CLASS NOTES

CHAPTER 3: Communication Principles for Group Members

I. Case Study: Students for Alternative Medicine

a. Who is to blame, in your opinion, for this miscommunication?

II. Communication: What’s That?

a. Communication defined:

b. There are five major characteristics to this definition:

i. Communication is symbolic

1. Symbol defined:

a. Arbitrary

b. No direct relationship

c. Allow us to reference time

d. Can take a variety of forms

ii. Communication is personal

iii. Face-to-face communicating is a transactional process, not a thing or state.

1. Transactional defined:

iv. Communication is a sender and a receiver phenomenon

v. Communication involves content and relationship dimensions

1. Content dimension:

2. Relational dimension:

3. Computer-mediation communication:

a. Do you have any groups in which you’ve used computer-mediated communication?

III. Implications for Small Group Communication

a. Making group communication productive is the responsibility of every member

i. Summary

b. Perfect understanding among group members is impossible

i. Summary

c. Disagreement and conflict are not necessarily signs of a breakdown in communication

i. Summary

IV. Listening: Receiving, Interpreting, and Responding to Messages from Other Group Members

a. Listening defined:

i. Listening requires activity

ii. Effective listening requires

1. Perceiving what the speaker said

2. Interpreting it accurately

3. Responding appropriately

iii. Major factors that influence what words and actions mean to us include our culture, gender, age, sexual orientation, learning style, and personalities

b. Listening preferences

i. Consider your own preference and those of your other group members as you learn these preferences. Where does everybody tend to fall?

ii. Shift your preference to meet the needs of the group where, perhaps, no one falls (see chart on p. 59)

1. People-oriented listeners:

2. Action-oriented listeners:

3. Content-oriented listeners:

4. Time-oriented listeners:

iii. No preference is best, all can be important to group climate and efficiency

c. Habits of Poor Listeners

i. Pseudolistening defined:

1. Fakes active listening

2. The pseudolistener nods, smiles, murmurs, and often looks the speaker in the eye

ii. Silent arguing defined:

1. Forms a quick judgment

2. Silent mental search for arguments

iii. Assuming meaning defined:

1. Interprets through the filter of the receiver’s culture

2. Mind assault defined:

a. Insisting that the listener knows what the speaker meant

b. This behavior attempts to dominate or reject the speaker

c. Stronger form of assuming meaning

iv. Focusing on irrelevancies defined:

1. Some people pay so much attention to dress, word choices, grammar, face or body details, accent or dialect, or things in the environment

v. Sidetracking defined:

1. Starting a new topic

2. Going off on a tangent

vi. Defensive responding defined:

V. Listening Actively

a. Active Listening defined:

i. Active listening is to paraphrase