Manual for Students

especially charming and getting the other person into a noncombative frame of mind.

239.Manner Maxim – a principle of Conversation that holds that speakers cooperate by being clear and by organizing their thoughts into some meaningful and coherent pattern.

240.Markers – devices that signify that a certain territory belongs to a particular person. Become sensitive to the markers of others, and learn to use markers to define your own territories and to communicate the desired impression.

241.Masculine Culture – a culture in which men are viewed as assertive, oriented to material success, and strong; women, on the other hand, are viewed as modest, focused on the quality of life, and tender. Masculine cultures emphasize success and so socialize people to be assertive, ambitious, and competitive. Opposed to Feminine Culture.

242.Matching Hypothesis – an assumption that you date and mate people who are similar to yourself – who match you – in physical attractiveness.

243.Mediation – the act of resolving conflict by having someone intervene between two parties.

244.Melting Pot – a metaphor that assumes that immigrants and cultural minorities will be assimilated into the U.S. majority culture, losing their original cultures.

245.Mentoring Relationship – a relationship in which an experienced individual helps to train someone who is less experienced; for example, an accomplished teacher might mentor a younger teacher who is newly arrived or who has never taught before.

246.Message – any signal or combination of signals that serves as a stimulus for a receiver.

247.Metacommunication – сommunication about com­munication.

Metacommunicate to ensure understanding of the other persons thoughts and feelings: Give clear feedforward, explain feelings as well as thoughts, paraphrase your own complex thoughts, and ask questions.

248.Metaphor – not only a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish, metaphor is a property of our conceptual system, a way of using language that structures how we perceive things, how we think, and what we do.

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249.Mindfulness and Mindlessness – states of relative

Awareness. In a mindful state, you are aware of the logic and rationality of your behaviors and of the logical connections among elements. In a mindless state, you’re unaware of rationality and logical connections. Be mindful when applying the principles of interpersonal communication. To increase mindful-ness, create and re-create categories, be open to new information and points of view, and avoid relying too heavily on first impressions.

250.Mixed Message – a message that communicates two different and often contradictory meanings, for ex­ample, a message that asks for two different (often incompatible) responses such as “leave me alone” and “show me more attention”. Often, one meaning (usually the socially acceptable meaning) is communicated verbally and the other (usually the less socially acceptable meaning) non-verbally. Avoid emitting mixed messages by focusing clearly on your purposes when communicating and by increasing conscious control over your verbal and non-verbal behaviors. Detect mixed messages in other people’s communications and avoid being placed in double-blind situations by seeking clarification from the sender.

251.Model – a representation of an object or process.

252.Monochronic Time Orientation – a view of time in which things are done sequentially; one thing is scheduled at a time. Opposed to Polychrome Time Orientation.

253.Multicultural – political term used to characterize a society composed of people from different cultures or an individual who belongs to several cultures. See Intercultural.

254.Multicultural Identity – a sense of inbetweenness that develops as a result of frequent or multiple cultural border crossings.

255.Multilingual – the ability to speak more than two languages fluently or at least competently.

256.Myths – a) theories or stories that are widely understood and believed; b) in semiotics, the layers of meaning beneath a signifier.

257.Narrative Style – a person’s way of telling stories that reflects the uses of language of the discourse community he/she has been socialized into. See conversational style; discourse accent.

258.National Identity – national citizenship.

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259.Native Speaker – a person who is recognized, linguistically and culturally, by members of a discourse community as being one of them.

260.Negative Feedback – feedback that serves a corrective function by informing the source that his or her message is not being received in the way intended. Looks of boredom, shouts of disagreement, letters critical of newspaper policy, and teachers’ instructions on how better to approach a problem are examples of negative feedback and (ideally) serve to redirect the speaker’s behavior.

261.Networking – connecting with people who can help you accomplish a goal or help you find information related to your goal; for example, to your search for a job.

262.Neutrality – a response pattern lacking in personal involvement; encourages defensiveness. Opposed to Empathy.

