- •Unit 1 Defining Communication
- •I. Notes
- •Is Communication Intentional?
- •Is Communication Sender- or Receiver-Based?
- •Is All Communication Symbolic?
- •II. Discussion
- •Unit 2 Communication: Models, Perspectives
- •I. Notes
- •It All Depends on Your Point of View: Three Perspectives
- •Improving Faulty Communication
- •Improving Our Social Constructions
- •Improving Unhealthy Patterns
- •II. Discussion
- •Unit 3 Decoding Messages: Perception, Information Processing and Listening
- •I. Notes
- •Imposing Order and Meaning on the World
- •Information Processing: Communicating for Clarity
- •Increasing Comprehension
- •Improving General Listening Performance
- •Improving Attention
- •Improving Interpretation
- •Improving Retention and Retrieval
- •II. Discussion
- •Unit 4 Encoding Messages: Spoken Language
- •I. Notes
- •Interactive Discourse: Coherence and Structure
- •Verbal Directness
- •Immediacy: Up Close and Personal
- •Improving Language Choices
- •II. Discussion
- •Unit 5 Encoding Messages: Nonverbal Communication
- •I. Notes
- •Illustrators
- •Increasing Nonverbal Skills
- •II. Discussion
- •Interpersonal Communication
- •I. Notes
- •Variations in Relational Development
- •Interpersonal Attraction: Filtering Theory
- •Increasing Relational Skills
- •II. Discussion
- •Unit 7 Group Communication
- •I. Notes
- •II. Discussion
- •Unit 8 mass communication
- •I. Notes
- •Characteristics of Mass Communication
- •Channels of distribution
- •Interpersonal Diffusion
- •II. Discussion
- •What is ‘strategic’
- •What is ‘strategic conversation’
- •II. Discussion
II. Discussion
Task 1. Discuss the following questions in small groups.
Dwell on the notion of mass communication and its distinctive features.
Speak on the characteristics of mass communication.
What distribution channels are involved in mass communication?
Discuss the ways and means to provide availability and accessibility of mass communication.
Discuss the role of audience from the point of view of different approaches to mass communication (The Magic Bullet, Interpersonal Diffusion, Uses and Gratifications).
What functions does mass communication perform in society?
Task 2. Applying the main characteristics of mass communication prove that “National Geographic” magazine belongs to mass media.
UNIT 9
The Role of Communication Strategies
in Interaction
I. Notes
Defining Strategic Conversation
To understand strategic conversation, we need to review the meanings of the component words and then combine them.
What is ‘Conversation’
If you study literature on the topic you will come across the following terms: dialogue, debate, discussion, and conversation. Let’s see how each of these words is used and how they differ from each other.
According to Peter Senge and colleagues, dialogue is a form of conversation to surface the ‘tacit’ infrastructure of thought. In dialogue there is an action focus where we suspend assumptions and enter into ‘think together’. In dialogue we don’t think about what we’re doing, we do something about what we’re thinking. Dialogue is about deeper understanding, not decisions, and is used to understand rather than advocate for agreement. Thus, dialogue has a narrow meaning. The value of dialogue is that it goes beyond one’s understanding, and supports the processes of creating, sharing, integrating, and evaluating knowledge. Dialogue is intended to be open and power-neutral communication, but sometimes it can be abused.
Debate differs from dialogue in that it is a dialectic process between two or more interlocutors, during which both parties pose questions and receive answers, the aim of which is to increase either party’s awareness or understanding. It is about being cooperative and goal-directed, with reciprocal exchanges of messages embedded in each specific normative context. Decision processes are not an inherent part of debate.
In discussion, ideas go back and forth in a winner-takes-all manner. There are dangers however of discussions veering from strategic towards operational, and of risk paralysis in conditions of uncertainty. To reduce those problems, authors suggest using conversational frameworks that encourage a strategic purpose and systematize organizational knowledge, culminating in the use of decision models. Discussion is a much broader concept than dialogue or debate, but still doesn’t go into and beyond the actual decision making to embrace subsequent actions
Conversation is a term that includes all the above, plus discourse and others. Conversation embraces every form of informational seeking, exchange, and processing (e.g. decisions, planning, implementing etc.).