Communication and Persuasion: Chapters 5 & 6

Communication and Persuasion Overview

• Communication covers Chapter 5, and Persuasion will be in Chapter 6.
• Reading before or after lectures is beneficial and resources are available physically or online via the library.

Today's Topics

• Language rules
• Language and cognition
• Language and culture
• Language and identity
• Nonverbal behaviour
• Conversation and discourse
• Computer-mediated communication

Communication and Persuasion

• Language shapes thought patterns which influence actions based on Bandura's 1999 research
• How people think affects behaviour

Communication Overview

• Communication is the transfer of information from one individual or group to another.
• Communication is the basis of social interaction

Language Definition

• Language comprises sounds (phonemes), structured into meaningful components(morphemes), organized by rules
• Utterances are complete units of speech in spoken language.

Language Rules

• Utterance meaning comes from semantic rules defining the meaning of sounds and words.
• Grammar includes morphological, syntactic, and semantic rules for language production and comprehension.
• Language rules ensure meaningful communication, facilitating the reliable transfer of information between individuals or groups

Pragmatics

• Pragmatics distinguishes between the literal and intended meaning of speech.
• An Irish english example is; "I will, yeah!"

Speech Act Theory - Austin (1962)

• Language is "performative," enabling people to achieve actions.
• People distinguish literal from intended meaning because they determine the actions performed by speech.
• We have the ability to interpret intentions.

Utterance Characteristics

• Locution refers to the unambiguous or literal meaning.
• Illocution is the speech act performed by the utterance.
• Perlocution constitutes the effects of an utterance.
• Indirect language(Searle, 1975) is when what is said does not explicitly state the intended meaning, yet it is understood.

Cooperative Principle

• Effective communication relies on being cooperative when we talk, following certain communication rules.
• Grice's theory of conversational implicature states we adhere to certain rules when communicating.

Grice's Maxims

• Quantity requires contributions with the right amount of information needed.
• Quality says contributions should be truthful.
• Relation contributions should be relevant.
• Manner contributions should be clear, straightforward, and without ambiguity.

Politeness Strategies

• Politeness involves framing conversations to save face of communicators
• Saving "face" maintains our sense of being viewed positively by others.
• Face is caring about value or standing in others' eyes.
• Positive face reflects the desire to be liked.
• Negative face: reflects the not to be bothered
• Threats to face are unpleasant, so utterances help maintain relationships.

Language Culture and Cognition

• Language shapes thought patterns influencing behaviours
• People who speak different languages may see the world differently.
• In cultural frame switching, language is learned influencing thought
• Example: Bilingual studies show culture affecting extraversion scores in English and collectivist and individualistic levels in Chinese

Language and Cognition

• The saying is believing effect is when memory is influenced by what has been said. Meaning, describing someone can affect your memory of them
• Describing a disliked group negatively alters recall and attribute negative associations to the group itself.
• This effect demonstrates the link between language, cognition, and memory.

How we speak relates to who we are

• How language is used is affected by the speaker.
• Factors which are taken to every social interaction are our patterns of behaviour and personality
• How one speaks provides clues to identity, feelings and thoughts.
• Social markers are features of language that convey the characteristics

Making Inferences

• Matched guise technique measures attitudes toward a speaker based on language.
• Experimental settings manipulate participants by asking for them to rate speakers in competence and sociability
• Rapid speech rates are associated with high ratings while long pauses are associated with lower ratings.

Identity and Language

• Language usage provides clues to a person's social status
• Accent marks social status at the phonological level.
• Class variations in accents occur within cultural contexts.
• Accents vary on a prestige continuum, e.g. D4 vs. south inner-city Dublin.
• Received pronunciation is a standard, high status accent.
• Accents deviating from the standard tend to be evaluated less favorably.