263.Noise – anything that interferes with your receiving a message as the source intended the message to be received. Noise is present in communication to the extent that the message received is not the message sent. In order to increase communication accuracy, combat the effects of physical, physiological, psychological, and semantic noise by eliminating or lessening the sources of physical noise, securing agreement on meanings, and interacting with an open mind.

264.Nonjudgmental – free from evaluating according to one‘s own cultural frame of reference.

265.Nonnegotiation – an unproductive Conflict strategy in which the individual refuses to discuss the conflict or to listen to the other person.

266.Non-verbal Communication – сommunication without words; for example, communication by means of space, gestures, facial expressions, touching, vocal variation, or silence.

267.Object-Adaptors – movements that involve your manipulation of some object; for example, punching holes in a styrofoam coffee cup, clicking a ballpoinl pen, or chewing on a pencil. Generally, objectadaptors communicate discomfort and a lack of control over the communication situation and so are best avoided.

268.Obliging Style – a conflict management strategy characterized by playing down differences and incompatibilities while emphasizing commonalities.

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269.Olfactory Communication – сommunication by smell.

270.Openness – a quality of interpersonal effectiveness encompassing (1) a willingness to interact openly with others, to selfdisclose as appropriate; (2) a willingness to react honestly to incoming stimuli; and (3) a willingness to own one’s feelings and thoughts.

271.Opinion – a tentative conclusion concerning some object, person, or event.

272.Orality – features of discourse associated with the use of spoken language; cf. literacy.

273.Orate – characteristic of either spoken or written language that bears traces of orality; cf. literate.

274.Orientalism – term coined by Edward Said to denote the colonialist perspective taken by European writers on the Orient, and by extension, a colonialist view of any foreign culture.

275.Other-Orientation – a quality of interpersonal effectiveness involving attentiveness, interest, and concern for the other person. Convey concern for and interest in the other person by means of empathic responses, appropriate feedback, and active listening responses.

276.Outing – the process whereby a person’s affectional Orientation is made public by another person without the gay man or lesbians consent.

277.Overattribution – the tendency to attribute a great deal or even everything a person does to one or two characteristics.

278.Overdifferentiation – imposition of phonemic distinctions from the primary language system on the sounds of the secondary system.

279.Owning Feelings – the process by which you take responsibility for your own feelings instead of Attributing them to others.

To increase honest sharing, own your feelings by using messages and acknowledging responsibility for your own thoughts and feelings.

280.Paralanguage – the vocal but non-verbal aspect of speech. Paralanguage consists of voice qualities (for example, pitch range, resonance, tempo), vocal characterizers (laughing or crying, yelling or whispering), vocal qualifiers (intensity, pitch height), and vocal segregates (“uh-uh” meaning “no” or “sh” meaning “silence”). Vary paralinguistic elements, such as rate, volume, and stress, to add variety and

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emphasis to your communications, and be responsive to the meanings communicated by others’ variation of paralanguage features.

281.Passive Listening – listening that is attentive and supportive but occurs without the listener’s talking or directing the speaker in any non-verbal way; also, negatively, inattentive or uninvolved listening.

282.Pauses – silent periods in the normally fluent stream of speech. Pauses are of two types: filled pauses (interruptions in speech that are filled with such vocalizations as “er” or “urn”) and unfilled pauses (silences of unusually long duration).

283.People-Centered – characteristic of conversational exchanges where participants have to engage their listeners, not just convey information; cf. Topic-Centered.

284.Perception – the process by which you become aware of objects and events through your senses.

285.Perception Checking – the process of verifying your understanding of some message, situation, or feeling. Use perception checking to get more information about your impressions by describing what you think is happening and asking whether this is correct or in error.

286.Personal Distance – the second closest distance in Proxemics, ranging from 18 inches to 4 feet.

287.Persuasion – the process of influencing attitudes and behavior.

288.Phatic Communion – term coined by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski to characterize the ready-made chunks of speech like ‘Hi, how are you?’ that people use more to maintain social contact than to conveyinformation; communication that is primarily social; communication designed to open the channels of communication rather than to communicate something about the external world. “Hello” and “How are you?” are examples in every­day interaction.

