Communication

Fundamental to human social interaction
Communication involves the transmission of a message from one person to another.

Communication Styles

In looking at communication styles, we examine the cultural and social aspect of language
The style which we learn to speak depends on the culture in which we were raised, our socioeconomic background and our gender
Styles involves not only our accents but also our vocabulary, grammar and the type of ideas we try to express
Much of our identity is tied up in how we speak. It is both part of our self-image and something by which other make judgements about us
The common three styles are assertive, aggressive and passive.

Definition

Assertive: In assertive communication you express your beliefs, feelings and opinions and thoughts in an open respectful manner that does not violate the rights of others.
Assertive communication uses and words to express their boundaries in a calm, confident manner
Aggressive: In aggressive communications you do not hold any respect for others. It disregards anyone else’s needs, feelings, opinions and ideas and sometimes this can compromise the safety of others.
Aggressive communicators are identified by their demanding, manipulative, angry and self-promoting behaviour. The body language of an aggressive person might be fist clenching, crossed arms, scowls, or staring at someone
Passive communications are often silent since they often lack respect for themselves, while not giving any importance to their own need, feelings, opinion and wants.
Passive communicators put their own needs after everyone else’s, allowing for others to decide how things will turn out. Often their body language might include covering the mouth, looking down, avoiding eye contact and crossed arms

Basil Bernstein

Basil Bernstein (1942-2000) was one of the early researcher to show an interest in the relationship between language style and social class (Bernstein, 1971)
Claimed that people from the working and middle class in the United Kingdom used different kinds of language codes
Language codes are the types of language used that reflect particular social groups
Considered that working-class people’s conversation relied on preserving traditional roles and ways of interacting (they used a restricted code)
People from middle classes worked to develop ideas in relation to their personal experiences, so in addition to using restricted code, they use elaborative codes
Considered children in the working class to have a language deficit because they could only use restricted codes
Bernstein introduce elaborated and restricted codes because it was a way of accounting for the poor performance of working-class schools’ pupil. On their language-based subjects, when they were achieving as well as their middle-class counterparts as mathematical topics
His research has major influence on education program for young children in the United States between the 1960s and 1970s
Head Start was originally established in 1965 as a summer school program to teach low-income students on what they need to know, especially in language courses

William Labov

Labov idea (1970) was in a strong contrast with Bernstein’s language deficit position
His ideas are based on the African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
Considered AAVE was just as complex, and rule governed as standard English
That it should also be considered different and not deficient
Linguist now accept that language styles are simply difference in language use, rather than one style being superior to another, prejudice against particular styles still exist in most communities

Tannen

Deborah Tannen (1990) describes styles that she considers to be typical of men and women
Men tend to use report talk, which is the type of talk used in public speaking for information sharing
Women use rapport talk, this style is based on establishing relationship and intimacy, developing understanding, and negotiating differences.
Tannen considered that women enjoy private conversation more than men
Considered these styles evolved from childhood
Girls being taught to maintain relationship through talking
Boys about maintaining relationship through action
Hedges are words or phrases that are used to lessen the impact of a statement or request being made, an example if a woman would say ‘please shut the door, if you don’t mind’ (if you don’t mind is the hedge)
However, as Dallos (1996) noted, hedges were used by both men and women often for strategic devices than a sign of softness

Features of a Persuasive Communication

Persuasion involves attempting to change the beliefs, feelings, and behaviour of another
Persuasion is associated with advertising and attitude change
There are three variables in the context in which persuasion takes place

o Source of the message; that is the person presenting the message (who)

o Contents of the message; this may include the medium of the message be talking, SMS or advertising (what and how)

o Audience or the receiver of the message (to whom)

There are two routes of persuasion, Central and Peripheral
Central route: ==consist of thoughtful consideration of the content of the message by the receiver as an active participant in the process of persuasion==
Central processing: @@can only occur when the receiver has both the motivation and ability to think about the message and its content@@
Peripheral route: ^^when the listener decides whether to agree with a message based on cues other than the content of the message. For example, a listener may agree with a message because the source appears to be an expert or is attractive in some way^^
Attitudes that are changed through central to persuasion will have different effects from the attitudes change in peripheral route
Central is more likely to last longer because how it is considered more carefully

Source of the Message

Persuasive communication considers the source of the message
Research suggest that we are likely to accept the word of people with expertise in an area, even without assessing the validity of their claim
Research has shown that we also attribute expertise to fast talkers
If the gist of the message can be understood, listeners assume that a faster speaker is more intelligent and knowledgeable
Smith and Shaffer (1995) considered that this is because fast presentation makes it more difficult for listeners to evaluate the content properly
Trustworthiness is also a characteristic that persuade us

