The Communication Playbook. Teri Kwal Gamble
we will learn in Chapter 2, how we formulate and interpret messages depends on our culture. Cultural diversity, including race, ethnicity, gender, and age, influences the meanings we attribute to communication. Cultural differences exist not only between people who speak different languages but also between people who speak the same language. Every cultural group has its own rules or preferences for interaction. When these are unknown or ignored, we are apt to misinterpret the meaning of messages received and miscalculate the impact of messages sent.
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Gender Influences Communication
“To be an ‘I” at all means to be gendered.”7 Our culture shapes our conceptions of gender, and conceptions of gender shape our communication.8 We learn socially accepted variations in the definitions of gender differences as we grow up. Girls, for example, learn to “play nice.” Boys learn to act tough. Gender is a relational construct with individuals promoting the gender ideologies they accept.
To what extent do you believe that your communication has been influenced by gender constructions or restrictions and what society considers “normal”?
Personal Ethics Influence Communication
Every time we communicate, we decide implicitly or explicitly if we will do so ethically. Ethics are the moral principles, values, and beliefs that members of society use to guide behavior. Since communication has consequences, it involves judgments of right and wrong. When the agreed-upon standards of behavior are violated, the behavior is judged unethical. For example, most of us expect those with whom we interact to be honest, play fair, respect our rights, and accept responsibility for their actions.
Communication is Competence Based
A communication scholar once said that if communication can fail, it will.9 Our challenge is determining how we can prevent communication from failing. One solution is to make wise choices. In certain situations, some messages are appropriate and okay to say to particular receivers, whereas others are not.
Even though we all have different communication strengths and weaknesses, we can all benefit from getting better at communicating. When we add to our knowledge and make a commitment to develop the skills to apply that knowledge across an array of communication situations or contexts, we gain communication competence. For example, included among the skills necessary for effective communication is the ability to think critically. When we think critically, we have the ability to examine ideas reflectively and to decide what we should and should not believe, think, or do, given a specific set of circumstances.10
Digital and Social Media are Transforming Communication
Decades ago, media critic Marshall McLuhan cautioned, “The medium is the message.”11 In McLuhan’s view, different channels of communication affected both how a sender encoded a message and how a receiver responded to it. This means that the same words delivered face-to-face, on paper, via text, or with a tweet do not constitute the same message. The channel of communication changes things. What channel would you use to say good-bye to someone who was moving away? Which channel would you use to tell someone “I’m sorry?” What about “I love you?”
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New communication forms—new channels—alter our communication experiences. Technology and social media are game changers. Using them speeds up communication. Instead of valuing sequential understanding and careful logic, we seek immediate gratification and emotional involvement with people near and distant, close to home and around the world. As our real and virtual communication repertoires expand, we exist simultaneously both in the physical world and online.
Living Brands
Do you know anyone whose life has become a brand? A 2017 film, Ingrid Goes West, satirized the sometimes very painful ways in which social media impact lives.12 In the film Ingrid goes into a rage after seeing photos online of a wedding to which she wasn’t invited. A loner, she turns her life on its head by traveling to Los Angeles and reinventing herself into the image of her Instagram obsession, Taylor, a person who posts perfectly posed photos of herself along with inspirational quotes and has gazillions of followers.
Now, who would you rather be: Ingrid or Taylor? The devoted follower or the influencer? Has a filtered life that you have observed ever made you green with envy?
Changes Have Upsides and Downsides
The changes in how we communicate affect our social, emotional, and professional lives. On the upside, they influence our cultural sensibilities, making it easier for many among us to identify like-minded people who share our interests. On the downside, they make it less likely that we will expose ourselves to different points of view. Also on the downside, they make it possible for us to remain anonymous or to disguise ourselves. But on the upside, if we do remain anonymous, our online communication will be evaluated more for what we write than for how we look. On the downside, again, social media allow us to present our lives through filters—delivering a carefully curated image of ourselves to the world—but then again, those filters can be humorous too.13
Social media reshape human consciousness and relationships. Because there are only so many hours in a day, the time we spend using social media takes time away from other activities. Social media impede our living “in the moment.” Rather than enjoying the company of others or an event or celebration, we tweet, use Snapchat, or check Facebook. They also foster our dependency on others—we wait anxiously to see if our post will receive approval and affirmation.14 On the other hand, they do make it more possible for marginalized groups to find support. They have upsides and downsides, downsides and upsides.
Being a communicator in a digital age adds multiple layers to our communication experiences. For one thing, our messages become more permanent. For another, ethically challenged individuals can troll our pages, hack into our files, make our private messages public, and forward to other people something that we had no intention of communicating to them. What happens online influences offline realities.
Why Do We Communicate?
Every communication experience serves one or more functions. For example, communication can help us discover who we are, help us establish more meaningful personal and professional relationships, or prompt us to examine and try to change either our own attitudes and behaviors or the attitudes and behaviors of others.
To Gain Self-Understanding and Insight into Others
One key function of communication is self–other understanding: insight into ourselves and others. When we get to know another person, we also get to know ourselves and when we get to know ourselves, we learn how others affect us. We depend on communication to develop self-awareness.
We need feedback from others all the time, and others are constantly in need of feedback from us. Interpersonal, small-group, public, and mediated and digital communication offer us numerous opportunities for self–other discovery. Through communication encounters we are able to learn why we are trusting or untrusting, whether we can make our thoughts and feelings clear, under what conditions we have the power to influence others, and whether we can effectively make decisions and resolve conflicts and problems.
Modern communicators need to be able to interact with people culturally different from themselves. Although it might be feasible in the virtual world to seek comfort in similarity, insulating ourselves from intercultural contact in our social