289.Phonic Interference – perception and reproduction of the sounds of a bilingual’s secondary language in terms of his primary language.

290.Phonotactic Interference – carryover of distributional restrictions of language A into language B.

291.Pidgin – a contact vernacular, a spoken language used for communication between speakers who have no other language in

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common; a mixed language incorporating the vocabulary of one or more languages, having a very simplified form of the grammatical system of one of these, and not used as the main language of any of its speakers.

292.Pitch – the highness or lowness of the vocal tone.

293.Polarization – a form of fallacious reasoning by which only two extremes are considered; also referred to as “black-or-white” and “either-or” thinking or two-valued orientation. In order to describe reality more accurately, use middle terms and qualifiers when describing the world; avoid talking in terms of extremes (for example, good and bad).

294.Politics of Recognition – the political debates surrounding the right of minorities to be legitimately recognized and accepted as members of a culture (2) that is different from the dominant culture. See

Legitimation.

295.Polychrome Time Orientation – a view of time in which several things may be scheduled or engaged in al the same time. Opposed to Monochrome Time Orientation.

296.Popular Culture – a new name for low culture, referring to those systems or artifacts that most people share and that most people know about, including television, music, videos and popular magazines.

297.Positive Feedback – feedback that supports or reinforces the continuation of behavior along the same lines in which it is already proceeding – for example, applause during a speech encourages the speaker to continue speaking this way.

298.Positiveness – a characteristic of effective communication involving positive attitudes toward oneself and toward the interpersonal interaction, and expression of these attitudes to others (as in complimenting) along with acceptance and approval. Communicate positiveness verbally and non-verbally with, for example, smiles, positive facial expressions, attentive gestures, positive verbal expressions, and the elimination of negative appraisals.

299.Power – the ability to influence or control the behavior of another person; A has power over B when A can influence or control B’s behavior. Power is an inevitable part of interpersonal relationships. Communicate power through forceful speech;

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avoidance of weak modifiers and excessive body movement; and demonstration of knowledge, preparation, and organization in the matters at hand.

300.Power Play – a consistent pattern of behavior in which one person tries to control the behavior of another. To combat power plays use an effective management strategy; for example, express your feelings, describe the behavior you object to, and state a cooperative response.

301.Pragmatics – the study of what speakers mean with words, as distinct from what the code means; the study of how meaning is constructed in relation to receivers and how language is actually used in particular contexts in language communities.

302.Primacy and Recency – typical patterns in human perception. Primacy is our tendency to give more importance to that which occurs first; recency is our tendency to give more importance to that which occurs last (i.e., most recently).

303.Primary Relationship – the relationship between two people that they consider their most (or one of their most) important; for example, the relationship between husband and wife or domestic partners.

304.Principle of Cooperation. An implicit agreement between speaker and listener to cooperate in trying to understand what each is communicating.

305.Print Culture – the artefacts, mindsets, and social practices associated with the production and reception of printed language; cf. orality; literacy.

306.Process – ongoing activity; Communication is referred to as a process because it is always changing, always in motion.

307.Provisionalism – an attitude of open-mindedness that leads to the development of a supportive relationship and atmosphere. Opposed to Certainty.

308.Proxemics – the study of how people communicate through the ways they structure their space – the distances between people in their interactions, the organization of space in homes and offices, and even the design of cities.

309.Psychological Time – the importance you place on past, present, or future time. Recognize the significance of your own time

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orientation to your ultimate success, and make whatever adjustments you think desirable.

310.Public Distance – the farthest distance in Proxemics, ranging from 12 feet to more than 25 feet.

311.Pupil Dilation – the extent to which the pupil of the eye is expanded; generally large pupils indicate positive reactions.

312.Pygmalion Effect – the condition in which you make a prediction of success, act as if it is true, and thereby make it come true (as when a teacher’s acting toward students as if they’ll be successful actually influences them to become successful); a type of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

313.Quality Maxim – a principle of Conversation that holds that speakers cooperate by saying what they think is true and by not saying what they think is false.

314.Quantity Maxim – a principle of Conversation that holds that speakers cooperate by being only as informative as necessary to communicate their intended meanings.

