are symbols for specific sounds in English.

Anger Management Strategies

Jefferson Strategy - Count to ten slowly before you say or do anything. Dr. Reitzel Strategy - If possible, remove yourself from the physical situation, give your self 3 to 5 minutes away from the situation and focus on breathing before you return to the situation to respond to whatever was done or said. Tell yourself to relax. If you are able to set up a specific time and place to talk later, then do so. Take charge. Say do this later. Anger is the shortest emotion.

Language

Language is a collection of symbols that can be arranged in a particular order according to a particular grammar. New words are added to the dictionary all the time. Like Hangry.

Aggressive Listening

Listening in order to attack or collect information to use against the speaker, such as when a father encourages his son to describe his ambitions just to ridicule the son's goals. Also known as ambushing.

Back-Channel Cues

Nonverbal or verbal responses that signal you've paid attention to and understood specific comments. Ex. Saying "Okay, got it" after someone details extensive driving directions.

Pseudo-Listening

Pretending to listen but not actually listening. Giving the appearance of listening. So someone acts like they are listening and if you ask them "What did I just say?" They will be able to tell you the last sentence you said and hope they got away with it.

Pseudo-Listening

Pretending to listen while preoccupied or bored.

Encounter Structuring

Preventing unwanted emotions by intentionally avoiding discussion of difficult topics in encounters with others. Ex. Natalie and Julie avoid talking about living expenses because Natalie is jealous of Julie's income.

Attention Focus

Preventing unwanted emotions by intentionally devoting your attention only to aspects of an event or encounter that you know will not provoke those emotions. Ex. You disregard your uncle's snide comments while forcing all your attention to your aunt's conversation.

Encounter Avoidance

Preventing unwanted emotions by keeping away from people, places, and activities likely to provoke them. Ex. Jessica infuriate Roxanne, so Roxanne moves out of their shared apartment.

Deactivation

Preventing unwanted emotions by systematically desensitizing yourself to emotional experience. Ex. Josh insulates himself with numbness after his wife death.

Cooperative Verbal Communication

Producing messages that are understandable, take ownership, and are inclusive.

Narcissistic Listening

Self-Absorbed approach to listening in which the listener redirects the conversation to his or her own interests. Ex. Neil acts bored while Jack describes his recent ski trip, he interrupts Jack and switches the topic to his own recent car purchase.

Supportive Communication

Sharing messages that express emotional support and offer personal assistance. Ex. Three women were jogging and got killed. Women was distraught so Doc just hugged her. No words would have worked in supporting the woman. This was supportive of doc. Make sure that the person is ready to talk, the right place or the right time. It's good to ask questions. General (how are you feeling?) to Specific (Have you found a support group?) Legitimize rather than minimize. Listen actively. Offer advice cautiously. Show concern and give praise. Offer companionship, be there if they need them, if they don't leave them.

Supportive Communication

Sharing messages that express emotional support and that offer personal assistance, such as telling a person of your sympathy or listening to someone without judging.

Feelings

Short-Term emotional reactions to events that generate only limited arousal, such as the fleeting nostalgia you experience hearing a familiar song.

What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?

Strong Version: Language determines thought. Lite Version Language influences thought. The more words you have for something the more value it has in your culture. Ex. If you have a bunch of words for snow, then snow is really big or important in your cultures. Eskimo's have more experience and words for now than people in Jamaica. If snow isn't really big, then you just have one word and it's hard to conceptualize it.

Mental Bracketing

Systematically putting aside thoughts that aren't relevant to the interaction at hand if your attention wander when listening. Ex. By consciously dismissing your worries about an upcoming exam in order to focus on a customer's requests at work.

What are emotions?

Technical Definition A complex pattern of changes, including physiological arousal, feelings, cognitive processes, and behavioral reactions, made in response to a situation perceived to be personally significant. -APA It's an intense reaction to an event that involves interpreting event meaning, labeling the experience as emotion, managing reactions, and communicating through emotional displays and disclosures.

