Human Communication
Rhetoric
"...Observing in any given case the available means of persuasion."
Be able to define and apply the term social construction
(Subpoint under second direction.) Social Construction: Knowledge/truth does not exist beyond the scope of mankind, but it is discovered/invented or created through discourse.
four characteristics of language
. Language is made up of symbols: Symbols are arbitrary and conventional. 100. Language is a kind of knowledge: Language is a body of knowledge stored in our brains. It can never be examined directly but must be inferred from speech. Speech is the external, physical side of language, and language is the internal mental side of speech. 101. Language is rule-governed and productive: Language is governed by grammatical. punctuation and phonetic rules that help us to understand one another. 102. Language effects the way we experience the world: The language we speak helps to shape the perceptions we form about the world and how we respond to it.
What are the dates of the classical period
5th Century B.C.- 4th Century A.D.
define and apply the five canons of rhetoric
: 1: Invention, 2: Style, 3: Arrangement, 4: Memory, 5: Delivery
perspective.
A coherent set of assumptions about the way a process operates.
mental set
A mental set consists of a person's attitudes, values, beliefs, and feelings, etc.
sign
A sign is "something that causes something to come to mind as a consequence of itself."
model
An abstract representation of a process, a description of its structure or function.
predictive function
Answers an "if...then" question. (Example: traffic simulations and growth projections. What would happen if we put a new traffic light here?
arrangement
Arrangement described ways to order ideas effectively. Speakers were taught that a speech must open with an introduction, follow with a statement of purpose, lead into a presentation of arguments, and end with a conclusion.
explain why the rhetorical tradition offers a "storehouse" of persuasive methods that are still being used today
Because the rhetorical tradition offers a "storehouse" of persuasive methods that are still used today, the study of rhetoric is still viable in postmodern civilization
breadth
Breadth: How broad or narrow we want the communication definition to be
Be able to define and apply the term defining communication, perspective one, definitions and the Process of Discovery
By carefully observing objects and actions, we can discover their essential features and express them in the form of an objective definition. According to the process of discovery view, a good definition accurately records and describes something that already exists.
chronically accessible constructs
Chronically accessible constructs are constructs that are important to us and that we frequently use regardless of the circumstances.
Cicero
Cicero (106-43 B.C.), a prominent Roman politician was considered to be Rome's finest orator. He met his death opposing Marc Antony after the assasination of Julius Caesar. Cicero developed the five canons of rhetoric.
cognitive complexity
Cognitive complexity occurs when an individual has a large, rich, and varied set of personal constructs.
explain why communication study was important in Ancient Greec
Communication study, which has its foundation in the rhetorical tradition, was important in Ancient Greece for at least three reasons: First, Greece was a society that revered the spoken word in forms such as storytelling, poetry reading, dramatic performance or conversation. Second, Greeks emphasized the importance of persuasion and argumentation. Athens was a democracy, so politicians gained their offices through persuasive speaking. Third, there was a ban on professional lawyers, so each citizen had to represent himself in court.
conventional signs
Conventional signs: Include the spoken and written word and are arbitrarily created by humans, so their interpretation is more difficult. For St. Augustine, "communication was a process of 'drawing forth and conveying into another's mind what the giver of the sign has in his own mind.'"
Corax
Corax studied rhetoric to help Sicilian citizens reclaim property after a political upheaval and argue their cases before the government.
decoding messages
Decoding is the creative, highly selective process by which people assign meanings to communicative messages. Decoding is highly subjective. Different people exposed to a single message can come away with very different understandings.
delivery
Delivery was considered necessary for success because if a speaker did not use a pleasing voice and graceful gestures, the speech would be undermined.
explanatory function
Divides a process into constituent parts and shows how the parts are connected. (Example: A city's organizational chart.)
Be able to define and apply the four directions of rhetorical study for the modern period. Douglas Ehninger identifies four directions of rhetorical study for the modern period
First Direction: Those who took the classical approach set out to recover insights of the great classical rhetoricians, adapting them to modern times.. Second Direction: Be able to identify and apply the terms psychological/epistemological Approach. They investigated the relationship of communication and thought, trying to understand in a scientific way how people could influence one another through speech
elocutionary approach
Fourth Direction: The elocutionary approach designed elaborate systems of instruction to improve speakers' verbal and non-verbal presentation.
Who was Francis Bacon and what did he do
Francis Bacon considered the relationship of human nature and human thought. Francis Bacon analyzed perceptual bias that is relevant today. Francis Bacon identified "Four idols or distortions that get in the way of clear thinking;" Idols of the Tribe, Idols of the Cave, Idols of the Marketplace, and Idols of the Theatre
Who was George Campbell and what did he do?