315.Racial Identity – identifying with a particular racial group. Although in the past racial groups were classified on the basis of biological characteristics, most scientists now recognize that race is constructed in fluid social and historical contexts.

316.Racist Language – language that denigrates, demeans, or is derogatory toward members of a particular race.

317.Rate – the speed with which you speak, generally measured in words per minute. Use variations in rate to increase communication efficiency and persuasiveness as appropriate.

318.Receiver – any person or thing that takes in messages. Receivers may be individuals listening to or reading a message, a group of persons hearing a speech, a scattered television audience, or machines that store information.

319.Referent – object that a signifier (sound or word) points to, for example, a flower of a certain shape and smell is the referent for the word ‘rose’.

320.Regional Identity – identification with a specific geographic region of a nation.

321.Regulators – non-verbal behaviors that regulate, monitor, or control the communications of another person.

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322.Reinterpretation of Distinctions – the process of distinguishing phonemes of the secondary system by features that are distinctive in the bilingual’s primary system but merely concomitant or redundant in the secondary system.

323.Rejection – a response to an individual that acknowledges another person but expresses disagreement. Opposed to Confirmation and Disconfirmation.

324.Relation Maxim – a principle of Conversation that holds that speakers communicate by talking about what is relevant and by not talking about what is not.

325.Relationship Communication – сommunication between or among intimates or those in close relationships; for some theorists, synonymous with interpersonal communication.

326.Relational Dialectics Theory – a theory that describes relationships in terms of a series of opposites representing competing desires or motivations, such as the desire for autonomy and the desire to belong to someone, desires for novelty and for predictability, and desires for closedness and for openness.

327.Relationship Message – message that comments on the relationship between the speakers rather than on matters external to them. In order to ensure a more complete understanding of the messages in­tended, recognize and respond to relationship as well as content messages.

328.Relationship Repair – a relationship stage in which one or both parties seek to improve the relationship. If you wish to preserve or repair a deteriorating relationship, lake positive action by recognizing the problem, engaging in productive conflict resolution, posing possible solutions, affirming each other, integrating solutions into normal behavior, and taking risks.

329.Relexification – very rapid replacement of the vocabulary of a language by lexical items taken from another language.

330.Religious Identity – a sense of belonging to a religious group.

331.Rules Theory – a theory that describes relationships as interactions governed by a series of rules that a couple agrees to follow. When the rules are followed, the relationship is maintained and when they are broken, the relationship experiences difficulty.

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332.Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis – the linguistic relativity hypothesis advanced by linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. See Linguistic

Relativity Principle

333.Schema (pl. schemata) – mental representation of typical instance used in discourse processing to predict and make sense of the particular instance which the discourse describes. See Structures of Expectation; Frame. Ways of organizing perceptions; mental templates or structures that help you organize the millions of items of information you come into contact with every day as well as those you already have in memory. Schemata include general ideas about people (Pat and Chris, Japanese, Baptists, New Yorkers); yourself (your qualities, abilities, or even liabilities); and social roles (the qualities of police officers, professors, or multimillionaire CEOs).

334.Script – a type of schema; an organized body of infor­mation about some action, event, or procedure. A script is a general idea of how some event should play out or unfold; the rules governing events and their sequence.

335.Segregation – the policy or practice of compelling groups to live apart from each other.

336.Selective Exposure – the tendency of listeners to actively seek out information that supports their opinions and to actively avoid information that contradicts their existing opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and values.

337.Self-Acceptance – being satisfied with yourself, your virtues and vices, your abilities and limitations.

338.Self-Adaptors – movements that usually satisfy a phys­ical need, especially to make you more comfortable; for example, scratching your head to relieve an itch, moistening your lips because they feel dry, or pushing your hair out of your eyes. Because these often communicate your nervousness or discomfort, they are best avoided.

339.Self-Awareness – the degree to which you know yourself.

Increase self-awareness by asking yourself about yourself and listening to others; actively seek information about yourself from others by carefully observing their interactions with you and by asking relevant questions. See yourself from different perspectives (seeyour different selves), and increase your open self.

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