Interpersonal Communications Terms (Chapter 1, 3-6)

"you" language

A form of evaluative language that expresses a judgement to another person.

Reflected appraisal

A mirroring of the judgement of those around you.

Personal Space

An invisible bubble that everyone carries around wherever they go. We think of the area inside this bubble as our own.

Noise

Any factor in the environment that makes communication difficult. External noise, physiological noise and psychological noise.

Territory

Area that serves as an extension of our physical being.

Opinion Statements

Claims are based on the speakers beliefs. For example, "Colorado is the best place to live".

Factual Statements

Claims that can be verified as true or false. For example, "the sky is blue".

Androgynous

Combining masculine and feminine traits

Identity Managment

Communication strategies people use to influence how others view them.

Inferential Statements

Conclusions that someone arrives at from an interpretation of evidence.

Ambiguous Language

Consists of words or phrases that have more than one commonly accepted meaning.

Abstractions

Convenient ways of generalizing about similarities between several objects, people, ideas or events. For example in stead of saying "thanks for washing the dishes, vacuuming the rug and making the bed" it is much easier to say "thanks for cleaning up".

Regulators

Cues that help control verbal interaction. Their are 3 nonverbal signals that indicate a speaker has finished talking.... 1) changes in vocal intonation - a rising or falling in pitch at the end of a clause 2) a drawl on the last syllable or the stressed syllable in a clause 3)a drop in vocal pitch or loudness when speaking a common expression such as "you know"

Emblems

Culturally understood substitutes for verbal expressions. For example; the middle finger, peace sign, rock on, OK.

Benevolent Lie

Defined as not being malicious-and perhaps even helpful to the person whom they are told. (Defined as this by the people who tell them)

Lie

Deliberate attempt to hide or misrepresent the truth.

Standpoint Theory

Describes how a persons position in society shapes their view of society in general and of specific individuals.

Static Evaluation

Descriptions or evaluations that use the word 'is'. For example, "mark is a nervous guy" or "karen is short-tempered". These type of descriptions often mistakenly make the assumption that people or things are constant and unchanging.

Euphemisms

Euphemisms use innocuous terms as substitutes for more blunt ones. They avoid a direct, literal reference to an event (such as "she died"), substituting terms describing its consequence ("shes no longer with us").

Social Comparison

Evaluating ourselves in terms of how we compare with others.

Sterotyping

Exaggerated beliefs associated with a categorizing system. Often are founded on a kernel of truth, but they go beyond the facts at hand and make claims that have no valid basis.

Relational Dimension

Expresses how you feel about the other person: whether you like or dislike them, feel in control of subordinate etc. For instance, consider how many different relational messages you could communicate by simply saying "thanks a lot".

Semantic Rules

Governs the meaning of statements. Semantic rules make it possible to agree that "bikes" are for riding and "books" are for reading. Without semantic rules communication would be impossible, each of us would use symbols in unique ways unintelligible to others.

Syntactic Rules

Governs the way symbols can be arranged.

Equivocal Language

Has two or more equally plausible meanings. For example you are given an ugly painting as a present, you might say "what an unusual painting! Ive never seen anything like it before!"

Social Penetration Model

Helps describe the ways in which communication can be more or less disclosing.

Pragmatic Rules

Helps us determine what uses and interpretations of a message are appropriate in a given context. For example, "i want to see you" is likely to mean something different coming from your boss than from your lover.

Linguistic Relativism

Idea that the worldview of a culture is shaped and reflected by the language its members speak. For example the Hopi Native Americans have no distinction between nouns and verbs so the refer to/view the world as constantly being in a state of process. While in the english language we tend to refer to things as more fixed.

Sexist Language

Includes words or phrases and expressions that unnecessarily differentiate between females and males or exclude, trivialize or diminish either sex. For example, we are familiar with terms like "working mother", but there is no term "working father" because we assume (perhaps inaccurately) that men are the breadwinners.

Second-order realities

Involves attaching meaning to first order things or situations. Second order realities don't reside in objects or events but rather in our minds. For example, you assume your grandmother gave you a big hug because she was excited to see you.

"I" language

Language that clearly identifies the speaker as the source of the message. These statements are a lot more direct than "it" statements.

Racist Language

Language that reflects a worldview that classifies members of one racial group as superior and others an inferior.

Evaluative Language

Language that seems to describe something but really announces the speakers attitude towards it. For example if you approve of a friends roundabout approach to a difficult subject you might call her "tactful", if you dont like it you might accuse her of "beating around the bush".

Relative Language

Language that uses comparisons. For example when asked do you attend a large or small school, it depends on what you compare it to. Ohio State University has more than 60,000 students while Naropa University has only hundreds.

Non-verbal communication

Messages expressed by non linguistic means. They can be communicated in a variety of ways: through body movement, touch, voice, distance, territory, time, physical appearance, clothing, and environment.

Johari Window

Model to help illustrate self-disclosure.

Confirmation Bias

Once we form a first impression-whether its positive or negative- we tend to seek out and organize our impressions to support this opinion.

Divergence

Opposite of convergence, speaking in a way that emphasizes your differences.

