Week 10:3 Favorite Concept

My favorite concept from the text, was from Chapter 3 Mindless and Mindful Processing. I guess this concept touched home for me because I tend to mindless process information more than I realized until reviewing this section. I feel so busy all the time. I'm always involved in multiple tasks at a time and several commitments. Between my education, my job, and my personal life, I just feel overwhelmed by life. I feel like when I'm stressed and I'm trying to do my best for everyone, I get wrapped up in thought. I tend to just skim through information and conversations will pass my mind without much consideration. I feel that mindless processing can help sometimes in dealing with massive amounts of information, but it also can be damaging to your communication skills. If you don't register and remember certain things you are told or read, it can be important later and put you at a loss when you can't remember. Mindful processing is a good skill for memorizing certain facts and retaining memories. Mindful processing also gives a person independence in thought. Being mindful gives us freedom to think about things and come up with unique ideas and solutions. We don't want to be zombies in this world, just thinking and believing what they show us on television or put on the internet, radio, newspapers and magazines. I picked this concept as my favorite to share with the class because I don't want to forget! Graduation does not mean this is all done and I can forget it; now is the time to apply all these great communication skills in my life.

Week 10:2 Course Wrap Up

Through this course we have learned so many interesting concepts about communication, in a relatively short period of time. When I first read Chapter 2 I thought it was funny to explain definitions so much without really defining communication. Then we continued through the textbook and read each chapter, which would dive deeper into communication between individuals, groups, cultures, and organizations. This course revealed to me the depth of communication as a subject matter. Communication can direct your life in the right direction if good communication skills are learned and used. It is complicated and natural. It is not really like a game, but there can be payoffs to good communication.
One of my favorite things in this course was the cultural event paper. I attended SF Pride, which was wildly spectacular, exciting, and different. It was different from other parades, as their cultural concerns were advocated loudly. I kept an open mind, enjoyed the live deejays, dancing, and music. It was fun to get out, since I was pretty busy all summer when I didn't think I would be in school this summer. I am happy though that I needed the extra units and this was the class I was able to get to fill them!

Week 10:1 Most Interesting Concept

When looking over the different concepts we learned this semester, in communication I feel one of the most interesting concepts is coordinating conversational moves in Chapter 4. This is very important to have conversational skills to be a successful communicator. The cooperative principle is simply the willingness to communicate with others while following social rules. We need to be polite, acknowledge others, respect them, and respond in appropriate ways. When we have no regard for truth or relevance then communication looses its effect.
H.P. Grice discussed basic and simple conventions that guide talk. The cooperative principle and conversational maxims are essential to communication. I really liked this concept, so I thought this was an interesting concept to share in my blog. Four conversational maxims make for good conversation. The quanity maxim, quality maxim, relevancy maxim, and manner maxim. If they are applied to communication and used properly then you will be a successful communicator.

Week 9:3 Hymes Ethnographic Model

When reviewing Chapter 2 and the different discussion questions that we have had through the semester, I found the Hymes model was not really discussed before and its a good way to describe communication. The visual representation (Figure 2.4 on page 38) of how the Hymes model divides communication into hierarchially arranged contexts is easy to interpret and understand. Plus describing "speaking" by using an acrostic poem, where the first letter of each line forms a word vertically, is a great breakdown of the different components of communication. Dell Hymes developed the Hymes ethnographic model as a field guide to describe communication. With the primary context as the speech acts, the individual and purposeful acts of communication. When observing communication the setting and participants make an impact on the type of communication which takes place. "Although the methods are quite different, each helps to explain a small part of a very complex process" (Trenholm, 40). In the Hymes model there are four contexts: speech community, speech situations, speech events, and speech acts. Which are explained by "speaking": situations, participants, ends, act sequences, keys, instrumentalities, norms and genres (Trenholm, 39). I personally feel this is one of the best models or defining forms of communications in this chapter. It is interesting it was the last one included in Chapter 2, since it is the easiest to understand. This also seemed to be the best choice to include in my blog topics for this weeks discussion.

