- Personal life and identity: Positive cheerfulmessages from friends, neighbors, or evenstrangers affect our happiness and promoteshealth.

- Civic life: citizens in a democracy must be able toexpress ideas and evaluate the ethical andlogical strength of communication by publicfigures

- Professional Life: 75% of engineers and 71% of human resource professionalssaid that communication skills had consequences for their career advancement.

- Communication is a systemic process inwhich people interact with and throughsymbols to create and interpret meanings.

- Process: it is ongoing and dynamic.

- System: interrelated parts that affect oneanother. A family or a school is a system.An open system affects and is affected byoutside factors and processes.

- Systems seek a state ofequilibrium, or homeostasis. Forexample:

Families create routines

Groups generate norms

Online communities develop conventions

Cultures generate rituals and traditions

- Meanings: The significance we bestow onphenomena, or what they signify to us.

- Content level of meaning contains theliteral message.

- Relationship level of meaning expressesthe relationship between communicators.

- For example: How was your day today?

- Your mother is asking

- Your good friend is asking

- Will your answer vary based onrelationship

- Linear, or Transmission Model: one person actson another person. “Noise” is anything thatinterferes with the intended meaning.

InformationSource Transmitter Receiver Destination

Message Signal ReceivedSignal Message

Sender Message Receiver

- Interactive model: Same model but adds afeedback loop where the receiver gives thesender feedback.

- Transactional Model: Adds the feature oftime and depicts communication asvarying, not constant. Senders andreceivers are now communicators overtime sharing a process within a system orcontext.

- Research: How does communication workor fail to work?

- Education: High school and universityteaching jobs.

- Nonprofit Sector: Police, social workers,nurses, doctors need to communicate withtheir constituency, clients, patients, etc.

- Mass Communication: Journalism,Broadcasting, Public Relations, andAdvertising jobs.

- Training and consulting.

- Human Relations and Management

- Sales and Marketing functions.

- Which model best describes andexplains communication in ourclass?

- Classical Roots: Rhetoric andDemocratic Life

- Art of Rhetoric (born ~ mid-400B.C.E. in Syracuse on the island ofSicily) Corax taught citizens howto develop and presentpersuasive arguments in court.

- Plato (428-348 B.C.E.)wassuspicious of rhetoric because herecognized the possibility ofmisusing rhetoric to manipulateand deceive.

- Liberal Education: Rhetoric wasviewed as a practical art forgiving effective public speecheswas valuable.

- National CommunicationAssociation (NCA), 7000members from 20 countries.Quantitative research orientation.

- International CommunicationAssociation (ICA), 3000 members.Qualitative research orientation.

- Invention: The art of discoveringideas for speaking andarguments, or proofs to supportclaims and increase a speaker’scredibility.

- Organization: The art ofarranging ideas clearly andeffectively to enhance aspeaker’s credibility.

- Style: The art of speaking wellwith grace, clarity, and vitality.

- Memory: The art of familiarizingoneself with the content of one’sspeech so that one’s energiescan be devoted to delivery andinteraction with listeners.

- Delivery: The art of presenting aspeech effectively and credibly.

- Ethos: Is the speaker credible,trustworthy, expert, and goodwilled?

- Pathos: Does the speaker appealto the listeners’ emotions?

- Logos: Does the speaker usecorrect logic and reasoning?

- [Sophists took a differentapproach to rhetoric. .]

- Michel Foucault, Frenchphilosopher in the 1970s, wasconcerned with who is and whois not allowed to speak in asociety.

- Current faculty research andteach about how newtechnologies affect personalrelationships and reshapesocieties, how organizationalcultures and practices affectemployees’ productivity.

- Quantitative Research

- Qualitative Research

- Intrapersonal Communication:Communication with ourselves,or self-talk

- Interpersonal Communication: Acontinuum that ranges fromquite impersonal to highlypersonal interactions.

- Group and TeamCommunications:Decision-making committees,work teams, etc.

- Public Communications: PublicSpeaking, speaking as part of ajob

- Organizational Communications:management, workers, andcompanies communicating.

- Mass Communications: TV,radio, etc.

- Personal and Social Media: Howwill new technologies changehow we think and work and howwe form, sustain, and endrelationships?

- Intercultural Communication: Asmore immigrants arrive inVietnam or Ho Chi Minh City,they bring their cultural valuesand styles of communicating thatare different from long termHCMC residents.

- Symbolic Activities: A smile is asymbol of friendliness.

- Meaning: The human world is aworld of meaning. For example,food symbolizes many things,such as an expression of love orcaring.

- Ethics: What are the moralprinciples or codes of conductwhen communicating?

- What major changes do youanticipate in Vietnam in the next50 years?

- What kinds of changes in thefield of communication might beprompted by the social changesyou anticipate?

- Perception is the active processof selecting, organizing, andinterpreting people, objects,events, situations, and activities.

- Selection—What do you sense?Smell? Hear? See? Touch? Taste?Feel?

- Organization—How do weorganize our perception inmeaning full ways?

- Prototypes: Knowledgestructures that define the clearestand ideal example of somecategory. How do you describeand know a “model worker”?What do you observe or sense?

