Human Communication: Week 9 - 29th Oct 2014 (Wed)

Interpersonal Communication
Interpersonal communication is a communication pattern between sender and receiver which more than 1 person is involved.
Conversation and dialogue are used in interpersonal communication

Process of conversation

Principle of conversation

1. Principle of Turn-Taking
2. Principle of Dialogue
3. Principle of Immediacy

Principle of Turn-Taking
In conversation, we usually exchange cues of speaker/listener actively - this is called the conversational turns.
Conversational turns =  a form of meta communication/gesture/non-verbal communication.

A table is constructed to help in understanding this principle

Principle of Dialogue
Dialogue is the conversation which contains meaningful message, showing the interaction between the sender and receiver.

Principle of Immediacy

• Immediacy= sense of togetherness, creation of closeness between speaker and listener
• both parties in a communication are required to consider the intimacy of their relationship and ajust their message according to the environment and context.

Everyday conversation

People have to maintain a social etiquette and obey conversational rules

1. Small Talk
2. Excuses and Apologies
3. Complimenting
4. Advice

Small Talk

• Small talk is a bridge to the conversation. 
• we usually start a conversation by using small talk, and it often leads to a bigger issue/message

Excuses and Apologies
Excuses

• etiquette to maintain excuses : don't lie and don't be too extreme
• type of excuses
1. I didn't do that - strong declination of involvement
2. It wasn't so bad - neutral stand on your involvement
3. Yes, but ... - Admitting the fault but defending your involvement

Apologies

• Etiquette for apologies: 
• maintain an open position.
• apologies only when you mean it

Complimenting

• complimenting = message of praise
• etiquette of compliments:
• qualified compliment : praises that justified the words
• unqualified compliment : praises that help you get favor or help you get out of trouble
• Etiquette of receiving compliments: do not expect praises from others when you do well in something.
• 2 options when received complimets from others
• denial
• acceptance

Advice

• Type of advices (which also known as META-ADVICE)
• Explore options - advice that helps someone to seek out alternatives
• Expert advice/ second opinion - advice that helps someone to emphasize/de-emphasize their belifs and inlination
• Delay decision - advice that delays one's decision

to be continued....

Human Communication: Week 9 - 28th Oct 2014 (Tue)

4. Spatial message

5. Artifactual communication
A channel that uses human-made messages to communicate

6. Smell Communication
also known as Olfactics/Olfactory, which means communication that is affected by odors/smell

7. Haptics
Also known as touch communication. this channel could be considered as the most primitive form of non-verbal communication because it is the first sense that is fully developed before a baby born.
Touch may contain several meanings:

• positive emotions
• playfulness
• control
• ritual
• task-relatedness

For example, it is inappropriate to touch one's face when you are talking to someone, but it would be fine to touch one's shoulder/arm during a conversation.

8. Paralanguage

The sound produce in your speech(not the words), including the rate of speech, the pitch, volume, accent, etc

eg. people might think that you are getting angry when you raise your volume and pitch in your speech

9. Silence

It might be very effective if it was used in correct timing.

it has several functions:

• to have time to think before speaking
• silent treatment/cold war is a way of using silence to protest something
• a way to respond threatening 
• to express anxiety/ shyness
• to avoid responding to certain topic
• to convey an emotional response, such as defiance or annoyance

10. Chronemics

 also known as Time communication, which means the way you organise time and react to time

People with PAST orientation usually be more traditional and tend  to do something with old methods

People with PRESENT orientation usually forget about the past and do no plan for tomorrow. they just let everything be in nature.

People with FUTURE orientation always making plans, setting goals and looking forward, they always think a lot about their future, so they are more organized.

Culture and Non-Verbal Communication

Different cultures always have different ways in their communication. Here are the few aspect we are going to discuss.

Culture and gestures

A body gesture may be defined differently by different culture.

eg. OK sign

this gesture means OKAY in most of the countries all over the world, however, there are a few exceptions. In Brazil and Argentina, it represents ASSHOLE, but in Japan, it represents MONEY.