Week 9:2 Pragmatic Perspective

There are different models and perspectives to explain and examine communication. The Pragmatic perspective examines the systems of behavior, while explaining communication much like a game. Communication can be considered an interaction of interdependent plays. Each communicator is like a player and the success of their team depends on their acts in the conversation. I think that this perspective is an unusual way to think of communication. Though communication can be patterned interaction, interpersonal communication is not a competition. I would consider a debate to be more like a game than a conversation between friends. When people communicate on a personal level the behaviors are unique to the situation and topics can easily change. There is not always a goal to be met other than just talking.
The fact that communication takes a sender and a receiver can make the analogy of a game work. Trenholm explains, " a person can't be a sender without someone to be a receiver, and it is impossible for a receiver to receive a message without a sender to send it" (34). As in a game there has to be at least two to play, and each move leads to a goal. Since I personally am not very athletic or competitive I don't really identify well with this perspective. If you believe more in a pragmatic perspective, then the personality and individual acts of people are not considered important in communication. That is just wrong. Communication is very personal. Our personality shows through verbal and nonverbal communication and can determine the success of our communications.

Week 9:1 Social Constructionist Perspective

As I consider the social constructionist perspective I realize how we build worlds through how we communicate, who we communicate with and the tools we may use for communication. Now that we have gone through this course learning about interpersonal, group, and cultural communication, it is evident that our social environment makes a big impact on us as individuals. Though the social constructionist perspective focuses more on the social self and not the individual self; we identify with social groups and standards, which also form our personal beliefs and traditions. Each culture has its own codes, customs, shared roles and rules, and cultural traditions. These cultural influences are inevitably going to make communication unique in each culture.
The American culture emphasizes the importance of education. School is unavoidable as a child. We are required by law to attend school and parents can get punished for violating the education rules of attendence for children. Once we become adults we have the choice to continue our education in order to create more opportunties in our lives. The educational system in the United States is an excellent example of the social constructionist perspective, as we build worlds through communication in school. Our teachers expose us to the world through text books, lectures, and images. We learn about history, geography, and geology. Many of the things we learn and know to be true through our education are often things we will never experience in person. We not only learn about the world in school, we also learn what is acceptable social behavior and communication. We know that it is not okay to speak out of turn in a class room setting, if you have not been called on by the teacher. Good communication is socially acceptable communication, according to the social constructionist perspective (Trenholm, 31). Many behaviors, proper roles, and traditions which are socially acceptable may not lead to happiness or success. Though someone can take all the "right" classes, be part of all the "right" social groups or clubs, and get into the "right" career, they may never be happy because they work too hard and are always doing what others expect of them. Restrictions on how an individual can express themselves can ultimately cause major mood swings or mental stress. Sometimes breaking the rules can bring much more happiness and success to an individual because they follow their heart and not social guidelines.

Week 8:1 Research Methods

In reviewing the different research methods in Table 13.3 I find myself drawn to the unobtrusive methods. Being able to draw conclusions about behavior by observing traces left behind by repetitive actions is interesting to me. This does not seem to be a very successful way to conduct research because remnants may be analyzed incorrectly. When it comes to deception there are many different areas that can be studied and observed. These days the topic of divorce comes up repeatedly; whether on television, in movies, on the news, or just a conversation between friends. There seems to always be deception behind the cause of the divorce. I think my research question would have to be: "How can the deception of marriage infidelity be saved by counseling?" I think that this question is best answered through ethnography. A good place to observe behaviors of married couples experiencing counseling is group therapies held by churches, hospitals, or nonprofit organizations. You could act as a participant in order to not upset or change the true responses or reactions of the group members. By using ethnography research the behaviors of counseling patients, topics of conversation, and reactions of the participants can by observed to rate if counseling helps marriages of deception.