Speech Communication Strategies

• Covers strategies in various speech situations.
• Key topics include types of speech context and style, speech acts, and communicative strategies.

Types of Speech Context

• Intrapersonal communication centers on one person, where the speaker is both sender and receiver.
• The message involves thoughts and feelings, processed by the brain.
• Meditation is silencing internal monologue to experience other types of consciousness.
• Reading is the process of reading to oneself.
• Imagination involves seeing beyond current realities to invent elements that don't yet exist.
• Interpersonal communication occurs between and among people, establishing personal relationships.
• Solomon and Theiss (2013) highlight that interpersonal communication connects people, emphasizing the importance of unique qualities during communication.
• Dyad communication occurs between two people.
• An example of dyad communication is offering feedback on a classmate's speech or comforting a friend.
• Small group communication involves 3-12 people in a face-to-face interaction to achieve a goal.
• Participation in an organizational meeting or discussing tasks with group mates are examples of small group communication.
• Public communication requires delivering a message before a group.
• Messages can be for informational or persuasive purposes.
• A graduation speech or participation in declamation are examples of public communication.
• Mass communication takes place through media like television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, billboards, and the internet.
• Serving as a student journalist articulating an opinion in a school newspaper is an example of mass communication.
• Context dictates and influences how people communicate, resulting in speech styles.
• According to Joos (1968), there are five speech styles, dictating appropriate language use.

Speech Styles

• Intimate style is private, occurring between close family or individuals, using language not shared in public.
• Casual style is common among peers and friends, using jargon, slang, or vernacular language.
• Consultative style is the standard, requiring professional or mutually acceptable language, such as between teachers and students.
• Formal style is used in formal settings, unlike consultative, and is one-way, exemplified by a sermon by a priest.
• Frozen style is unchanging, occurring in ceremonies, like the Preamble to the Constitution and Allegiance to the flag.

Speech Act

• A speech act is an utterance intended to achieve a specific effect, such as apology, greeting, request, or refusal, using one word or several.
• According to J. L. Austin (1962), every utterance includes three types of acts.
• Locutionary act is the actual act of uttering a statement, like "Please do the dishes."
• Illocutionary act is the social function of the statement, such as requesting someone to wash the dishes.
• Perlocutionary act is the resulting act, where "Please do the dishes" leads to the addressee washing them.
• Indirect speech acts occur when there's no direct connection between the utterance and the intended meaning, differing in force from the inferred speech act.
• The utterance "Can you pass the rice?" is an indirect request to pass the rice.
• Performatives are statements that enable the speaker to perform something by stating it.
• Utterances by the right person under the right circumstances result in a change.
• Verbs that excuse the speech act they tend to effect are called performatives.
• Uttering, "I now pronounce you husband and wife" by an authorized priest has the effect of binding a couple in marriage.
• Searles classifications of speech act are assertive, directive, commissive, expressive and declaration.
• Assertive conveys belief about the truth
• Directive makes the addressee perform an action
• Commisive commits the speaker to do something in the future
• Expressive conveys his/her feelings or emotional reactions
• Declaration brings a change in the external situation
• Speech acts include concrete life interactions, requiring appropriate language use within a culture, with communicative competence essential for understanding nuances.

Communicative strategy

• It is essential to know that people communicate daily to maintain relationships, understand themselves, and find meaning.
• Successful communication requires understanding of the relationship between words, speech acts and sentences.
• Strategies must be used to start and maintain conversation (Cohen, 1990).
• Knowing and applying grammar appropriately is a basic strategy to maintain a conversation.
• Nomination collaboratively establishes a topic, opening it for others to engage.
• Restriction refers to limitations speakers may have, with specific instructions confining the speaker.
• Turn-taking involves deciding who speaks, to give all communicators a chance.
• Speakers should keep their words relevant and polite.
• Topic control covers how procedural formality affects the development of topics in conversations
• Topic shifting involves moving from one topic to another.
• Repair addresses problems in speaking, listening, and comprehending during a conversation.
• Termination involves initiating expressions that close a topic, often signaled by the topic initiator.