Communication - University Lecture Slides PDF

Communication Mia Doolan Chapter 5 of Social Psychology, Sutton & Douglas.  Hello! Mia Doolan o PhD Student (Research) o Supervisor: Dr. Kiran Sarma o Thesis Title: Countering online far-right propaganda targeting migrant communiti...

Communication Mia Doolan Chapter 5 of Social Psychology, Sutton & Douglas.  Hello! Mia Doolan o PhD Student (Research) o Supervisor: Dr. Kiran Sarma o Thesis Title: Countering online far-right propaganda targeting migrant communities – Building a social scientific evidence base. o Research interests: Online radicalisation, extremism, online communication, social movements and subcultures  Communication and Persuasion Chapter 5: Communication (This week) Chapter 6: Persuasion (Next week) Read along before or after lectures (ideally). Available in physical copy or online through the library.  Overview for today Language – rules of language Language and cognition Language and culture Language and identity Nonverbal behaviour Conversation and discourse Computer mediated communication  Weeks 4 & 5 Communication and Persuasion “language shapes thought patterns on which actions are based” (Bandura, 1999 p.195). Language Thoughts Behaviour  Communication – An overview Communication: The transfer of information from one individual to another, or from one group to another. o The heart of social interaction.  Defining language - "building blocks" Language: A set of sounds (phonemes), structured into meaningful components (morphemes), organised according to sets of rules. Utterances: Complete units of speech in spoken language.  The rules of language The meaning of utterances is determined by semantic rules, which determine the meaning of sounds and words. Grammar: Collection of morphological, syntactic and semantic rules that govern the production and comprehension of language. These rules ensure that the language we produce is meaningful to others. o These rules facilitate effective communication – that is, the reliable passing of information on from one person/group to another.  When we don’t mean exactly what we say…. Pragmatics: The distinction between what a speaker's words literally mean, and the speaker's intended meaning. Irish example: o "I will, yeah!"  Speech Act Theory – Austin (1962) Speech Act Theory: Austin (1962) ▪ Language is "performative" o Allows people to perform or achieve actions o Argues that people are able to separate literal from intended meaning because we have the ability to determine the actions performed by speech. ▪ We have the ability to figure out what people intend to say.  Speech Act Theory – Austin (1962) Three characteristics of utterances that enable people to do this: o Locution: The non-ambigious or literal meaning of an utterance. o Illocution: The speech act performed by the utterance. o Perlocution: The unintended effects of an utterance. Indirect language (Searle, 1975): Use of language in which the intended meaning is not stated explicitly yet is commonly understood. How are we able to understand the difference between what is said and what is meant?  The Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975) How are we able to communicate effectively? Grice (1975): Theory of conversational implicature o We are "cooperative" when we talk. ▪ Cooperative Princple o We adhere to certain rules when communicating.  Grice's four maxims of communication The 4 rules or maxims that communicators follow: o Quantity: Contributions to a conversation are the "right amount" - "as informative as required". o Quality: Communicators generally attempt to make contributions that are true, and do not make contributions they know to be false. o Relation: Communicators aim to only say things that are relevant. o Manner: Communicators aim to be clear and straightforward and avoid ambiguity. o Do you break these rules? When? Why?  "I just wanna break the rules." Sometimes we wanna break the rules.  Politeness Politeness: Processes by which communicators frame their conversations in order to save the face of their interlocutors/peers. o Situations where delicacy is required! Saving "face": maintaining a positive sense of how one is viewed by others. Face: People's concern about their value or standing in the eyes of others. Positive face: A person's desire to be well thought of; to be understood, liked, and treated nicely. Negative face: A person's desire to not be bothered, and to go about one's business unimpeded. Threats to face are unpleasant – we orientate our utterances to save the positive or negative face of those we interact with (in order to maintain relationships).  Language, Culture, and Cognition “language shapes thought patterns on which actions are based”. Language has significant power over people's thoughts, which in turn, affect their behaviour. o People who speak different language see the world in different ways. Cultural frame switching: Because languages are learned in different cultural settings, different knowledge structures are learned and this influances thought. Example: Studies on bilinguals. o Spanish and English – Big Five Test – Extraversion scores were higher in English (Ramirez–Esparza et al, 2006). o Chinese and English – Chinese, more collectivistic and more indiviudalistic when answering in English (Wang et al., 2010).  