III. Cooperative Verbal Communication

1. Cooperative language has three features: (a) understandable – informative, honest, relevant and clear; (b) actively owned by you – using “I” messages; (c) inclusive (making reference to common issues, “us”).

2. Cooperative Principle by Paul Grice:

Quantity: Say as much as is needed to convey the message; Quality: Say the truth; Relevance: Say what is relevant to the topic; Manner: Do not use confusing words.

C. Kathleen Verderber adds two more maxims (Michael’s Sound Bite 6-4): maxim of morality (do not betray confidence, do not persuade to do what you think is wrong), and maxim of politeness (behave courteously toward your interlocutor).

DISCUSSION STARTER 6: Recall an encounter where you possessed important information but knew that disclosing it would be personally or relationally problematic. What did you do? How did your decision impact your relationship?

Was your choice ethical? Based on your experience, is it always cooperative to disclose important information?

D. Use I-language: take responsibility for what you say; do not blame the other person, and emphasize ownership of your feelings, opinions and beliefs.

E. Use We-language: express your connection to others (Michael’s Sound Bite 6-5): Always come to the conversation: (a) with a list of solutions and offers, not problems; (b) thinking about what the other person needs; (c) ready to demonstrate flexibility; (d) ready to demonstrate equality by sharing turns and following maxims

F. Gender stereotypes in language: Deborah Tannen: Men communicate in a more clear and straightforward manner, while women are more indirect and wordy; men are less polite, women are more considerate (with more uncertain phrases, and flowery adjectives); men interrupt more, women listen more carefully.

G. Culture and Cooperative Verbal Communication Guoming Chen, William Starosta: (a) Cultures have overt and covert verbal communication rules; (b) people seek to adapt to their conversation partners: match rate, clarity and turn-taking; (c) do not try to copy dialects or word choices.

IV. Barriers to Cooperative Verbal Communication

1. Deception occurs when people deliberately use uninformative, untruthful, irrelevant or vague language to mislead others; concealment (just withholding information) is practiced even wider. Deception is common in online communication, although it is very harmful. However, ambiguous and indirect language can be a cultural feature.

DISCUSSION STARTER 7: How do you define deception? What relationship consequences have you experienced because of it? If a friend, family member, or romantic partner deceives you out of a genuine concern for your feelings or to protect your mutual relationship, is the deception unethical? Why or why not?

2. Misunderstanding is often the result of not listening carefully due to mismatching listening styles. Misunderstanding often occurs online because of the lack of nonverbal cues. Misunderstandings also happen intentionally: (a) people specifically look for excuses to twist your words; (b) look for and find things to support your negative assumptions; (c) repeatedly misbehave; in response partners repeatedly misunderstand. Michael has more barriers to add (Michael’s Sound Bite 6-6):

DISCUSSION STARTER 8: Recall an online encounter in which you thought you understood someone’s

e-mail, text message, or post, then later found out you were wrong. How did you discover that your impression was mistaken? What could you have done differently to avoid the misunderstanding?

3. Multiple meanings: words can have different meanings for different people, when this happens we refer to it as “variable designation.”

4. Grandiloquence: we use words of “high style” that we don’t necessarily understand completely or that make it sound absolutely out of the context;

5. Malopropism: this barrier happens when we mistakingly use a wrong word instead of the word that sounds alike. (“like”, “love”, “want” and “fancy”; Slovenia and Slovakia, etc.)

6. Generalization: this barrier takes place when we generalize about the whole based on a particular episode or part of an experience. People react emotionally to words like “always”, “overall,” “never,” etc.

7. Static evaluation: Static evaluation takes place when we view something as unchanging: call your grown-up son “kid,” fear talking to your former high-school teacher who had been very strict, etc.

8. Polarization: Using the either-or language.

9. Presentiment: Using language to attach labels.