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Language (Language Reflects Attitudes (POWER (Communication researchers…
Language
Language Reflects Attitudes
Feelings of control, attraction, commitment, responsibility—all these and more are reflected in the way we use language.
POWER
Communication researchers have identified a number of language pat- terns that add to, or detract from, a speaker’s ability to influence others, as well as reflecting how a speaker feels about his or her degree of control over a situa- tion.
AFFILIATION
communicators who want to show affiliation with one another adapt their speech in a variety of ways, including their choice of vocabulary, rate of talking, number and place- ment of pauses, and level of politeness.
ATTRACTION AND INTEREST
Even when peo- ple are reluctant to speak candidly,the language they use can suggest their degree of interest and attraction toward a person, object, or idea.
RESPONSIBILITY
In addition to suggesting liking and importance, language can reveal the speaker’s willingness to accept responsibility for a message.
Gender and Language
Some theorists and researchers, though, have argued that there are significant differences between the way men and women speak, whereas others have argued that any differences are not significant.
Content
Although there is a great deal of variation within each gender, on the average, men and women discuss a surprisingly different range of topics.
Female friends spent much more time discussing personal and domestic subjects, relationship problems,family,health and reproductive matters,weight,food and clothing,men, and other women.
Men,on the other hand,were more likely to discuss music,cur- rent events, sports, business, and other men.
Both men and women were equally likely to discuss personal appearance, sex, and dating in same-sex conversations.
Reasons for Communicating
Research shows that the notion that men and women communicate in dramatically different ways is exaggerated.
men are more likely than women to emphasize making conversa- tion fun.Their discussions involve a greater amount of joking and good-natured teasing.
women’s con- versations focus more frequently on feelings,relationships, and personal problems.
Conversational Style
Women behave differently in conversations than do men.
For example, women ask more questions in mixed-sex conversations than do men—nearly
three times as many, according to one study. Other research has revealed that in mixed-sex conversations, men interrupt women far more than the other way around.
Nongender Variables
Despite the differences in the ways men and women speak, the link between gender and language use isn’t as clear-cut as it might seem.
here is no significant difference between male speech and female speech in areas such as use of pro- fanity, use of qualifiers such as “I guess” or “This is just my opinion,” tag ques- tions, and vocal fluency.
All this information suggests that, when it comes to communicating,“mas- culinity” and “femininity” are culturally recognized sex roles, not biological traits.
The Language of Misunderstandings
The most obvious kind of language problems are semantic:We simply don’t un- derstand others completely or accurately
EQUIVOCAL LANGUAGE
Equivocal words have more than one correct dic- tionary definition.Some equivocal misunderstandings are simple,at least after they are exposed.
RELATIVE WORDS
Relative words gain their meaning by comparison. For example, is the school you attend large or small? This depends on what you compare it to
SLANG AND JARGON
Slang is language used by a group of people whose members belong to a similar co-culture or other group.
Almost everyone uses some sort of jargon: the specialized vocabulary that functions as a kind of shorthand by people with common backgrounds and experience.
Disruptive Language
Not all linguistic problems come from misunderstandings. Sometimes people understand one another perfectly and still end up in conflict.
CONFUSING FACTS AND OPINIONS
Factual statements are claims that can be verified as true or false.
opinion statements are based on the speaker’s beliefs.
CONFUSING FACTS AND INFERENCES
inferential statements—conclusions arrived at from an interpretation of evidence.
EMOTIVE LANGUAGE
Emotive language contains words that sound as if they’re describing something when they are really announcing the speaker’s attitude toward something.
The Nature Of Language
Language is symbolic
Symbols- arbitrary contractions that represent a communicators thought
Not all linguistic symbols are spoken or written words.
Meanings Are in People, Not Words
Ask a dozen people what the same symbol means, and you are likely to get twelve different answers
As with physical symbols, the place to look for meaning in language isn’t in the words themselves, but rather in the way people make sense of them.
Language Is Rule-Governed
Languages contain several types of rules.
Phonological rules govern how words sound when pronounced.
Syntactic rules govern the structure of language—the way symbols can be arranged.
Syntactic rules govern the structure of language—the way symbols can be arranged.
Pragmatic rules govern how people use language in everyday interaction.
OVERLY ABSTRACT LANGUAGE
Most objects,events,and ideas can be described with varying degrees of specificity.
abstraction ladder
his ladder consists of a number of descriptions of the same thing. Lower items fo- cus specifically on the person, object, or event, whereas higher terms are gener- alizations that include the subject as a member of a larger class.
Abstract language
speech that refers to observable events or objects—serves a second, less obvious function. At times it allows us to avoid confrontations by deliberately being unclear.
Evasive Language
None of the troublesome language habits we have described so far is a deliber- ate strategy to mislead or antagonize others.
EUPHEMISMS
A euphemismis a pleasant term substituted for a more direct but potentially less pleasant one. we say“restroom”instead of“toilet”
EQUIVOCATION
a deliberately vague statement that can be inter- preted in more than one way.
The Power Of Language
On the most obvious level, language allows us to satisfy basic functions
But beyond these func- tions, the way we use language also influences others and reflects our attitudes in more subtle ways
Language Shapes Attitudes
NAMING
Research has demon- strated that names are more than just a simple means of identification: They shape the way others think of us, the way we view ourselves, and the way we act.
CREDIBILITY
We refer to what has been called the Dr. Fox hypothesis.13 “An apparently legitimate speaker who utters an unintelligible message will be judged competent by an audience in the speaker’s area of apparent expertise.”
STATUS
Several factors combine to create positive or negative impressions: accent,choice of words, speech rate, and even the apparent age of a speaker.
SEXISM AND RACISM
The power which comes from names and naming is related directly to the power to define others—individuals, races, sexes, ethnic groups.
I found this reading to be very interesting because before this I thought language was like what language do we speak and the way we say thing. I never knew language had so many different parts to it and what i found most interesting is that gender has an effect on language in so many different ways from like how we say what we say all the way to the things that we talk about differ but sometimes there the same for all genders, and also it has an effect on why we communicate.