Language and Cognition Saying is believing effect: The tendency for a person's memory of individuals, groups or events to be influenced by what they have said about them. o The act of describing a person or group to an audience directly impacts your memory of the person/group. o When you believe your audience does not like a group, and so you describe a group/person in negative terms and subsequently remember them in a negative way. ▪ The negative mental associations become attributable to the group itself, rather than just what you said about the group. ▪ Saying is believing effect illustrates the link between language and cognition. ▪ How we communicate directly affects our memory.  Language, personality, identity and gender How is “what” we say, and “how” we say it, effected by who we are? We bring many aspects of ourselves to every social interaction/communicative effort. o Our patterns of behaviour/personalities o Our gender identity o Other identity markers which determine what kind of experience we have in the wider social world. How we speak can give clues as to who we are, what we are feeling and what we are thinking. Social markers: Features of language use that convey information about the speaker's characteristics.  Personality How can we make inferences about a speaker's personality based on their use of language? Matched guise technique: used to measure attitudes about a speaker based on the speaker's language use. o Used in experimental settings o Speech characteristics are manipulated, and participants are asked to evaluate the speaker along dimensions such as competence and sociability. ▪ Example: Rapid speech rates are associated with high ratings of competence, trustworthiness and sociability, while long silent pauses are associated with low ratings of competence.  Identity How can language use provide clues to a person's social status? Accent is the most significant indicator of social status at the phonological level. Percieved class variations in accents occur in most cultural contexts. Variations in accents can be ordered on a continuum of prestige. o E.g. D4, vs South inner-city Dublin Received pronunciation: Standard, high status spoken accent. o Accents that deviate from this standard tend to be evaluated less favourably than middle class accents.  Speech accomodation theory Speech Accomodation Theory asserts that people modify their speech style in conversations to suit the context. Our motives for speech accomodation can include wanting to be better understood, or wanting to be liked by our communication partner. Speech convergence: Speech style shift towards that of the listener. Speech divergence: Speech style shift away from that of the listener. Communication accomodaion theory: People modify their speech style and nonverbal behaviours in conversations to suit the context.  Gender How do differences in speech patterns relate to gender identity? Significant differences in vocal pitch of male and female speakers Unknown if this relates to social or biological/anatomical factors. Women use the middle part of the register while men use the lower part. Arguably, it is more socially desirable and stereotypical for men to speak with a "deeper" voice. Evidence that speech register is influanced by gender roles: o Japanese study – women's voices have dropped in recent years, as the socital status of women has changed.  Language and stereotyping Through language, we can communicate what we think about other people or groups. o Explicitly: "She's great!" or "I hate that fella..." o Indirectly: stereotypes (describing behaviour in biased ways) Serial transmission experiment: Lyons and Kashima (2003). o Game of Chinese Whispers o Asked participants to recall stereotype-consistent and inconsistant information. o At the end of the chain, much of the stereotype-inconsistant information had disappeared, while significantly more of the stereotype consistant information survived.  Language abstraction Linguistic intergroup bias (LIB): assumes that behavioural events can be described at different levels of abstraction (e.g. from concrete verbs - "touch", "hit", "hug", to adjectives "violent", "affectionate" and also nouns "aggressor". As language becomes more abstract, it conveys less about the situation and the specific behaviour, conveys more about the characteristics of the person whose actions are described. Linguistic intergroup bias (LIB): The tendency for people to describe ingroup positive and outgroup negative behaviour abtractly, but to describe ingroup negative and outgroup positive behaviours concretely. Linguistic Expectancy bias: Interpersonal version of linguistic intergroup bias, whereby people describe expected behaviours abstractly and unexpected behaviours concretely.  Nonverbal Communication Nonverbal communication: Everything that communicates a message but does not include words. Social intellect: Set of skills involving the ability to infer other people's emotions, motives, intensions and personality, and to communicate the same information about the self. Co-verbal behaviours: Nonverbal behaviours that accompany speech and convey information to a receiver. Patterson (1983): Nonverbal behaviour helps us: o Express intimacy with others o Establish dominance in conversation o Facilitate the achievement of goals o Regulate conversation o Provide information about one's thoughts and feelings  Touch Heslin and Patterson (1982) - five specific types of touch, based on the objectives they are intended to achieve. o Professional/Functional o Social/Polite o Friendship/Warmth o Love and Intimacy o Sexual Gender and cultural differences and touch.  