Culture and Facial expression
the difference of facial expression in culture is often affected by the permissibility of the public.
eg. Asians usually control themselves from laughing out loudly because it is impolite to the speakers, but Americans don't care- they just laugh out loud when they feels happy.

Culture and Colours
Different cultures define colours differently.
eg. For chinese, wearing a red shirt to attend a funeral is greatly inappropriate because red represents happiness, you should not feel happy when someone died unless you are trying to insult him/her. wearing a black shirt during chinese new year is not encourage because black represents bad luck.

Culture and eye communication
Most cultures encourage people to have eye contact in a communication, but there's always exceptions.
For example, Japanese rarely see eye-to-eye level when they greet the bow to each others.

Culture and Touch
 For some cultures, touching someone when communicating is impolite and inappropriate. (eg. northern European countries  and Japan) While some cultures greatly encourage people to physically contact with each others.(eg. Southern European countries and middle east countries)

Culture- Paralanguage and Silence
in Japan, valued silence is greatly appreciated while in the most of the countries, silence is impolite to the speaker in a conversation.

Human Communication: Week 8

21th Oct 2014 (Tue) - Midterm, No class
22th Oct 2014 (Wed) - Deepavali , No class

Human Communication: Week 7 - 15th Oct 2014 (Wed)

Non-Verbal Communication

Non-verbal communication is communication that does not involve any words.
It includes everything that could  be sense other than the spoken words.

Functions of Non-Verbal messages

1. Integrating Non-verbal and verbal messages
2. Forming and managing impression
3. Defining Relationships
4. Structuring conversation
5. Influencing and Deceiving
6. Expressing emotion

Integrating Non-verbal and verbal messages

integrates non-verbal messages and verbal message may help convey message more effectively

The following shows how non-verbal messages integrate verbal messages:

• accent/emphasis verbal message
• complement/add nuances of meaning to verbal message
• contradict verbal message
• regulate/control verbal message
• repeat/restate the verbal message in a non-verbal manner
• substitute verbal message

Forming and managing impression

non-verbal messages do affect one's impression to others in few ways. It may ensure someone  

• to be liked
• to be believed
• to avoid failure
• to secure help
• to hide faults
• to be followed by others
• to confirm self-image and communicate it to others

Defining Relationships

We could define a relationship by identifying the non-verbal gestures used by different parties. This is because different non-verbal gestures and communications are used in different stages of relationship.

For example, people usually be polite and respectful to elder family members, such as parents, grandparents, parents' siblings, aunties and uncles etc. besides that, people also be polite and respectful to their boss. however, we can still differentiate ones' boss from their family members. what we had done is to identify the non-verbal messages used. People would be more friendly to their family members, but they usually keep a distance with their boss.

Structuring conversation
in a conversation, we the listener always give response to the speaker right after the speaker finish their speech. We seldom see both a listener speaks before the speaker ends his/her speech(unless they are quarreling/arguing for something). Why?
This is because people always give and receive cues that they are ready to speak, listen, comment non-verbally. This is called turn-taking cues. however, it might be verbal sometimes. for example, "don't you agree with that?"

Influencing and Deceiving
Non-verbal messages could influence others. For example, you would trust somebody who talk to you with a sincere and confident eye contact than a person who talks to you but does not look at you at all.
Non-verbal message could be deceiving too. This happens when you are trying to tell a white lie to someone with presence of third party who already knows that you are lying. 

Expressing emotions
You cry when you feel sad, you laugh/ smile when you feel happy, you shout when you are angry, these are the examples that show the function of non-verbal message in expressing emotions


Channels of Non-Verbal Communication

The following chart shows the channels of non-verbal communication.
*Drawn by Lim Tao. Copyright Reserved.

1. Body messages
   The figure below shows how body messages acts as a channel in non-verbal communication
  *Drawn by Lim Tao. Copyright Reserved.

