Men and Women

I wholeheartedly agree that men and women use language differently. There are so many nuances between the sexes regarding the importance that men place onto the spoken word, while females have a tendency to value the non-verbal communication. I refer to these differences as nuances because I perceive that there is a subtlety to each and every audience or participant. While men tend to value the spoken word, males can also communicate great volumes without speaking a word also. This is my experience from my observations of how my generational males interact. Females on the other hand, tend to value the non-verbal communications slightly higher than they do the verbal. Regardless of whether the females are communicating amongst other females, or with males, an unlearned speaker / listener can oftentimes miscommunicate or misinterpret the meaning to a conversation because they are focusing too heavily on what’s not being said that the spoken word.

Why Listening Sometimes Fails

I found the section on evaluating listening skills of slight amusement but it also struck a personal chord with me. I oftentimes have trouble expressing myself correctly with those closest to me. My fiancé and I have adjusted relatively well to our individual listening and speaking styles, and we are both very patient and understanding. I still think we can improve our communication styles to be better in our thought process before we initiate the conversation, or expand our empathetic understanding of each other so we don’t start an unintended argument. The amusing aspect of this section in the book was when it was describing that Americans are trained to be bad listeners. The book cited examples such as Americans value activity and independence and so our value towards listening is lessened. It was only until the last sentence that the section entertained the thought that the teachers may be reinforcing this bad listening behavior. This was amusing to me as I was wondering if this might be the author’s own bias towards being less critical of oneself and more critical of others.

Judgments and Perceptions

It is within human nature to instantly and on some fundamental and genetic level to judge everything we are exposed to. This harkens back to our evolutionary inheritance of the fight or flight response. Given that perspective, I believe we incapable of not judging on some raw unconscious level. I do believe that we can come to understand our initial reactions and in applying our own experiences and logical thoughts we can control our initial gut reaction. It is through our life experiences, understanding of the world, and appreciation for other people’s thoughts and ideas that we can adjust our initial judgments towards others. Whether these adjustments to our perspective judgments are fair, is purely up to the individual. People in our society who are not following the social norm for how they treat people, or how they react to situations tend to get their behavior altered over time. In short, Society itself has a way of creating this fair and balanced perspective.

Well-Known Speaker

A well-known speaker that resonates within my realm of experience is J.K. Rowling. Mrs. Rowling has nearly unparalleled fortitude and strength of character that she is quite capable of demonstrating through not only her successes but also her failures in her life. Through her Harry Potter series of books, she captured and re-ignited the imagination of thousands of people world-wide. The very boundless impact that her stories had justifies unquestionably to her strength as not only a story-teller, but also as a magician with regards to vision and imagination, but also as an empathetic human of strong moral fiber. Mrs. Rowling also possesses a natural beauty, but this only adds to her already high qualifications as a speaker. Mrs. Rowling has obtained attractiveness and power through her empathy and strength of character, thusly, these areas are that much greater in value than attractiveness or power that is given or bestowed. In my very humble opinion, there is not much more than Mrs. Rowling can do to build her ethos in these areas other than continue on her path of greatness, splendor towards her fellow mankind.

Influential Speakers

A very informational and fundamentally influential speaker that I have had the pleasure to listen to is Sir Ken Robinson. Sir Ken Robinson is renowned as a visionary cultural leader and a creativity expert. Robinson gave a public speech that is available online via Ted.com where he discusses the idea that our educational systems are hindering our children’s creativity. He goes so far as to posit that our educational system is not only hindering, but stifling or even killing our next generation’s creativity before they even begin learning how to become creative. His speech presents very well-reasoned arguments that are undeniable truths inherent with our society’s educational system. When I listened to this speech, I felt both moved by the naked truth presented in his arguments, as well as saddened by this very same revelation. Sir Robinson peppers the listeners with these rough hard truths about how the educational system is failing in their role. After revealing these truths, he does not allow the audience to wallow in this sadness, he tells a joke, or laughs at the apparent idiocy of the situation that, rather than polarizing the audience, actually unifies them in purpose. In contrast, one of the worst speakers I’ve ever heard was a gentleman on the college campus. This gentleman was so vulgar and rough with his words without any consideration of his audience that I can only remember my distaste for him speaking at all.

Chapter 9 Interesting Topic

The section in Chapter 9 that resonated most for me was the Social Characteristic description of Credibility. In this section the book highlights the two subcategories of credibility as: expertness and trustworthiness. Expertness is a speaker who is knowledgeable about a subject while someone who demonstrates concern for the audience’s interests is viewed as trustworthy. These two descriptions resonated most with me as I have a long-time friend who is very good at convincing you that they are an expert on any subject matter, period. I have tried on many different occasions to describe that confidence does not translate well into being a subject matter expert, or being trust-worthy. Where this individual excels is their ability to make you question your own confidence on a subject. They know just enough obscure but relevant facts about a wide breadth of subjects that they can very convincingly talk about these subjects. It is only through careful consideration of evidence, or very concrete examples that the receiver can hold onto their own confidence. This individual is viewed as being very persuasive to most people, who also only have passing knowledge of a subject. Unfortunately, where this individual fails miserably is when the receivers are possess more intimate knowledge of the subject then the speaker does. That’s when the receiver begins to realize that the speaker has zero credibility and any prior perceived expertness or trustworthiness is put into question.

Useful and Interesting Concept from Chapter 2

I think the thing that I found most useful while reading the chapter was that even as critical or judgemental people are of communications they are also just as critical and judgemental of their own analysis methodologies. While reading the text I found myself often distracted by finding logical flaws in each model, and I had to refocus my attention on the text rather than these flaws. In my opinion, each and every model described in the text was narrow enough in focus to fit itself to the communication model. But you cannot define how someone communicates by a logical analysis any better than you can separate out the emotional aspects of the speaker. The speaker is a whole person, logical to an extent, and emotional to some degree, who is shaped by every moment of their existence and perceptions of the world, flawed as they may be. I am not saying that we shouldn't reflect on our speaking methods in an effort to improve on them, just realizing that each model has its flaws. I recognize these flaws in each model, just as these rhetoricians did, and am reassured further through their diligent endeavors to define the undefinable. This is surely an arduous task, one which I am much more confident to in much more capable hands than mine own.

The Pragmatic Perspective

It was very interesting to read about the pragmatic perspective. The sequence of move, reacting counter move, definitely made sense when trying to contextualize a communication model. The crying example in the book very eloquently explained this, simply seeing someone cry doesn’t convey meaning as to why they are crying, you need to understand the context that caused the crying to understand. This communication model made sense in the form of a game whereas both the sender and receiver are interdependent upon the other, with one reacting to the other, and even by not reacting, is still playing the “game”. I think that the pragmatic view differs from a game in that it’s too logical, too ordered. Part of playing a game is that it’s supposed to be fun for both players. The pragmatic view breaks this model when only one person is playing, interacting, or getting anything out of the communication. I disliked the mental state of exclusivity that the pragmatic view fosters. Not only does this perspective typically discount the surroundings, or anything outside of the communication, it also doesn’t seem to include too much insight as to how the communication is affecting the speaker. It seems to focus more on the dyad.