Speech Accommodation Theory

• Speech Accommodation Theory states people adapt language to suit the context and can include wanting to be better understood, or wanting to be liked.
• Speech convergence is a style shift toward the listener.
• Speech divergence is where style shifts away from the listener.
• Communication accommodation theory involves people modifying their speech style, and nonverbal behaviours in conversations to suit the context.

Relation to Gender

• Speech pattern differences relate to gender identity.
• Vocal pitch differs greatly in male and female speakers.
• If patterns relate to social, biological, anatomical factors are unknown.
• Women use the register's middle part; men use the lower part.
• A deeper voice is often considered socially desirable and stereotypical for men.
• Japanese study showed women's voices dropping as women's status changes.

Stereotypes

• Language can communicate thoughts about groups or people explicitly or implicitly.
• Lyons and Kashima's (2003) serial transmission experiment demonstrates recall of consistent stereotype information, while inconsistent information disappears.
• Stereotypes in language can describe behaviour in biased ways.

Language Abstraction

• The Linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) describes behaviours at different levels of abstraction.
• As language becomes more abstract, it conveys less about the situation or behavior, but more about the person responsible.
• LIB means ingroup positive and outgroup negative are abstract.
• The opposite is true for in- and outgroup.
• The linguistic expectancy bias is interpersonal version of linguistic intergroup bias, people describe expected behaviors abstractly.

Nonverbal Communication

• Nonverbal communication encompasses everything that communicates a message without using words.
• Social intellect involves inferring emotions, motives, intentions, personality, self.
• Co-verbal behaviour involves nonverbal actions accompanying speech conveying data to a receiver.
• Patterson (1983) states nonverbal behaviour expresses intimacy, establish dominance, facilitate goals, regulate conversation and thoughts.

Patterson (1982) Five Types of Touch

• Touch covers: Professional /Functional
• Social/Polite
• Friendship/Warmth
• Love and Intimacy
• Sexual

Facial Expressions

• Facial expressions can be voluntary or involuntary changes conveying information.
• Display rules govern appropriate expression.

Kinds of Gesture

• Gestures accompany communication.
• Emblems replace or substitute for communication

Interpersonal Distances

• Hall (1966, 1984) defines intimate, personal, social and public distances.
• Intimate is up to 0.5 m
• Personal is between 0.5-1 m
• Social is between 1-4 m
• Public exceeds 4 m

Factors affecting Gaze

• Gaze concerns looking at another person's eyes, for two thirds of communication
• Eye contact/gaze is when two people are looking into each other's eyes.
• Gaze differs based on gender and cultures.

Nonverbal Cues and Influences

• Nonverbal behaviours reflect the presence of others
• There's evidence how nonverbal behaviours influence conversation and are automatic, and can increase/decrease language use.
• Bükeboom's (2009) found nonverbal cues could influence subsequent language used in conversational

Nonverbal Sensitivity and Pathology

• Skilled nonverbal decoders are able to discern other individuals thoughts feelings and intention from their nonverbal behaviours.
• Nonverbal sensitivity increases with age and experience
• Psychopathology can reduce nonverbal behaviour decoding.

Deception

• Motivational impairment effect: the irony for the goal to hide deceit is actually what makes the concealment less effective.

Discourse

• Conversations encompass verbal and nonverbal interactions.
• Back-channeling cues indicate listening.
• Conversation analysis (CA) studies conversation structure/patterns

How to Discourse

• Discourse analysis analyses social psychology through many phenomenons such as relationships and actions
• Discourse covers prejudice or study of crowds.

Rise of the Internet

• CMC stands for communication-mediation-communication, using computer networks.
• Online facilitates anonymous communication and has deindividualisation consequences, acting in groups, not as individuals.

Internet's Affect

• Online, deindividualisation explains the rise of behavior with disclosure and hostile trolling behaviours.
• Also groups in and out of the mainstream can dissemminate propaganda and recruit through online communication

Extremism

• Cyberbullying, harassment are all facilitated by online communication
• Extremists use the internet for opinion, radicalisation of behaviour and recruitment and fundraising