2. Facial communication
    Indicates the degree of pleasantness, agreement and sympathy felt. It contains emotions such as happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, contempt and interest. These expressions show higher physiological arousal than those who suppress these expressions.

Facial management
technique that enable people to communicate feelings to achieve the effect they want and act in socially acceptable ways, such as:

• intensifying: exaggerating surprise and happiness
• deintensifying: covering up happiness/joy
• neutralizing: covering up sadness
• masking: pretending happy when you are not
• simulating: expressing emotion that you do not really feel

Eye communication

one of the most important non-verbal cues. Eye movements have several functions:

• to seek for feedback
• to signal openness in communication channel
• to signal the  nature of a relationship
• to change the psychological distance between speaker and listener
• to help others maintain privacy through civil inattention (eye avoidance)
• to signal lack of interest by avoiding eye contact

To be continued...

Human Communication: Week 7 - 14th Oct 2014 (Tue)

Confirmation and Disconfirmation(cont.)

There are several aspects that involved in Confirmation and Disconformation. They are:

1. Racism: Discrimination to the other races 
2. Sexism : Discrimination to the other gender
3. Heterosexism : Discrimination to the other sexuality 
4. Ageism : Discrimination to the other age, especially to the children or elder people.

We should avoid involving in any kinds of discrimination stated above. generally, there are some ways to avoid them:

1. Avoid offensive language
2. Respect the others

Cultural identifier 

Cultural identifier refers to the preferred terms which are widely used in talking / speaking of different cultures (language that is free of racism, sexism, heterosexism and ageism). We should be sensitive and avoid offensive languages to different

1. Race and nationality
2. affectional orientation
3. age and sex

Using verbal messages effectively

Verbal messages can be:

1. Symbolize reality
2. express both facts and inference
3. be relatively static
4. obscure distinctions

Symbolize reality

Verbal message are often used to symbolize something, event, situation, people, etc, it doesn't mean that the message is exactly same with the reality. (Message symbolize reality, not represent reality)

• Eg. When somebody says UCSI is good, doesn't mean that it is really good, just that the person who said that believed it is good.

People used to judge someone/something before they really know it. When people do so, they fell into the trap of Intensional orientation. We should avoid practising Intensional orientation but Extensional orientation which means that knowing the person/things/situation/event before judging it.

• Eg. Students often believe that Physics is difficult because everyone say so. They believe it is hard before they know it.(intensional orientation) if people tried to learn it and study hard, they will find that physics is not as hard as they think.(extensional orientation)

Messages express facts and inferences

Message could be misleading because it always infused with emotions, feelings, thoughts, etc. Therefore, we have to bear in mind that messages must be made up of facts but not inference.

We should avoid inferential statements in our speech when we convey a message. Factual statements are encouraged to be used to prevent confusion.

For an example:

• Factual statements - I like to eat Cheeseburger. (Listener would immediately know your preference)
• Inferential statements - I don't like Cheeseburger. (Listener might be confused-- so what do you like to eat? Chicken burger? Beef Burger? Fried Chicken? Pizza?)

Message can be relatively static

Humans tend to retain the old evaluation despite it may change from time to time. They failed to recognize the past does not dictate the present or future. Such incident is called Static Evaluation.

eg. Some people think that homosexuality is wrong because they think it is a choice- they choose to be homosexual. However, scientists have proven that homosexuality is not a choice, therefore people could not decide to be heterosexual or homosexual. These people do not update their information and still evaluate homosexual people with outdated thoughts, which shows that messages they received are relatively static.

Message can obscure distinction

Message that is not specific can be confusing because it generalize context and surroundings. Thus, it blurs the distinction between people, object, events etc

Indiscrimination

People who could not distinguish different people, objects or event that are similar

Eg. Some people from China could not distinguish the difference between Malays and Malaysia-borned Chinese.

Polarization

The tendency to think in only 2 extremes. For these people, they do not allow the possibility of a middle of a ground.

