Most annoying phrases

Here's a brief discussion of the most annoying phrases--"Whatever" tops the list. This would make an interesting opening discussion for verbal messages.

Communication Strategies: Expressiveness

In some of my books, I'm integrating much of the material on skills that I once had in boxes. But, some may still prefer the box presentation. This one is on expressiveness. Others are all labeled "Communicaton Strategies: Skill".

Expressiveness is the skill of communicating genuine involvement in the conversation; it entails, for example, taking responsibility for your thoughts and feelings, encouraging expressiveness or openness in others, and providing appropriate feedback. As you can easily appreciate, these are the qualities that make a conversation exciting and satisfying. Expressiveness includes both verbal and nonverbal messages and often involves revealing your emotions and your normally hidden self—bringing in a variety of interpersonal skills noted earlier.

Communicating Expressiveness. Here are a few suggestions for communicating expressiveness.

<  Vary your vocal rate, pitch, volume, and rhythm to convey involvement and interest. Vary your language; avoid clichés and trite expressions, which signal a lack of originality and personal involvement.

<  Use appropriate gestures, especially gestures that focus on the other person rather than yourself. Maintain eye contact and lean toward the person; at the same time, avoid self-touching gestures or directing your eyes to others in the room.

<  Give verbal and nonverbal feedback to show that you’re listening. Such feedback promotes relationship satisfaction.

<  Smile. Your smile is probably your most expressive feature and it will likely be much appreciated.

<  Communicate expressiveness in ways that are culturally sensitive. Some cultures (Italian, for example) encourage expressiveness and teach children to be expressive. Other cultures (Japanese and Thai, for example) encourage a more reserved response style. Some cultures (Arab and many Asian cultures, for example) consider expressiveness by women in business settings to be inappropriate; in other cultures it would be inappropriate for women not to be expressive.

Self-Awareness

Here's a brief article on the reasons you should run a background check on yourself. All the reasons given are good ones. I would also add one other and that is to learn about yourself, to increase self-awareness. an interesting in-class discussion could easily be centered around what you can learn about yourself from searching the Internet.

Politeness on the phone

In a continuing effort to integrate politeness into my communication textbooks and into communication generally, here is a useful set of guidelines for teaching children proper phone etiquette.

The Compliment

Here's an interesting little piece on complimenting someone that would work well with any unit on conversation in interpersonal communication. It provides 10 ways to tell someone you think he or she is beautiful and would be a great introduction to complimenting in general.

Romance Lessons

Here's an interesting little article, suggested to me by the site as something readers of this blog would enjoy. I agree. It's a brief article on the 10 love "lessons" that Harlequin Romance novels teach. It should make an excellent discussion starter for interpersonal relationships as well as testing assumptions about love and romance.

Communication Strategies: Flexibility

Flexibility is a quality of thinking and behaving in which you vary your messages based on the unique situation in which you find yourself. It's one of the essential skills of interpersonal communication.
One measure of flexibility asks you to consider how true you believe certain statements are——statements such as

·         “People should be frank and spontaneous in conversation” or

·         “When angry, a person should say nothing rather than say something he or she will be sorry for later.”

The “preferred” answer to all such questions is “sometimes true,” underscoring the importance of flexibility in all interpersonal situations. 

As you can appreciate, flexibility is especially important when communicating your feelings, be they positive or negative. It’s especially important in emotional communication because it’s in times of emotional arousal that you’re likely to forget the varied choices you have available. And of course this is exactly the time when you need to consider your choices. The greater your flexibility, the more likely you’ll be to see the varied choices you do have for communicating in any situation.

Increasing Flexibility. Here are a few ways to cultivate interpersonal flexibility.

<  Realize that no two situations or people are exactly alike; consider what is different about this situation or person and take these differences into consideration as you construct your messages.

<  Recognize that communication always takes place in a context; discover what that unique context is and ask yourself how it might influence your messages. Communicating bad news during a joyous celebration, for example, needs to be handled quite differently from communicating good news.

<  Become aware of the constant change in people and in things. Everything is in a state of flux. Even if the way you communicated last month was effective, that doesn’t mean it will be effective today or tomorrow. Realize too that sudden changes (the death of a lover or a serious illness) will influence what are and what are not appropriate messages.

<  Appreciate the fact that every situation offers you different options for communicating. Consider these options and try to predict the effects each option might have.

Emotional speech

Here's a great little article describing the work on software to detect aspects of emotional speech such as deception, friendliness, flirtation, and anger. Would it be great if networks could use this type of software when politicians speak. A split screen with a politician (or financial analyst or news reporter) speaking on one side and the emotional meaning (including deception) on the other would make for a different world.