George Campbell (1719-1796): Campbell was concerned about the relationship between speaker and audience. He believed that receivers were active participants in the persuasion process and that the effective communicator studied the "inner workings or faculties of the human mind."
Who was Douglas Ehninger and what did he do
He identified four directions of rhetorical study.
Idols of the Tribe
Idols of the Tribe referred to fallacies in thinking due to human nature
Lyceum
In 335 B.C. you could study at the Lyceum, a school founded by Aristotle.
How many published definitions of human communication are there?
In fact, in the early 1970s, Frank Dance identified 126 published definitions of communication!
Know the elements of a pragmatic model and be able to apply them
In the Pragmatic Model, communicators become partners that play games to get what they want. Each partner makes moves or acts that become patterned over time, depending on how satisfied each partner is with the outcome of the moves he or she makes; the simplest pattern is a two-way sequence called an interact. Each partner is interdependent because their payoffs depend on their partner's actions. The game ends when one player ceases to respond to the other, or both players decide to stop the communication transaction.
involuntary attention
Involuntary attention is attention spontaneously attracted by the intrinsic properties of a stimulus; it lies outside our control.
style
It described the selection of proper words to convey a message.
symbolic codes
Languages
determinism
Linguistic determinism is the theory that language determines thought.
linguistic realitivity
Linguistic relativity follows from linguistic determinism; people from different languages perceive the world differently.
middle style
Middle style emphasized logos by impressing the audience with the soundness of the speaker's position; it consisted of intricate argumentation and careful philosophical decisions.
mindless or automatic processing
Much of our time is spent on what we call mindless or automatic processing. We process mindlessly when we rely on old routines and mental habits to give us information about the world.
natural signs
Natural signs: (Smoke causes one to think of fire.) are created by God.
noise
Noise is any distraction that interferes with or changes a message during transmission
Aristotle contributions
One of Aristotle's greatest contributions in The Rhetoric was in identifying three persuasive proofs.
Be able to define and apply the term intentionality as it applies to definitions.
People do not always intend or mean to send messages to others, but if a message has been sent intentionally or unintentionally, communication has occurred whether it was intentional or not; therefore, it is impossible for a person to not communicate.
Perception
Perception is a social, cognitive process, whereby individuals assign meaning to raw-sense data. It is cognitive because it involves mental effort, and it is social because the categories used to process information are shared with others and are validated by social consensus.
person prototypes
Person prototypes are idealized representations of a certain kind of person.
Ethos
Personal character.
plain style
Plain Style built ethos by convincing the audience of the speaker's good character, good sense and trustworthiness. It was logical, clear, and restrained.
Know who John Bargh is and what he did
Psychologist John Bargh tells us that there are wide personal differences in construct accessibility and this accessibility does not often overlap between individuals
cognitive schemata
Psychologists agree that in order to recognize objects and follow sequences of actions, we must possess internal representations of these objects and sequences. These mental guidelines are called schemata, and they help us identify and organize incoming information.
Scripts
Scripts are schemata for action sequences.
Know the elements of the psychological model and apply them:
Sender A's mental set, Sender A encodes message, message travels through channels, Receiver B decodes message, Person B's mental set, Sender B encodes message, message A decodes message. Noise alters the message.
encode
Sender encodes a message into understandable language (symbols).
sender
Sender encodes a message into understandable language (symbols).
explain who St. Augustine was and his perspectives on communication
St. Augustine was a major Christian theorist who argued that it would be foolish for truth "to take its stand unarmed against falsehood." He defended the use of rhetoric and helped to preserve its study and usage. St. Augustine believed that people communicate through signs.
attention.
Step One, in information processing, Attention: Receivers filter out extraneous stimuli and focus on the elements that are essential to the message.
the three steps in information processing
Step One: attention; Step Two: Interpretation; Step Three: Acceptance
acceptance
Step Three, in information processing, Acceptance occurs when receivers evaluate the message and decide if it is worth further processing.
interpretation
Step Two, in information processing, Interpretation: (consists of two parts: comprehension and acceptance). When receivers comprehend a message, they understand its meaning and intent, and they relate it to other information.
Rhetorician
Teachers of communication were called rhetoricians
Idols of the Cave
The Idols of the Cave referred to individual prejudices we bring with us because of our own background and personalities.
Idols of the Marketplace
The Idols of the Marketplace are social in nature and refer to the imprecise use of language. Bacon said, "words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion..."
Idols of the Theatre.
