1.3 Communication Principles

It’s probably not difficult to get you, as students in a communication class, to see the relevance of communication to your academic lives. At least during this semester, studying communication is important to earn a good grade in the class, right? Beyond the relevance to your grade in this class, I challenge you to try to make explicit connections between this course and courses you have taken before and are currently taking. Then, when you leave this class, I want you to connect the content in future classes back to what you learned here. If you can begin to see these connections now, you can build on the foundational communication skills you learn in here to become a more competent communicator, which will undoubtedly also benefit you as a student.

 

Aside from wanting to earn a good grade in this class, you may also be genuinely interested in becoming a better communicator. If that’s the case, you are in luck because research shows that even people who have poor communication skills can improve a wide range of verbal, nonverbal, and interpersonal communication skills by taking introductory communication courses (Zabava & Wolvin, 1993). Communication skills are also tied to academic success. Poor listening skills were shown to contribute significantly to failure in a person’s first year of college. Also, students who take a communication course report more confidence in their communication abilities, and these students have higher grade point averages and are less likely to drop out of school. Much of what we do in a classroom—whether it is the interpersonal interactions with our classmates and professor, individual or group presentations, or listening—is discussed in this textbook and can be used to build or add to a foundation of good communication skills and knowledge that can carry through to other contexts.

Professional

The National Association of Colleges and Employers has found that employers most desire good communication skills in the college graduates they may hire (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2022). Desired communication skills vary from career to career, but again, this textbook provides a foundation onto which you can build communication skills specific to your major or field of study. Research has shown that introductory communication courses provide important skills necessary for functioning in entry-level jobs, including listening, writing, motivating/persuading, interpersonal skills, informational interviewing, and small-group problem solving (DiSalvo, 1980). Interpersonal communication skills are also highly sought after by potential employers, consistently ranking in the top ten in national surveys (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2010). Poor listening skills, lack of conciseness, and inability to give constructive feedback have been identified as potential communication challenges in professional contexts. Employers appreciate good listening skills and the ability to communicate concisely because efficiency and clarity are often directly tied to productivity and success in terms of profit or task/project completion. Despite the well-documented need for communication skills in the professional world, many students still resist taking communication classes. Perhaps people think they already have good communication skills or can improve their skills on their own. While either of these may be true for some, studying communication can only help. In such a competitive job market, being able to document that you have received communication instruction and training from communication professionals (the faculty in your communication department) can give you the edge needed to stand out from other applicants or employees.

Personal

While many students know from personal experience and from the prevalence of communication counseling on television talk shows and in self-help books that communication forms, maintains, and ends our interpersonal relationships, they do not know the extent to which that occurs. I am certain that when we get to the interpersonal communication chapters in this textbook that you will be intrigued and maybe even excited by the relevance and practicality of the concepts and theories discussed there. My students often remark that they already know from experience much of what’s discussed in the interpersonal unit of the course. While we do learn from experience, until we learn specific vocabulary and develop foundational knowledge of communication concepts and theories, we do not have the tools needed to make sense of these experiences. Just having a vocabulary to name the communication phenomena in our lives increases our ability to consciously alter our communication to achieve our goals, avoid miscommunication, and analyze and learn from our inevitable mistakes. Once we get further into the book, I am sure the personal implications of communication will become very clear.

Civic

The connection between communication and our civic lives is a little more abstract and difficult for students to understand. Many younger people don’t yet have a conception of a “civic” part of their lives because the academic, professional, and personal parts of their lives have so much more daily relevance. Civic engagement refers to working to make a difference in our communities by improving the quality of life of community members; raising awareness about social, cultural, or political issues; or participating in a wide variety of political and nonpolitical processes (Ehrlich, 2000). The civic part of our lives is developed through engagement with the decision making that goes on in our society at the small-group, local, state, regional, national, or international level. Such involvement ranges from serving on a neighborhood advisory board to sending an e-mail to a US senator. Discussions and decisions that affect our communities happen around us all the time, but it takes time and effort to become a part of that process. Doing so, however, allows us to become a part of groups or causes that are meaningful to us, which enables us to work for the common good. This type of civic engagement is crucial to the functioning of a democratic society.

