VIII. Doing Communication Research:

A. Quantitative Research: Making assumptions of what we are going to find and testing these hypotheses. Uses numbers and statistical instruments.

B. Qualitative Research: Observing, identifying patterns and determining the principles behind these patterns.

IX. Issues in Interpersonal Communication

A. Culture: a set of beliefs, attitudes, values and practices shared by a group of people. We learn culture from significant people in our lives.

B. Macro- and micro-cultures, cultural communities (Michael’s Sound Bite 1-13): The entire civilization, races and ethnicities form macrocultures. Microcultures are groups united around religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, social class, profession and other distinguishing group characteristics. There are also cultural communities, cultural entities created at separate communities: schools, workplaces, towns, clubs, etc. All of these have their own separate sets of beliefs, attitudes, values and practices, although parts of these systems intersect and are shared.

C. Gender and Sexual Orientation: Gender is a collection of social, psychological and cultural traits usually associated with one or the other biological sex. Gender is learned. Sexual orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectionate attraction to others that exists along a continuum ranging from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality and that includes various forms of bisexuality.

Although people of different genders and sexual orientations communicate in a different manner due to cultural differences, they maintain and develop their relationships mostly in the same manner.

D. Online communication: interaction by means of social-networking sites (such as Facebook), e-mail, text or instant messaging, videoconferences, chatrooms, multiuser discussions, listservs and other mailing lists, and Usenet newsgroups.

E. Communication knowledge can be used destructively. Therefore, study of communication also includes study of how to overcome destructive communication patterns.

DISCUSSION STARTER 8: Call to mind a devastating relationship event you’ve experienced. In what ways, if any, did your communication contribute to what happened? What consequences did you suffer? How have you overcome them?

X. Learning Interpersonal Communication

This textbook consists of three sections: Interpersonal Essentials (information on models and understanding of self and others); Interpersonal Skills (repeatable behaviors that enable you to improve the quality of your life; and Interpersonal Relationships (study of ways we begin, shape and end relationships).

Practice

I. Opening Story: Starting the Discussion

A. Michael’s Instructions: While not obligatory for reading, the opening story in each chapter sets the mood for the rest of the reading. Stephen chooses stories that relate to several concepts in the chapter and talks about these concepts in general terms.

B. Read the opening story and identify three concepts from the chapter that characterize the communication process in the situation.

C. Then: (a) think of similar examples in your life, (b) remember the actions that the hero of the story, you, and other people around you took when they faced the situation; (c) think of the ways these actions influenced everyone involved; (d) suggest the ways which your naïve knowledge of communication offered you as remedies for whatever did not work in communication in that particular instance; (e) discuss how your scientific knowledge of communication changes your perception, and list three things that you would do now if you faced a similar situation in the future

D. An essay on the opening story can be used as an extra credit opportunity. If you would like to get more points, write a six-paragraph essay answering the questions above in good paragraphs (1 opening sentence, 2-3 main idea sentences, 1 summary and transition sentence). Make note that although this assignment is long and fairly difficult, you will be given only 10 points for it. The reason for it is that the extra credit points must be extra hard to get.

A CUPCAKE STORY

My office hours were about to end when Helen, a student from my interpersonal communication course the previous semester, arrived. She smiled and said, “Last term you talked in class about the field of interpersonal communication. I want to go into it and do research. How do I do this?”1

Now it’s not every day that a former student boldly declares a desire to become a communication scholar. But my initial skepticism regarding Helen’s query soon disappeared as she and I discussed the history behind her visit. As we talked, it became clear that her interest was genuine, and her motivation to study interpersonal communication deeply personal.

Helen Torres was born in Puerto Rico but spent her early childhood in Detroit in a neighborhood of Polish, Hispanic, Lebanese, and Euro-American families. The summer before Helen entered third grade, her family moved to a suburb that was almost entirely Euro-American, making them the only Hispanic family in the area. Helen’s mother was excited about the change, and she immediately volunteered to help out with activities at

Helen’s school, including fundraising and school parties.

Soon an incident occurred that changed Helen’s view of interpersonal communication forever. A parent called Helen’s mother and asked her to bake cupcakes for an upcoming school event. Helen’s mother, bilingual but predominantly a Spanish speaker, didn’t know what “cupcakes” were. Why would anyone in their right mind want a cup-size cake? she wondered.

Concluding that the caller must be confused, Helen’s mom baked a beautiful full-size cake and brought it to school. Seeing the cake, some of the kids teased Helen. “I shut them up,” Helen explains. “[I said] ‘My

mom can speak two languages. Can yours?’”

But her mother was mortified. She stopped volunteering for school functions, afraid of embarrassing her daughters. She also curtailed Helen’s and her sister’s interactions with schoolmates, worried that she couldn’t defend them if they got into conflicts with fellow students. “It was basically ‘Come right home, do your homework, and do your chores,’” recalls Helen.

The stigma associated with the cupcake incident quickly faded from Helen’s classmates’ memories. But for Helen’s mother it fostered a sense of alienation and insurmountable difference between her and the other mothers at Helen’s school. And for Helen, it inspired a fierce intellectual curiosity regarding people’s perception of difference and the importance of interpersonal communication in shaping relationships. A decade later, when Helen was a college student, this curiosity brought her to my office door.

In the years after our conversation, Helen earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication. As she put it, “Learning about interpersonal communication provided a different lens for looking at the world than what I previously had. It made me a more alert and savvy person in interpreting communication and allowed me to ask better questions and make better decisions. It also gave me the tools to critically analyze myself, others, and situations—I now can step back when I need to and reflect on my own messages, putting myself in others’ shoes.”

Today, Helen Iris Torres is executive director of Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE), an influential nonprofit organization committed to achieving political and economic equality for Latinas through leadership, advocacy, and education. But she still recalls the cupcake incident and its impact on her life. “It’s a silly story, but it illustrates a profound point: even small communication events can have big consequences. For me, this incident sparked a lifelong quest to better understand communication. And the knowledge I have gained has proven indispensable. In my daily dealings with politicians and other people in positions of power, it always comes down to interpersonal communication.”