Perception Checking

Our first perceptions may not always be correct, perception checking is a tool to help us understand others accurately instead of assuming that our first interpretation is correct. The goal is a mutual understanding.

Presenting Self

Our public image or the way we want to appear to others.

Self-esteem

Part of the self-concept that involves evaluations of self-worth.

Reference Groups

People we use to evaluate our own characteristics.

Assertiveness

People who use "you" language and "i" language to clearly express their thoughts, feelings and wants could be labeled as assertive.

Significant Other

Person whose evaluations are especially influential.

Environments

Physical location as well as the personal experiences and cultural background that participants bring to a conversation.

First-order realities

Physically observable qualities of a thing or situation. For example the fact that your grandmother gave you a big hug would be obvious to any observer.

Self-concept

Relatively stable set of perceptions you hold of yourself.

Phonological Rules

Rules that govern how sounds are combined to form words. For example the words; champagne, double and occasion have the same meaning in french and English, but are pronounced differently because the languages have different phonological rules.

"it" statements

Statements that replace the personal pronoun 'I' with the less immediate construction 'its'. Communicators who use "it statements" avoid responsibility for ownership of a message.

"but" statement

Statements that take the form of "X-but-Y", the but usually has the effect of canceling the thought that precedes it. For example, "your a great person, but i think we should stop seeing each other". 'But' statements can be used as a face-saving strategy. A better way to phrase statements like the previous one would be breaking them down into two sentences and explaining each one as necessary, this lets you acknowledge both parts of the statement without contradicting yourself.

Proxemics

Study of how communication is affected by the use, organization and perception of space and distance. 0"-18" --- intimate distance 18"-4' --- personal distance 4'-12' --- social distance 12' + --- public distance

Chronemics

Study of how humans use and structure time.

Cognitive Conservatism

Tendency to seek information that conforms to an existing self-concept.

Cognitive Complexity

The ability to construct a variety of different frameworks for viewing an issue. For example imagine a longtime friend seems to be angry with you; one possible explanation is that he is offended by something you've done, another is that something upsetting has happened in another part of their life.

Empathy

The ability to re-create another persons perspective, to experience the world from his or her point of view. It is impossible to achieve total empathy.

Communication Competence

The combination of both effective and appropriate communication. For example declining an unwanted party invitation, but in a way that doesn't make them feel bad.

Channels

The medium through which messages are exchanged. For example; face to face interaction, phone, email or instant messages.

Content Dimension

The obvious message being explicitly discussed. For example "Please pass the salt".

Perceived Self

The person you believe yourself to be in moments of honest self-evaluation. This may not always be accurite, for example, you might think you are much more intelligent than you actually are.

Negotiation

The process by which communicators influence each others perceptions through communication.

Convergence

The process of adapting ones speech style to match that of others which whom the communicator wants to identify.

Attribution

The process of attaching meaning to behavior.

Self - Monitoring

The process of paying close attention to ones own behavior and using these observations to shape the way one behaves.

Organization

The second step of perception, after selecting information from our environment, we must arrange it in some meaningful way in order to make sense of the world.

Haptics

The study of communication through touch.

Kinesics

The study of how people communicate through bodily movements. These include; gesture, posture, facial expression and eye contact / movement.

Halo Effect

The tenancy to form an overall positive impression of a person on the basis of one positive characteristic.

Interpertation

The third step of perception, once we select and organize our perceptions we break them down in ways that make sense to us. For example is the person who smiles at you across a crowded room interested in romance or simply being polite?

Self Disclosure

Things we choose to tell others about ourselves, the types of things we share usually depend on our relation with the person. For example you may be comfortable talking about your music preference with a stranger but not your address or phone number.

"we" language

This type of language implies that the issue is the concern and responsibility of both the speaker and receiver. "we" language can often be used to avoid the overuse of "i" language. This type of language can help build a constructive climate, suggesting a "we are in this together" sort of orientation. For example, "We have a problem. We cant seem to talk about money without fighting" is a lot more constructive and having an were in this together type attitude versus saying "you have a problem talking about money".

Privacy Management

Used to describe the choices people make to reveal or conceal information about themselves.

Punctuation

Used to describe the determination of causes and effects in a series of interactions.

Paralanguage

Used to describe the way a message is spoken. For example, "THIS is a fantastic communication book" puts an emphasis on this specific book. If it was spoken like "this is a FANTASTIC communication book" it puts emphasis on the book being exciting/superior.

Facework

Verbal and nonverbal ways in which we act to maintain our presenting image.

Selection

We are exposed to more input than we can possibly imagine, this is the first step of perception that involves deciding which data we will attend to.

Narratives

What scholars call stories we use to describe our personal worlds.

Dyad

What social scientists call two people interacting.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

When a persons expectations of an event, and their subsequent behavior based on those expectations, make the outcome more likely to occur than would have otherwise been true. For example a fortune cookie that says you will meet the person of your dreams today; you dress up extra nice, decide to go out on the town, are in and charming mood, and because of this end up meeting someone perfect for you. Its not the fortune cookie that did it, its your behavior based on the expectations of an event.

Self-serving bias

While we may evaluate others critically, we tend to judge ourselves in the most generous terms possible.