Emotional Intelligence

The ability to accurately interpret your and others' emotions and use this information to manage emotions, communicate them competently, and solve relationship problems.

Speech Arts

The actions we perform with language, such as the question, "Is the antique clock in your window for sale?" and the reply, "Yes, let me get it out to show you."

Verbal Communication

The exchange of spoken or written language with others during interactions.

Communication Apprehension

The fear or nervousness associated with communicating with others.

Recalling

The fifth stage of the listening process in which a listener is able to remember information received.

Bizarreness Effect

The finding that we remember unusual or odd information more readily than commonplace information.

Cooperative Principle

The idea that we should make our verbal messages as informative, honest, relevant, and clear as is required, given what the situation requires. Ex. Listening closely to your friend's problem with a coworker and then responding with support would demonstrate the Cooperative Principle; interrupting your friend to brag about your new laptop would not.

Denotative Meaning

The literal, or dictionary definition of a word.

Anger

The negative primary emotion that occurs when you are blocked or interrupted from attaining an important goal by what you see as the improper action of an external agent.

Long-Term Memory

The part of your mind devoted to permanent information storage.

Short-Term Memory

The part of your mind that temporarily houses information while you seek to understand its meaning.

Emotional Contagion

The rapid spread of emotion from person to person. Good or bad emotions spread like wild-fire. Intensity is also a factor of emotional contagion. IF your friend is alway one emotion they won't effect you as much.

Emotional Contagion

The rapid spreading of emotion from person to person, such as anger running through a mob.

Attending

The second stage of the listening process in which a listener devotes attention to received information. Ex. You may hear a radio but attend only when a favorite song comes on.

Hearing

The sensory process of taking in and interpreting sound.

Responding

The stage of the listening process in which a listener communicates, nonverbally or verbally, their attention and understanding. Ex. By nodding or murmuring agreement.

What is denotation?

This is the dictionary meaning. It's more neutral.

What is connotation?

This is the underlying meaning. Ex. Specious and Spurious both mean that a thing is false. However Specious has the connotation of it's intentionally false, so the person has the intent to deceive.

Low Context Language

This mean explicit, much more reliant on verbal information. It's more direct.

Time-Oriented Listeners

Those who prefer brief, concise messages to save time.

Content-Oriented Listeners

Those who prefer to be intellectually challenged by messages. They prefer complex, detailed information. For example a supervisor who reviews the success of a funding-raising event by requesting data analyzing the effectiveness of her team's publicity campaign instead of asking to hear about team members' experiences.

Action-Oriented Listeners

Those who prefer to receive brief, to-the-point, accurate information for decision making. Ex. A supervisor who requires brief summaries from department heads and does not want to bat around details in long meetings.

People-Oriented Listeners

Those who view listening as an opportunity to establish commonalities between themselves and others. Ex. Carl enjoys Elaine's descriptions of the trumps and difficulties she's had learning to snowboard.

Verbal Communication

Verbal Communication refers to words. It's not just the words but also how you put words into phrases. Sometimes noises of pain or anger can also be considered a word, because they have specific meaning. Words aren't just things that are defined in the dictionary. Verbal Communication involves the use of language. Use is emphasized here. You can say a dirty word that has no meaning to you, but to others it has meaning. Or think Idioms. Calling someone a dog, a dog can be both literal and figurative, the meaning of the word depends on the context.

Feedback

Verbal and Nonverbal messages that receivers use to indicate their reaction to communication, such as a frown or saying "I disagree."

Catharsis

Within the field of interpersonal communication, the assumption, that openly expressing emotions enables you to purge them.

Personal Idioms

Words and phrases that have unique meanings to a particular relationship, such as pet names or private phrases with special meaning. Ex. Uncle Henry was known for his practical jokes; now years after his death, family members still refer to a practical joke as "pulling a Henry."