Facial expressions Facial expressions: Voluntary or involuntary changes in the face that convey information for a recipient in a conversation. Display rules: Cultural rules governing the appropriateness of expressing emotions in particular contexts.  Gestures Gestures: Hand and arm movements that accompany verbal communication. Emblems (quotable gestures): Gestures that replace or substitute for verbal communication. See you at 1pm! Communication Mia Doolan Chapter 5 of Social Psychology, Sutton & Douglas.  Welcome back! A quick recap on nonverbal behaviour  Nonverbal Communication Nonverbal communication: Everything that communicates a message but does not include words. Social intellect: Set of skills involving the ability to infer other people's emotions, motives, intensions and personality, and to communicate the same information about the self. Co-verbal behaviours: Nonverbal behaviours that accompany speech and convey information to a receiver. Patterson (1983): Nonverbal behaviour helps us: o Express intimacy with others o Establish dominance in conversation o Facilitate the achievement of goals o Regulate conversation o Provide information about one's thoughts and feelings  Touch Heslin and Patterson (1982) - five specific types of touch, based on the objectives they are intended to achieve. o Professional/Functional o Social/Polite o Friendship/Warmth o Love and Intimacy o Sexual Gender and cultural differences and touch.  Interpersonal distance Hall (1966; 1984): Observed four zones of interpersonal distances o Intimate zone – up to 0.5 m o Personal zone – 0.5-1m o Social distance - 1-4m o Public distance - 4m  Facial expressions Facial expressions: Voluntary or involuntary changes in the face that convey information for a recipient in a conversation. Display rules: Cultural rules governing the appropriateness of expressing emotions in particular contexts.  Gestures Gestures: Hand and arm movements that accompany verbal communication. Emblems (quotable gestures): Gestures that replace or substitute for verbal communication.  Gaze Gaze: Looking at another person's eyes. o During communication, we spend two-thirds of the time looking at the other person's eyes. Eye contact (mutual gaze): When two people are looking at each other's eyes at the same time. There are differences in gaze among different genders and cultures.  Nonverbal communication, self-presentation and influence - Our nonverbal behaviours are influenced by the presence of other people. - Argyle and Dean (1965) - people reach an equilibrium in conversation and maintain it by responding in compensatory ways to any changes in their conversational partner's behaviour. - A lot of our nonverbal behaviour is automatic – however – there is evidence that we have awareness and control over nonverbal expressions. - There is evidence for how our nonverbal behaviours influence others: o Buekeboom (2009) experiment – nonverbal cues from listeners can influence subsequent language use.  Decoding nonverbal behaviour Nonverbal sensitivity: Ability to discern other people's thoughts, feelings and intentions from their nonverbal behaviour. Nonverbal sensitivity improves with age and experience Psychopathology can impede on one's ability to decode nonverbal behaviour.  Nonverbal communication and deception Motivational impairment effect: The ironic tendency for the motivation to hide deceit to make concealing deceit less effective.  Conversation and Discourse Conversations: Interactions between individuals encompassing both verbal and nonverbal communication. Back-channel communication: Cues that let the speaker know that a person is listening Conversation analysis (CA): The study of talk in interactions, which attempts to describe the structure and patterns of conversation.  Discourse analysis - Used to analyise many phenomenon in social psychology: o The role of emotions in relationships and actions ▪ How people call upon emotional states in their personal narratives o Study of prejudice o Study of crowds, collective action and protest  Communication and technology - Communication has been revolutionised by internet technologies. - Computer-mediated-communication (CMC): Communication via the use of computer networks. - The online environment facilitates anonymous communication – and this has its consequences. - Deindividualisation - described as the situation in which individuals act in groups and do not see themselves as individuals. Communication and technology continued Deindividualisation explains a lot of the behaviour we see online o Higher levels of disclosure o Higher levels of hostile (trolling) behaviours are observed online o An opportunity to hate-groups and other extremists to disseminate propaganda and recruit members.  Negative phenomenon in CMC Cyberbullying, stalking, harrassment – faciliated by features of the online environment Extremist use of the internet o Radicalisation ▪ Radicalisation of opinion, radicalisation of behaviour o Recruitment o Fundraising  Next week: Persuasion Chapter 6 of course textbook. Email me with any questions – [email protected] Thank you for listening!