Nature of the Communication

The nature of the communication is the content itself as well as the medium used for communication between the source and the audience
The medium used can be speaking, writing, SMS or Twitter, and the tone of the language used can vary and can, for example be formal/information, accusatory/conciliatory
Research indicate that much persuasive information is misunderstood, although comprehension of printed advertisements and information is higher than for information presented on television. Broadcast media for persuasion need to remember to “keep it simple”
Messages often aim to provoke an emotional response as well as to change our thinking
If our reaction is unfavourable, we are unlikely to be persuaded
Some advertisements make no appeal at all to our reason but aim straight at our emotion
Many advertisers for products in a range of things like lottery ticket would try to make us feel good in hopes of buying the product
Research evidence links good mood and ability to be persuade as mixed
The reasoning appears to be that when people are in a good mood, they are less likely to process information carefully and therefore won’t be swayed by rationale argument
Some attempts persuasion relies on inducing fears rather a positive mood
Research shows us that, for this type of appeal to be successful, it must arouse sufficient anxiety to convince us to attend the message, but not too much anxiety or we may miss the message by becoming too emotional

\ \ \ \

Characteristics of the audience

The content or presentation style of our message will change depending on a range of characteristics of the audience such as their age, relationship to us, personality, level of education or culture
Research has shown us that some people enjoy examining issues, checking for inconsistencies, and weighing up the ‘pros and cons’ in a debate
Advertisers working across cultures generally try to be aware of the cultural differences in what people find persuasive
In a study, people in Western countries were found to be appealed strongly to logic
In China, they were appealed to both logic and emotions
Min-Sun Kim and colleagues (1998) examined cultural differences in the way attempts at persuasion are evaluated. They based their study on differences between individualistic and collectivist culture.
The participants were students who were presented with three diferent vignettes describing different requesting situation. The situation selected were ‘being on time, ‘repaying the loan’ and ‘extending homework deadline.’
Results revealed that the higher the participants’s interdepence as epitomised by the korean students, the higher the effectiveness and subsequent likelihood of using hint strategies in first request.
Independence was however was positively associated with the later likelihood of using direct statement and strategies for both first- and second- attempts request
\

Features of Limitation of Theories of Language Development

Researchers of language consider that there are three main types of knowledge they must acquire

o Knowledge about what to say (content of the language)

o Knowledge about how to say it (the form of the language)

o Knowledge about the use of the language

Children learning a spoken language must learn to discriminate and produce the sounds of their language, while those who are learning a signed learn must learn to discriminate and produce the hand shapes and movements of signs
All these components change as infant developed
12 months old is usually made up of single words
2 years old combine words in a fixed word. They say “more milk” rather than “milk more”
Between 2-3 years old children’s language expand at an amazing rate, so by the time they are 3 years old, they will be speaking in mostly complete sentence.

Chomsky

At first it was assumed that language was something that developed naturally as everyone learned how to speak their own native language, this was called a nativist theory
Chomsky (1986) proposed a language acquisition device (LAD),
This black box proposed by Chomsky as a theoretical construct that represent the genetic ability of humans to acquire language
This theory proposed that language development was genetically predetermined
LAD worked by receiving as input the native language around the child and generating sentences in that same language as output
LAD works by assuming that all languages share similarities for sentence construction
These principles are universal and are the assumption children bring to the task of learning languages
Chomsky’s theory of language assumed there was universal rules in the LAD that could distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical sentence
This theory paid little attention to the social environment in which the child was developing, except to acknowledge that the primary linguistic input came in that form of language being used in the family and in the community
Children were innately predisposed to learn how to talk and how to understand the language around them
It was this shortcoming that led other researchers to propose a substantial role for the social environment in the language development of children, recognising that communication is a fundamental function of language

Bruner

By contrast, many believe that children’s language development takes place through parents talking to their children
Such learning involves participation in shared activities where words and meanings develop in routines and activities regularly undertaken like shopping, washing dishes and etc
The notion that adults assist children learn language is best explained by Jerome Bruner

o Based on a longitudinal study of two boys

o Aged 3 months of age until they were 24 months

Bruner (1983) proposed a language acquisition support system (LASS)
Which is essentially described how parents guided and support their children’s merging language through interaction
LASS requires LAD and vice versa
Proposed adults provided suitable interactional framework to allow language to develop, this is known as scaffolding
Scaffolding contains an instructional part in the form of a framework that encourage learning. It is gradually introducing speech to the infant
Formats are micro-interactional patterns and include such activities as meal and bath time as well as familiar games like peek a boo
Reference is how people manage and direct each other’s attention by linguistic means. Reference develops out of non-linguistic methods of directing attention such as pointing or turning your head to look at something
Joint attention, the shared focus of two individuals on an object its first established through eye contact between infant and his or her mother. Sustained eye contact is often taken by parents as the first sign that the infant recognises them and it leads to primitive conversations, mainly from the parents’ end.
From this early eye contact, mothers and their infants develop primitive vocal turn-taking, the child looking and making a noise, the mother looking and talking.
Once this routine is established, the mother introduces objects to the infant. For example, she may hold a brightly coloured object in-between her line of sight and that of her young child will look at it. These routines themselves are accompanied by talk and gradually over time the object is moved far away
As discussed by Bruner (1983) and then later on by Garton and Pratt (1998, 2004) by the time book reading appears as a format, children are able to take turns and know many of the conventions of the conversation \n \n