Men/Women communication

I definitely do think that men and women communicate differently. In my quantitative research class last semester we spent almost the entire semester working on a research project and our question was: Do men and women differ in the amount of adjectives used to describe a person/place/event? Well not surprisingly we found that the overwhelming answer was yes! Women tend to use more descriptive terms when describing something. Men are more general and don’t use many adjectives when speaking. I also find women to generally be more sympathetic and emotional during communication while men tend to be more direct while speaking. Men also tend to describe the opposite sex more by using their body image to describe them (i.e she was fat/skinny, short/tall, pretty/ugly etc.) I want to believe this is all stereotypical but after participating in the research study I can say that I do honestly believe women and men speak differently. It comes down to women being more indirect and formal and men being more direct and informal.

Social Construction

I can honestly say that when I started reading this model of communication I was somewhat confused. Culture is such a subjective term that can be applied to many different groups. I do feel that culture is what shapes our communication styles and gives us the 'tools' to communicate effectively. Peoples perception of reality dramatically differs depending on their culture. People in Japan view the world in a complete different way than we do here in the Unites States. Culture enables us to view the world through a filter or a lense. This shapes our perception of reality and our social norms. This perspective does lack in the area of placing much emphasis on the culture rather than the individual. I am apart of the Italian culture but I still have many other outside variables that help shape my communication style. I also feel that communication styles greatly differ depending on the context of the situation. 

Communication Game

I can agree with the pragmatic model of communication. There is a lot in the process of communication that happens within a persons head. Many times there are things that we think about and scenarios we re-play in our heads that happen during communication. At times we think of a message and try to simplify it for our audience or the receivers of our messages. I do think there is a process of encoding and decoding that has to go on when communicating verbally. I do feel like communication is like a game. We play back and forth with individuals and audiences. There can be as little as 2 players and even as many as 100+. There is generally a strategy to communication (just like a game). There can also be 'winners' and 'loosers' in communication. Communication is also like a game because of the way we are faced with challenges. While communicating we have blocks and players...sometimes even on teams! I can also argue that Communication is NOT like a game. We do not necessarily need others to communicate an idea or to express ourselves. If I had to choose a side though I would say that Communication is primarily used like a game and heavily relies on the individual. 

Elements of Communication

A concept that was discussed in the reading that I found really interesting was the Elements of Communication model that was developed by Dell Hymes. This model attempts to explain how different cultures communicate and in which context communication occurs. The model also talks about individual ‘speech communities’. When I started to think about it I realized that I belong to several speech communities. I am a student here at San Jose State so I have the speech community within my peers. I am also apart of a football speech community. Many of us adapt to different speech communities depending on the context of communication so I found that to be an interesting point. The Elements of Communication model was a good example of how to better understand communication by breaking it down in order to make it easier to understand where people come from-especially in an intercultural context. There is an acronym for this model and it is:

S ituations

P articipants

E nds

A ct sequences

K eyes

I unstrumentalities

N orms

G enres

 

This idea of breaking down such a massive process like communication makes understanding this phenomena less challenging for scholars like me. I like the way this model explains the specifics.