Communication: Language and Social Interaction

Communication and Persuasion

• Chapter 5 focuses on communication, while Chapter 6 will cover persuasion.
• Reading before or after lectures allows for a more thorough learning experience.
• Physical and online copies are available through the library.

Overview of Topics

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

Communication and Thought

• Language shapes thought patterns, which influences actions.
• This concept is supported by Bandura's research in 1999.

Communication Overview

• Communication is the transfer of information between individuals or groups.
• Core to social interaction.

Language Defined

• Language is defined as a system of sounds (phonemes) structured into meaningful components (morphemes).
• These components are organized by rules.
• Utterances are complete units of speech in spoken language.

Language Rules

• The meaning of utterances derives from semantic rules, which determine the meanings of sounds and words.
• Grammar is a collection of morphological, syntactic, and semantic rules.
• These rules govern language production and comprehension.
• Rules ensure our language is meaningful and facilitates the reliable passing of information.

Pragmatics

• Pragmatics involves understanding a speaker's intended meaning, which may differ from the literal meaning of their words.
• Example: "I will, yeah!"

Speech Act Theory

• Austin's Speech Act Theory (1962) defines language as performative, enabling action.
• People can separate literal and intended meaning to determine actions performed by speech.
• There is the capability to discern a speaker's intent.

Utterance Characteristics from Speech Act Theory

• Locution pertains to the literal meaning of an utterance.
• Illocution refers to the speech act performed by the utterance.
• Perlocution describes the unintended effects of an utterance.
• Searle (1975) highlights indirect language, where the intended meaning isn't explicit but understood.

The Cooperative Principle

• Grice's Cooperative Principle (1975) explores effective communication
• Theory of conversational implicature explains people are generally "cooperative" when communication.
• Adherence to certain rules is key.

Grice's Maxims of Communication

• Quantity: Contributions should be as informative as required, providing the right amount of detail
• Quality: Contributions should be genuine, avoiding known falsehoods.
• Relation: Only say things that are relevant to the conversation
• Manner: Communication should be clear, straightforward, and avoid ambiguity.

Politeness

• Politeness involves communicators framing conversations to save the face of their conversational partners.
• Saving face maintains a positive sense of how one is viewed.
• Face reflects people's concern about how they appear to others.
• Positive face is the desire to be well-regarded and treated nicely
• Negative face is the desire not to be bothered and to act unimpeded.
• Threats to face are unpleasant, prompting efforts to save the positive/negative face to maintain relationships.

Language Culture and Cognition

• Language is a shaper of thought patterns that drive actions.
• Language influences thoughts, affecting behavior.
• Speakers of different languages may perceive the world differently.
• Cultural frame switching involves adjusting knowledge structures based on different language-learning environments,.
• Bilingual studies show:
  • Spanish/English speakers show higher extraversion scores in English.
  • Chinese/English speakers can be more collectivistic when answering in Chinese

Language and Cognition

• Saying is believing effect: Memory of things is altered based on what has has been said.
• Memory impact results from describing someone or a group to an audience, directly affecting memory.
• Communication directly affects our memory.

Language and Identity

• The way language is used is impacted by identity.
• Many aspects of ourselves are brought to every social interaction.
• Patterns of behavior, personality, and gender identity play key roles.
• Social markers are features of language use that convey information about the speaker's characteristics

Personality

• Personality inferences are made from speaker language use
• The matched guise technique measures attitudes toward a speaker based on their language use.
• Speech characteristics are manipulated and assessed through a experimental settings.
• Participants evaluate along competence and sociability dimensions.
• Rapid speech gets high ratings of competence while long pauses lead to sociability and competence

Identity

• Language reveals social status.
• Accent is an indicator of social Status.
• Class perceptions in accents vary across cultures.
• Accent variations are ranked by prestige.
• Received pronunciation is a standard, high-status accent.
• Non-Standard accents evaluated less favorably.

Speech Accommodation Theory

• People adapt speech in conversations to suit the context.
• Motives include wanting to be understood and liked.
• Speech convergence: Speech style shifts towards that of the listener.
• Speech divergence: Speech style shifts away from that of the listener.
• People shift speech and nonverbal behaviors to fit the context

Gender in Speech Patterns

• Differences in speech patterns related to gender identity, particularly vocal pitch.
• If that relates to anatomy or social factors is unknown
• Women tend to use the middle part of their vocal register, while men use the lower part.
• A deeper voice for men is more socially desirable.
• A Japanese study showed women's voices dropped due to societal role changes.

Language and Stereotyping

• Language communicates thoughts about people and groups explicitly or via behavior descriptions.
• Lyons and Kashima (2003) show during Serial transmission experiments.
• In Chinese Whispers stereotype-consistent information lasts, while inconsiststant diminishes.

Language Abstraction

• Linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) describes events at different abstraction levels from concrete verbs to nouns.
• Increasingly abstract language indicates less about the situation.
• It says more about a persons actions that are being described.

Nonverbal Communication

• Nonverbal communication includes anything that conveys a message without words.
• Social intellect involves understanding/communicating emotions, motives, intentions, and personality.
• Co-verbal behaviors are nonverbal cues accompanying speech.
• Patterson (1983) lists these benefits: establishing intimacy, dominance, achieving goals, regulating conversation, sharing thoughts/feelings.

Touch

• Heslin and Patterson (1982) classify touch in five intentions:
  • Professional/Functional
  • Social/Polite
  • Friendship/Warmth
  • Love and Intimacy
  • Sexual

Interpersonal Distance

• Hall (1966; 1984) created four interpersonal distance zones:
  • Intimate (up to 0.5m),
  • Personal (0.5-1m)
  • Social (1-4m)
  • Public (over 4m)

Facial Expressions

• The face shifts to offer communications.
• Display rules manage emotion expression.

Gestures

• Hand motions that go with communication.
• Emblems replace language.

Gaze

• Looking at another person.
• During conversations, two-thirds the time is spent on this.
• Mutual gaze is when both partys do this.
• Varies on culture or gender.

Nonverbal Communication, Self-Presentation and Influence

• The presence of other people influences nonverbal behavior.
• Argle and Dean (1965) say People create conversational equality
• Compensation leads too shifts in partner behaviour.
• A lot of the nonverbal behavior is not thought through
• People are both aware and in control to and extent
• Buekekoom (2009) is an example

Decoding Nonverbal Behaviour

• The capacity for nonverbal sensitivity in behaviour
• This improves with age and wisdom
• Ailments can hurt decode of these behaviours

Nonverbal Communication and Deception

• Motivation to hide deceit makes conceiving deceit more effective.
• This is the Motivational impairment effect.

Conversation and Discourse

• Conversations blend both verbal and nonverbal communication.
• Back-channel communication are cues that show when someone is listening.
• Conversation analysis (CA) studies talked about the structure.

Discourse Analysis and Psychology

• Discourse analysis is used in psychology areas.
• Emotions in relationships as well as actions
• Also peoples emotional states
• Can provide better studies of prejudice
• Better studies in general of crowds

Communication and Technology

• The internet changed methods of communication.
• Now communication runs through computer systems.(CMC)
• Online communication became easier
• CMC and technology is used for communication.
• The internet changed methods of communication.
• Online communication became easier
• The use of anonimity has some affects.
• Deindividualisation is a concept that explains individual acts while in a group and do see themselves as individuals.

Technological De-Individualisation Effects

• Occurs with disclosure.
• Can lead leads to increased hate.
• Propaganda and recruitment can be easier.

CMC Negatives

• Bad: Cyberbullying and stalking.
• Extremist groups: radicalisation.