What Is Verbal Communication?  Verbal Communication is simply the sharing of information between individuals through words, spoken or written. Consider how different professions rely on effective verbal communication: Professors Doctors Law Enforcement Insurance Sales Agent

Rules of Verbal Communication  Regulative Regulate interaction by specifying when, how, where, and with who to communicate about certain things.  Constitutive Defines what a particular communication means or stands for. vqo vqo

Features of Language  Ambiguity Doesn’t have clear-cut meanings. ○ Thanksgiving may mean different things to Native Americans and Europeans.  Abstraction Words aren’t the concrete or tangible phenomena to which they refer.  Arbitrariness Verbal symbols are not connected to what they represent.

Language Defines Phenomena  Totalizing - Responding to a person as if one label totally represents that person. “She’s just a nerd.” or “He’s just poor.” Stereotyping & Totalizing are two different aspects. ○ JQIM JQIM

Language Evaluates Phenomena  Reappropriation – Happens when a group reclaims a term used by others to degrade its members, and treats that term as a positive self-description.  Loaded Language – Words that slant perceptions. ○ O6c O6c

Language Organizes Experiences  Words organize our perceptions of events and experiences.  Stereotyping is thinking unreflectively in broad generalizations about a whole class of people or experiences. Stereotypes can be positive or negative. ○ h4 h4

Language Allows Hypothetical Thought  Hypothetical Thought – Thinking about experiences and ideas that are not part of your concrete, daily reality.  Hypothetical thought can enrich personal relationships.  Thinking hypothetically helps us improve who we are. ○ FiI (1:04) FiI

Language Allows Self-Reflection  We use language to reflect on ourselves.  Self-reflection is the foundation of human identity.  The self has 2 aspects: the “I” and the “me”. The “I” responds to the inner needs & desires. The “me” is the socially conscious part of self that monitors & moderates the I

Language Defines Relationships and Interaction  Verbal communication conveys 3 dimensions of relationship level meaning. Responsiveness ○ Liking ○ “I really like this restaurant.” or “I really enjoy spending time with you.” Power ○

Qualify Language  Static Evaluation – An assessment that suggests that something is unchanging. Static evaluations can be both inaccurate and irritating. ○ 2eQ (1:50) 2eQ  Indexing – A technique to remind us that our evaluations apply only to specific times and circumstances.

I-Language & You-Language  I-Language – Identifies the speaker’s or perceiver’s thoughts and feelings.  You-Language – Attributes intentions and motives onto another person. DBLJM DBLJM

Questions  What is verbal communication?  What are the 2 rules of verbal communication?  How many symbolic abilities are there?

PLEASE NOTE: Chapter summarized from information found in: Wood, Julia T. (2014). Communication Mosaics: An Introduction to the Field of Communication. 7 th Edition. Boston, MA: Wadsworth. These student lecture notes provide a brief summary of Wood’s discussion on verbal communication (chapter 4) while providing additional commentary and examples. The information in this slideshow is based on the work (content and organization) of Wood (2014).