Eg. Some people could not accept Transgender because there are only 2 gender in their mind: male and female. They could not accept a man possesses female's personality and vice versa.

Human Communication: Week 6 - 8th Oct 2014 (Wed)

Mr Anwari took a medical leave yesterday, therefore we have only one class this week.
for this class, those groups who didnt present their topic about principle of verbal message continue their presentation.

Messages Vary in Assertiveness
Assertive people speak their minds and opinions, and they welcome others to do so. they operate "win-win situation" that both parties could gain something from their interaction

However, being assertive is not always the most desirable response.
eg. You and your friend want to go for lunch, your friend want to have McDonald but you want to have pizza hut. if Both of you are assertive: You voiced up and tell your friend that you dont want to have McD, but your friend still want to have McD instead of having pizza hut. this might end up with a quarrel.
Therefore, it is the best to be rational when being assertive. using the example above, the quarrel could be avoided if both of you be tolerate. you and your friend can take away your food and meet up at school to have lunch together.

To communicate assertively, the following steps are suggested:
1. Describe the problem you faced
2. State the consequences of the problem
3. Suggest solution(s)
4. Confirm the message you conveyed is understood by the others

Message can Deceive
Not all the messages conveyed are true- some of the message could be deceiving/lying. Lying is the act of *sending message that you believed to be false *intentionally. If you unintentionally give some wrong/false information which you believe it is true, you are not considered lying. vice versa, if you send a message which is true but you believed it is false, you are considered deceiving somebody.

Type of lies
1. Pro-social deception: The aim of giving this lie is to achieve some good effect.
Eg. You are trying to help your friend gain confidence in a competition, you might be giving white lies to he/she, telling him/her that he/she looks well-prepared.
2. Self-Enhancement deception: this lie makes yourself look good.
Eg. You present your good grades, good personalities and characters but you omit the poor ones during an interview in order to get hired.
3. Selfish deception: this lie is to protect yourself from being hurt by others.
Eg. Those who are homosexual would try to hide their sexualities by telling others they are straight.
4. Anti-social Deception: this lie would hurt/harm somebody.
Eg. People might be jealous at you and they would spread rumours which are bad to you in order to harm you.

Generally, Lies are not easy to be detected by people. This is because of we assumed that everyone is telling the truth in most of the situation, this is called the TRUTH BIAS. Whilst in some minor cases which a person often tell lies, we would lose confidence to he/she. The reason why we hardly believe in his/her speech or the information told by he/she is because of the LIE BIAS, which we assumed that the person is telling a lie.

To avoid people losing confidence at ourselves, we should always prevent ourselves from sending deceiving messages.Sometimes, lying is, however, not considered as a immoral or unethical action- lies are good in some cases to prevent somebody being harmed. Telling the truth is not always the best decision in some situation. Therefore, we should lie wisely according to the need of the situation with the premise of the lie is beneficial for everyone.

That's the end of the Principle of Verbal Messages.

The second topic would be the
CONFIRMATION AND DISCONFORMATION
there are 3 terms that i would like to introduce
1. Confirmation: a communication pattern that involves your acknowledging the presence of the person and the acceptance of the person
2. Disconfirmation: a communication pattern that you ignored the person and his/her message.
3. Rejection: an action that refused to accept someone's opinion, message, action, etc.

Eg. You chatted with your friend with a very loud voice and kept playing music using your handphone during the class which disturbed your classmate. The lecturer asked you to be sitted and keep quiet but you ignored him. The communication pattern used by you is Disconfirmation.
You continued doing these actions without listening to the lecturer, he finally yelled at you : "Get out of my class right now!!!" You yelled back to him : "Why should i??? I paid the tuition fees for you to yell at me and ask me to leave the class??? It's your responsibility to teach me, you should not give such an irresponsible order to me!!" What you had done is that you refused to leave the class, and it's call the Rejection.
Then the lecturer screamed to you : " I don't care!! If you do not leave right now, I'll bar you from the final exam!!! Please disappear from my sight in 10 seconds!! GET OUT!!!! NOW!!!" You are afraid of being barred from the final, so you shouted back to the lecturer : "OKAY!! FINE!!!" then you packed your bag and leave the room. What you've done is that you acknowledged the presence of your lecturer and you accepted him as a person who speak to you, which is the Confirmation.

