Communication Research

Here's a brief discussion of the most annoying phrases--"Whatever" tops the list. This would make an interesting opening discussion for verbal messages.

In some of my books, I'm integrating much of the material on skills that I once had in boxes. But, some may still prefer the box presentation. This one is on expressiveness. Others are all labeled "Communicaton Strategies: Skill ". Expressiveness is the skill of communicating genuine involvement in the conversation; it entails, for example, taking responsibility for your thoughts and feelings, encouraging expressiveness or openness in others, and providing appropriate feedback. As you can easily appreciate, these are the qualities that make a conversation exciting and satisfying. Expressiveness includes both verbal and nonverbal messages and often involves revealing your emotions and your normally hidden self�bringing in a variety of interpersonal skills noted earlier. Communicating Expressiveness.  Here are a few suggestions for communicating expressiveness. <   Vary your vocal rate, pitch, volume, and rhythm to convey involvement and interest. Vary your language;...

Here's a brief article on the reasons you should run a background check on yourself. All the reasons given are good ones. I would also add one other and that is to learn about yourself, to increase self-awareness. an interesting in-class discussion could easily be centered around what you can learn about yourself from searching the Internet.

In a continuing effort to integrate politeness into my communication textbooks and into communication generally, here is a useful set of guidelines for teaching children proper phone etiquette.

Here's an interesting little piece on complimenting someone that would work well with any unit on conversation in interpersonal communication. It provides 10 ways to tell someone you think he or she is beautiful and would be a great introduction to complimenting in general.

Here's an interesting little article, suggested to me by the site as something readers of this blog would enjoy. I agree. It's a brief article on the 10 love "lessons" that Harlequin Romance novels teach. It should make an excellent discussion starter for interpersonal relationships as well as testing assumptions about love and romance.

Flexibility is a quality of thinking and behaving in which you vary your messages based on the unique situation in which you find yourself. It's one of the essential skills of interpersonal communication. One measure of flexibility asks you to consider how true you believe certain statements are��statements such as �          �People should be frank and spontaneous in conversation� or �          �When angry, a person should say nothing rather than say something he or she will be sorry for later.� The �preferred� answer to all such questions is �sometimes true,� underscoring the importance of flexibility in all interpersonal situations.  As you can appreciate, flexibility is especially important when communicating your feelings, be they positive or negative. It�s especially important in emotional communication because it�s in times of emotional arousal that you�re likely to forget the varied choices y...

Here's a great little article describing the work on software to detect aspects of emotional speech such as deception, friendliness, flirtation, and anger. Would it be great if networks could use this type of software when politicians speak. A split screen with a politician (or financial analyst or news reporter) speaking on one side and the emotional meaning (including deception) on the other would make for a different world.