Communication scholars have been aware of the connections between communication and a person’s civic engagement or citizenship for thousands of years. Aristotle, who wrote the first and most influential comprehensive book on communication 2,400 years ago, taught that it is through our voice, our ability to communicate, that we engage with the world around us, participate in our society, and become a “virtuous citizen.” It is a well-established and unfortunate fact that younger people, between the ages of eighteen and thirty, are some of the least politically active and engaged members of our democracy. Civic engagement includes but goes beyond political engagement, which includes things like choosing a political party or advocating for a presidential candidate. Although younger people have tended not to be as politically engaged as other age groups, the current generation of sixteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds, known as the millennial generation, is known to be very engaged in volunteerism and community service. In addition, some research has indicated that college students are eager for civic engagement but are not finding the resources they need on their campuses (Jaschik, 2012). The American Association of Colleges and Universities has launched several initiatives and compiled many resources for students and faculty regarding civic engagement. I encourage you to explore their website at the following link and try to identify some ways in which you can productively integrate what you are learning in this class into a civic context: http://www.aacu.org/resources/civicengagement.

Communication Meets Needs

Physical needs include needs that keep our bodies and minds functioning. Communication, which we most often associate with our brain, mouth, eyes, and ears, actually has many more connections to and effects on our physical body and well-being. At the most basic level, communication can alert others that our physical needs are not being met. Even babies cry when they are hungry or sick to alert their caregiver of these physical needs. Asking a friend if you can stay at their house because you got evicted or kicked out of your own place will help you meet your physical need for shelter. There are also strong ties between the social function of communication and our physical and psychological health. Human beings are social creatures, which makes communication important for our survival. In fact, prolonged isolation has been shown to severely damage a human (Williams & Zadro, 2001). Aside from surviving, communication skills can also help us thrive. People with good interpersonal communication skills are better able to adapt to stress and have less depression and anxiety (Hargie, 2011). Communication can also be therapeutic, which can lessen or prevent physical problems. A research study found that spouses of suicide or accidental death victims who did not communicate about the death with their friends were more likely to have health problems such as weight change and headaches than those who did talk with friends (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006). Satisfying physical needs is essential for our physical functioning and survival. But, in order to socially function and thrive, we must also meet instrumental, relational, and identity needs.

Instrumental Needs

Instrumental needs include needs that help us get things done in our day-to-day lives and achieve short- and long-term goals. We all have short- and long-term goals that we work on every day. Fulfilling these goals is an ongoing communicative task, which means we spend much of our time communicating for instrumental needs. Some common instrumental needs include influencing others, getting information we need, or getting support (Burleson, Metts, & Kirch, 2000). In short, communication that meets our instrumental needs helps us “get things done.”

To meet instrumental needs, we often use communication strategically. Politicians, parents, bosses, and friends use communication to influence others in order to accomplish goals and meet needs. There is a research area within communication that examines compliance-gaining communication, or communication aimed at getting people to do something or act in a particular way (Gass & Seiter, 1999). Compliance gaining and communicating for instrumental needs is different from coercion, which forces or manipulates people into doing what you want. In Section 1.3: “Communication Principles,” we will discuss communication ethics and learn that open communication, free from constraint and pressure, is an important part of an ethical society. Compliance-gaining communication is different from persuasion, which you can learn more about by taking a persuasive communication course.

Relational Needs

Relational needs include needs that help us maintain social bonds and interpersonal relationships. Communicating to fill our instrumental needs helps us function on many levels, but communicating for relational needs helps us achieve the social relating that is an essential part of being human. Communication meets our relational needs by giving us a tool through which to develop, maintain, and end relationships. In order to develop a relationship, we may use nonverbal communication to assess whether someone is interested in talking to us or not, then use verbal communication to strike up a conversation. Then, through the mutual process of self-disclosure, a relationship forms over time. Once formed, we need to maintain a relationship, so we use communication to express our continued liking of someone. We can verbally say things like “You’re such a great friend” or engage in behaviors that communicate our investment in the relationship, like organizing a birthday party. Although our relationships vary in terms of closeness and intimacy, all individuals have relational needs and all relationships require maintenance. Finally, communication or the lack of it helps us end relationships. We may communicate our deteriorating commitment to a relationship by avoiding communication with someone, verbally criticizing him or her, or explicitly ending a relationship. From spending time together, to checking in with relational partners by text, social media, or face-to-face, to celebrating accomplishments, to providing support during difficult times, communication forms the building blocks of our relationships. Communicating for relational needs isn’t always positive though. Some people’s “relational needs” are negative, unethical, or even illegal. Although we may feel the “need” to be passive aggressive or controlling, these communicative patterns are not positive and can hurt our relationships.