The Idols of the Theatre are fallacies that occur when we accept fashionable ideas uncritically
explain who the Sophists were and what they did.
The Sophists trained citizens to represent themselves before government officials, the Sophists offered to teach citizens the art of public speaking. The Sophists found their audiences in what would be today's versions of health clubs. Sophists taught the "tricks" of persuasive speaking for use in law courts or assemblies. Sophists acted as professional speechwriters and political consultants. Philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle believed that the goal of communication was to discover truth, not merely win arguments.
Pathos
The ability to arouse emotions.
memory
The ability to hold content, style, and arrangement in one's mind, was exceedingly important.
Newspeak
The architects of newspeak have reduced the number of words in language because "the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought." The significance of this is that we think through language.
control function
The best way to explain the control function is to provide an example: A street map not only describes the layout of a city but allows you to find your way from one place to another and helps you figure out where you went wrong if you get lost.
destination
The destination is the receiver or receivers.
channel
The encoded message travels along a channel. A channel is anything that carries the message. Channels can be verbal or non-verbal.
Be able to define and apply the expressionist approach: (Subpoint under second direction.)
The expressionist approach: Truth does not exist beyond mankind, but exists deep within; therefore, it is up to those involved in verbal interaction to draw that knowledge out by questioning. (Ex. Socratic method, developed by the philosopher, Socrates.)
collective representations of reality
The four quadrants of the social constructionist model shape the way we experience and talk about our world.
payoffs
The outcomes each partner hopes to gain through their interactions.
invention.
The process of deciding on the subject matter of one's speech and discovering information and arguments that would lead to sound conclusions.
receive
The receiver decodes the message so that he or she can understand it.
receiver
The receiver decodes the message so that he or she can understand it.
feedback
The receiver's response is also called feedback, and may include the behavior or subsequent communication after the original communication transaction has taken place.
mnemonics
The science of mnemonics (techniques of improving the memory) was developed to help speakers keep track of complex arguments.
phonemes
The significant sound distinctions in a given language.
people in groups
The social constructionist model focuses on people in groups rather than getting inside the heads of the communicators like the psychological model.
phonology
The study of significant sound patterns of language.
semantics
The study of the structure of the units of meaning in a language.
Be able to define and apply the term defining communication, perspective two, definitions as a Subjective Construction.
The subjective construction approach assumes that most of the things we define are human constructions. As we experience the world, we try to make sense of it by creating mental representations of it. According to this view a definition is a subjective construction. The subjectivity is based on our individual needs, experiences, and our various understandings we bring to a situation. If we adopt this approach, then the test of a good definition is not its absolute truth, but its practical use.
What are the dates of the modern period and why was it significant in Communication study
The three centuries from 1600 to 1900 are known as the modern period. Beginning in 1660, the world became more secular, and a new emphasis on men's and women's ability to rationally determine truth took hold. With the rise of the scientific method, arguments were encouraged to be empirically grounded--based on observation.
Be able to define and apply the term epistemic
The word epistemic means the theories of the source of knowledge: Where does knowledge/truth come from?
Logos
The wording and logic of the message.
belletristic approach
Third Direction: The belletristic approach focused on writing and speaking as art forms, developing critical standards for judging drama, poetry, and oratory.
Tisias
Tisias studied rhetoric to help Sicilian citizens reclaim property after a political upheaval and argue their cases before the government.
Be able to define and apply the current-traditional approach.
Truth exists beyond the scope of man, and it is man's duty to search for truth.
Why is communication so difficult to define
Unfortunately, no single definition of communication does this to everyone's satisfaction.
Vigorous style
Vigorous Style was based on pathos; it "pulled out all the stops" and was eloquent and emotional.
voluntary attention
Voluntary attention occurs when we willfully focus our attention on a stimulus; it is attention guided by personal plans and goals.
message
What is sent between sender and receiver simultaneously.
personal constructs
are the characteristics we notice on a daily basis about others. Whereas prototypes are global categorizations, constructs are specific descriptors. Personal constructs belong to us rather than to the person we are judging.
cultural traditions
attitudes, values,and beliefs.
identify and define Aristotle's three persuasive proofs
ethos, pathos, and logos.
non-verbal as a code system
facial expressions, body movements, and physical appearance.
. Know the elements of a social constructionist model and be able to apply them
people in groups, collective representations of reality, symbolic codes, cognitive customs, cultural traditions, and shared roles and rules.
interact
the simplest pattern in the Pragmatic Model, a two-way sequence.
shared roles and rules
those things that guide our actions.
symbolic as a code system
words, numbers, and graphic designs.