The subtopics would be explained in the next post....

Human Communication: Week 5 - 1st Oct 2014 (Wed)

Today was the Presentation day of our topic, which is "Message Depends on Context", and i was responsible in explaining the Gender Context.

As I said yesterday, the time given is not enough for us to prepare everything for this presentation. For me, After  i went home, i spent my whole night to do some researches about this topic, prepare the slide and also look for some video. The hardest part is actually preparing the slide, because there's a lot of information about this topic, but you cant really include everything inside, or else it would be a long and boring session for the students. You have to select not only the interesting part, but also the important points so that the presentation won't be meaningless.

Besides, The process of searching a suitable video is really time-killing. You have to look for the video which is relevant to the topic, yet it have to be interesting. You have to go through every video, and decide whether it is suitable for the presentation. This spend me quite a lot of time. At last, I chose 2 videos and i sent them to Aaron, one of my teammate.

There's actually another briefing session early in the morning today. Due to some reasons, i couldn't attend it.

Well, our group members did quite well in the presentation, but i think i ruined their good performance...  Feeling too nervous and i cant control my speech. Thank god for the video, it caught students' attention as i expected...

well i think really have to train myself to do more public speaking and gain more self-esteem.

What i've learnt from this class is the 4 topics.

1. Meaning of verbal message varies in people. The term, Bypassing, means miscommunication that occurs when the speaker and receiver misunderstand the message conveys to each others. There are 2 types of bypassing,which is "Different words same meaning" and "Same Words, Different meaning". These are the examples.

• Different words, same meaning: 2 of your friends saw you eating chocolate, A says "The chocolate seems nice to be eaten" and B says"Chocolate is my favourite". The actual meaning of their speech is "Can i have some chocolate from you?" but they used different words to express their message.
• Same Words, Different meaning: You parked your car in the middle of the street, and your friend asked you to remove your car , but you rejected him. then he say  " fine! you will be fined!" both of the Fine in his speech is the same word, but they have different meaning.

    2.   Verbal message conveyed through languague is Denotative and Connotative

• Denotation : meaning found in the dictionary
• Connotation:  emotional meaning
• For example, somebody scolded you "You're a pig", the PIG might be denotative which means you looks like a pig, or connotative which means you are as fat as a pig.
• Snarl words: Words that are highly negative, as example, you're a pig is snarl words
• Purr words: words that are highly positive, as example, you're beautiful

     3.   Meaning of verbal message depends on context

• CULTURAL CONTEXT
• The principle of cooperation : cooperate among both parties of communication, there are 5 maxims
• Maxim of quality: speak the truth only
• Maxim of relation: talk about something which is relevant to the topic
• Maxim of manner: avoid ambiguities, speak clearly, briefly and in an organised manner
• Maxim of quantity: be informative

• Principle of peaceful relations: never insult the others to maintain peacefulness
• Principle of face-saving: do not embarrass someone
• Principle of self-denigration: be humble

• GENDER CONTEXT
• Boys and girls are constructed in such a different way and biologically non- identical, the way they convey their message would be different
• the difference are  due to biological factors, different patterns of socialization and inequalities in social power
• women are generally speak better, more polite, more indirect  than men do.

     4.  Verbal message varies in Politeness

• Politeness Online: internet communication has very specific rules for politeness, called netiquette. These are some of the netiquette:
• Familiarize yourself with the site before contributing
• Be brief
• DONT SHOUT ( Writing in capital letters is perceived as shouting)
• Dont spam and flame
• Avoid offensive language

• Be gentle
• Be social
• be positive
• be considerate
• be discrete