Identity Needs

Identity needs include our need to present ourselves to others and be thought of in particular and desired ways. What adjectives would you use to describe yourself? Are you funny, smart, loyal, or quirky? Your answer isn’t just based on who you think you are, since much of how we think of ourselves is based on our communication with other people. Our identity changes as we progress through life, but communication is the primary means of establishing our identity and fulfilling our identity needs. Communication allows us to present ourselves to others in particular ways. Just as many companies, celebrities, and politicians create a public image, we desire to present different faces in different contexts. The influential scholar Erving Goffman compared self-presentation to a performance and suggested we all perform different roles in different contexts (Goffman, 1959). Indeed, competent communicators can successfully manage how others perceive them by adapting to situations and contexts. A parent may perform the role of stern head of household, supportive shoulder to cry on, or hip and culturally aware friend based on the situation they are in with their child. A newly hired employee may initially perform the role of motivated and agreeable coworker but later perform more leadership behaviors after being promoted. We will learn more about the different faces we present to the world and how we develop our self-concepts through interactions with others in Chapter 2: “Communication and Perception”.

Communication Is a Process

Most people are born with the capacity and ability to communicate, but everyone communicates differently. This is because communication is learned rather than innate. As we have already seen, communication patterns are relative to the context and culture in which one is communicating, and many cultures have distinct languages consisting of symbols.

A key principle of communication is that it is symbolic. Communication is symbolic in that the words that make up our language systems do not directly correspond to something in reality. Instead, they stand in for or symbolize something. The fact that communication varies so much among people, contexts, and cultures illustrates the principle that meaning is not inherent in the words we use. For example, let’s say you go to France on vacation and see the word poisson on the menu. Unless you know how to read French, you will not know that the symbol is the same as the English symbol fish. Those two words don’t look the same at all, yet they symbolize the same object. If you went by how the word looks alone, you might think that the French word for fish is more like the English word poison and avoid choosing that for your dinner. Putting a picture of a fish on a menu would definitely help a foreign tourist understand what they are ordering, since the picture is an actual representation of the object rather than a symbol for it.

All symbolic communication is learned, negotiated, and dynamic. We know that the letters b-o-o-k refer to a bound object with multiple written pages. We also know that the letters t-r-u-c-k refer to a vehicle with a bed in the back for hauling things. But if we learned in school that the letters t-r-u-c-k referred to a bound object with written pages and b-o-o-k referred to a vehicle with a bed in the back, then that would make just as much sense, because the letters don’t actually refer to the object and the word itself only has the meaning that we assign to it. We will learn more, in Chapter 7: “Verbal Communication”, about how language works, but communication is more than the words we use.

We are all socialized into different languages, but we also speak different “languages” based on the situation we are in. For example, in some cultures it is considered inappropriate to talk about family or health issues in public, but it wouldn’t be odd to overhear people in a small town grocery store in the United States talking about their children or their upcoming surgery. There are some communication patterns shared by very large numbers of people and some that are particular to a dyad—best friends, for example, who have their own inside terminology and expressions that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. These examples aren’t on the same scale as differing languages, but they still indicate that communication is learned. They also illustrate how rules and norms influence how we communicate.

Communication Helps Us Construct Our Realities

As communication theorist John Stewart has said, “Humans live in worlds of meaning, and communication is the process of collaboratively making these meanings” (Stewart & Logan, 1998, p. 7). While many of us might suggest that we live in worlds of tangible objects (i.e., mountains, houses, cars, etc.), Stewart and other social constructionist theorists argue that while physical objects certainly do exist in our world (a fact), and that some patterns of objects also exist (laws of nature), how we, as humans, make sense of these objects is through the intersubjective process of communication.