- Personal Constructs: A mentalyardstick that allows us tomeasure a person or situationalong a bipolar dimension ofjudgment. Examples:Intelligent-not intelligent,kind—not kind, trustworthy-nottrustworthy, etc.

- Stereotypes: Predictivegeneralization about a person orsituation.

- Scripts: A sequence of activitiesthat spells out how we andothers are expected to act in aspecific situation.

- Interpretation is the subjectiveprocess of creating explanationsfor what we observe andexperience.

- Attribution: The act of explainingwhy something happens or whya person acts a certain way.

- Attribution four dimensions:1)Locus-internal vs. external, 2)Stable-stable vs. unstable, 3)Specificity- specific vs. Global, 4)Control-within personal controlvs. beyond personal control.

- Physiological Factors: Tired?Stressed? Sick? Hungry?Intoxicated?

- Expectations—positive versusnegative: “Life is suffering” or“Life is a bowl of cherries!” “Life isrough….if you make it.” (RexKonno, 1995)

- Cognitive Abilities andcomplexity: What is the numberof personal constructs used?How abstract are they? Howelaborately do they interact toshape perceptions?

- Person Centeredness: The abilityto perceive another as a uniqueindividual. What is theirperspective?

- Social Roles: Teacher perceptionvs. student perception, forexample. Also, police person vs.doctor vs. restaurant waiter eachhave a different perception of anevent.

- Membership in Cultures andSocial Communities:

- A culture consists of beliefs,values, understandings, practices,and ways of interpretingexperience that a number ofpeople share.

- A social community is a group ofpeople who are part of an overallsociety but also distinct from theoverall society in that they holdvalues, understandings, andpractices that are not shared bypeople outside the group.

- Avoid Mind Reading

- Check Perceptions with Others

- Distinguish Facts from Inferencesand Judgments: A fact is basedon obervation or proof. Aninferences is a deduction thatgoes beyond what you know orassume to be a fact. A judgmentis a belief or opinion that isbased on observations, feelings,assumptions, or otherphenomena that are not facts.

- Monitor the Self-Serving Bias

- Vietnam is a country.

- People from the small villagesare friendly.

- Students who come to class lateare disrespectful.

- Acid rain can destroy trees.

- Bob did not study for the exam.

- Bob will not do well in college.

- Beer has calories.

- Beer makes you smarter.

- What differences can you identifyin how you communicate withpeople on the phone vs.face-to-face? Vs. Facebook? Vs.e-mail?

- How do physiological factorsaffect your perceptions?

-Gestures, body language,inflection and volume of words,temperature, lighting, objects,etc.

- Nonverbal communication is alsoambiguous, interacts with verbalcommunication.

- Observe a business setting—anoffice or other work context.

- Who has more space? Who hasless?

- Who enters the space of others?Who does not?

- Who touches others?

- Who uses commandinggestures? Who does not?

- (For fun, watch TV program orvideo with the sound turned off.Can you understand what isgoing on? How?)

- Kinesics (face and body motion)

- Haptics (touch)

- Physical appearance

- Olfactics (smell)

- Artifacts (personal objects)

- Proxemics (personal space)

- Environmental Factors

- Chronemics (perception and useof time)

- Paralanguage (vocal qualities)

- Silence

- Describe thefollowing for each restaurant:

- How much space is therebetween tables?

- What kind of lighting is used?

- What sort of music and soundare in the place?

- How comfortable are the chairs?

- What colors and art do you see?

- Can you make any generalizationabout environmental featuresthat promote relaxation andthose that do not?

- Monitor your nonverbalcommunication

-Because of complexity andambiguity, we should not assumewe can interpret it withprecision.

- Think about current genderprescriptions in Vietnam.

- How are these culturalexpectations communicated?

- How might you resist and alterunhealthy cultural genderprescriptions?

- 10 hours of walking in NYC as awoman

- Features of language:

- Arbitrary: The verbal symbols arenot intrinsically related to whatthey represent.

- Ambiguous: Language doe nothave clear cut, precise meanings.

- Abstraction: Words are not theconcrete or tangible phenomenato which they refer.

- Ambiguous Language

- Concrete Language

- Interpretation creates meaning:Interpretation is an active,creative process we use to makesense of experiences.

- Communication is guided byrules, which are sharedunderstandings among membersof a particular social or culturalgroup. There are two types ofrules: regulative and constitutiverules. (see page 76)

- Punctuation affects meaning: It isour perception of wheninteraction begins and ends.

- Regulative

- Constitutive

- Symbols define phenomena. “ Iam white or Caucasian.”

- Symbols evaluate phenomena.“The teacher is hard(unreasonable) or rigorous(challenging).”

- Symbols allow us to organizeexperiences. “Education is good.”

- Symbols allow us to thinkhypothetically. (to plan or dream)

- Symbols allow self-reflection. (“I”vs. social “me)

- Symbols define relationships andinteractions: Responsiveness,Liking, and Power.

- You Language

- I Language

- People use screen names forchat rooms and online forums.

- How do the names people createfor themselves shapeperceptions of their identity?

- What screen names do you use?

- Why did you choose them?