Most of us would agree that we use language to describe our realities. For example, we are using language as a symbolic means for describing theories of social constructionism. However, if we really stop and think about it for a moment, without language, we have no way of knowing or understanding our realities. Social constructionists argue that it is through language and other forms of communication that we come to know our realities. Therefore, verbal and nonverbal communication become the means by which we literally construct our realities. It is important to note, however, that acceptance of social construction theories does not, at the same time, require us to acknowledge that all reality is subjective. Rather, one may accept the assumption of an observable, objective world but, “simultaneously separate the construction of knowledge systems, or the way one communicates about the world, from the experience itself” (Gergen, 1994, p. 202).

A good way to understand the theory of social constructionism is to see how power is socially constructed. Power is neither positive nor negative. Power and the inequities of power are natural outcomes of people interacting with one another and may even be productive in human systems. Antonio Gramsci (1971) was one of the first theorists to use the term hegemony, which refers to the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class which manipulates the culture of that society–its beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and so forth–so that the imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm. Gramsci saw hegemony as the multiple systems of rules, normal routines, standard operating procedures, and our individual ways of communicating with each other, all of which then control or largely determine the way way we behave without us even being self-aware of the influence. Power is hegemonic when no one notices it but everyone complies with it, nonetheless. Rules, operating procedures, and “normal” ways of doing things are often labeled as “just the way it is” or “for the good of all” but really often serve to keep the powerful in power.

We all willingly participate in systems of hegemony and do so through and because of our communicative practices. Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1984) expands our understanding of hegemony by considering how our everyday practices reinforce power. According to Bourdieu, the rules of communication and behavior change according to different fields. A field is a distinct social environment with its own rules, knowledge, and forms of capital. What is considered socially acceptable or valuable may differ from one field to another. Career fields such as medicine, law, education, business, etc. would each count as different fields. Other contexts such as family, specific friend groups, even specific work locations change the field. Bourdieu argues that our habitus is our feel for the game that allows for the successful navigation of social environments. Even though raising your hand to ask a question is a legitimate nonverbal signal in a classroom, you instinctually know not to perform that action when entering a conversation among a small group of friends. The rules changed from one field to another, and your habitus allowed you to adapt to that new set of expectations. Most of the communicative rules are never articulated. Doxa is a term for that which goes without saying. If a social practice is endorsed by enough people, then individuals tend to follow the practice and simply take it for granted. Returning to the raising hands example, it is doxa that if someone in a classroom raises a hand, everyone in the room expects the instructor to respond and acknowledge the student raising a hand in some way. Perhaps you have been in a classroom where that didn’t happen. Imagine that hand being held up long past when it becomes awkward, still with the instructor not pausing or acknowledging the student. Most people in the room would see this as a rule violation. Another student might speak up and try to get the instructor’s attention or wave a hand to bring attention to the original raised hand. We adopt many nonverbal practices to help us signal the rules of communication to one another. These rules become doxa by being socially constructed and reinforced. The last concept from Bourdieu that helps us better understand communication rules is capital. For Bourdieu, capital is value forming the foundation of social life and dictating one’s position within the social order. Capital comes in three primary forms: material, social, and cultural. Examples of material capital include money and physical resources. Social capital comes from reputation, titles, and social standing. Cultural capital comes from skills, tastes, posture, clothing, mannerisms, belongings, credentials, and talents. Your capital has value within a field but may not transfer to another. For example, the ability to sing well might be valuable among auditioning performers but less influential with a group of soccer players. Your expectation for how communication rules should be followed in a given context might have more or less influence on the rest of the group, depending on what capital you hold and what is valued within that specific field. For example, capital can be embodied with accents, dialect, and attractiveness. It can be objectified, such as with luxury cars or expensive collectibles. It can also be institutionalized such as with academic degrees.

What all this has to do with you is that one of the primary objectives in this class is to make you more self-aware of communication. The next section will focus on how we grow as more competent communicators. The first big step in communicating better is understanding how communication works. The more you begin to see the silent rules of communication that we all follow, the better you can adapt to different contexts and situations. Set a goal to begin seeing your habitus more deliberately. Power is a product of our communication and can only happen between people. It is constantly changing and has the potential to evolve over time. If power, relationships, and communication are conceived of and enacted differently, reality can and will be different for all of us. We can have a positive influence in our environment. This is the essence of seeing the world as socially constructed.