Book definitions:

Chapter 1: (Book Page 3-16)

Communication perspectives
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Communication: The process of creating or sharing meaning in informal conversation, group
interaction, or public speaking.

Participants: Individuals who assume the roles of senders and receivers during an interaction.
Messages: Verbal utterances, visual images, and nonverbal behaviors to which meaning is attributed
during communication.

Meanings: Thoughts in our minds and interpretations of others’ messages.

Symbols: Words, sounds, and actions that are generally understood to represent ideas and feelings.
Encoding: The process of putting our thoughts and feelings into words and nonverbal cues.
Decoding: The process of interpreting another’s message.

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Context: The setting in which communication occurs, including what precedes and follows what is said.
Physical context: A communication encounter’s location, environmental conditions (temperature,
lighting, noise level), distance between communicators, seating arrangements, and time of day.

Social context: The nature of the relationship that exists between the participants.
Historical context: The background provided by previous communication episodes between the
participants that influence understandings in the current encounter

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Psychological context: The mood and feelings each person brings to a conversation.
Cultural context: The values, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underlying assumptions prevalent
among people in a society.

Channel: Both the route traveled by the message and the means of transportation.
Interference (noise): Any stimulus that interferes with the process of sharing meaning.
Physical interference: Sights, sounds, and other stimuli in the environment that draw people’s
attention away from intended meaning.

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Psychological interference: Internal distractions based on thoughts, feelings, or emotional reactions
to symbols.

Internal noise: Thoughts and feelings that compete for attention and interfere with the
communication process.

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Semantic noise: Distractions aroused by certain symbols that take our attention away from the main
message.

Feedback: Reactions and responses to messages.

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Communication setting: The different communication environments within which people interact,
characterized by the number of participants and the extent to which the interaction is formal or
informal; also called communication contexts.

Intrapersonal communication: The interactions that occur in a person’s mind when he or she is
talking with himself or herself.

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Interpersonal communication: Informal interaction between two people who have an identifiable
relationship with each other.

Small group communication: Two to 20 people who participants come together for the specific
purpose of solving a problem or arriving at a decision.

Public communication: one participant, the speaker, delivers a prepared message to a group or
audience who has assembled to hear the speaker.
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Spontaneous expressions: Messages spoken without much conscious thought.
Scripted messages: Phrasings learned from past encounters that we judge to be appropriate to the
present situation.

Constructed messages: Messages put together with careful thought when we recognize that our
known scripts are inadequate for the situation.

Immediacy: The degree of liking or attractiveness in a relationship.

Control: The degree to which one participant is perceived to be more dominant or powerful.

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Culture: Systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.

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Ethics: A set of moral principles that may be held by a society, a group, or an individual.
Ethical dilemma: A choice involving two unsatisfactory alternatives.

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Communication competence: The impression that communicative behavior is both appropriate and
effective in a given situation.

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Credibility: A perception of a speaker’s knowledge, trustworthiness, and warmth.
Social ease: Communicating without appearing to be anxious or nervous.
Communication apprehension: Fear or anxiety associated with real or anticipated communication
with others.
 Chapter 2:
Perception of self and others (Book page 24-41)

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Perception: The process of selectively attending to information and assigning meaning to it.

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Pattern: A set of characteristics used to differentiate some things from others.

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Interpret: Assigning meaning to information.
Self-concept: Your self-identity.
Self-esteem: Your overall evaluation of your competence and personal worthiness. What is a self -
concept and how is it formed and maintained?

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Incongruence: The gap between our inaccurate self-perceptions and reality.

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Self-fulfilling prophecy: A false perception of a situation or characteristic or skill that leads to
behaviors that perpetuate that false perception as true.

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Self-monitoring: The internal process of observing, analyzing, and regulating your own behavior based
on your analysis of the situation and others’ responses to you.

Role: A pattern of learned behaviors that people use to meet the perceived demands of a particular
context.
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Uncertainty reduction: the process of monitoring the social environment to learn more about self and
others.

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Implicit personality theories: Assumptions about which physical characteristics and personality traits
or behaviors are associated with one another.

Halo effect: To generalize and perceive that a person has a whole set of characteristics when you have
actually observed only one characteristic, trait, or behavior.

Stereotypes: generalizations, usually exaggerated or oversimplified and often offensive, use to

describe or distinguish a group.

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Prejudice: A rigid attitude that is based on group membership and predisposes an individual to feel,
think, or act in a negative way toward another person or group.

Discrimination: A negative action toward a social group or its members on account of group
membership.

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Attributions: Reasons we give for others’ behavior.

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Perception check: a message that reflects your understanding of the meaning of another person’s
nonverbal behavior.
 Chapter 3:
Communicating verbally (Book page 48-59)

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Language: A body of symbols (most commonly words) and the systems for their use in messages that
are common to the people of the same speech community.

Speech community: A group of people who speak the same language (also called a language
community).

Words symbols: Used by a speech community to represent objects, ideas, and feelings.
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis: A theory claiming that language influences perception. Language allows us
to perceive certain aspects of the world by naming them and allows us to ignore other parts of the world
by not naming them.

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Denotation: The direct, explicit meaning a speech community formally gives a word.
Connotation: The feelings or evaluations we associate with a word.
Syntactic context: The position of a word in a sentence and the other words around it.

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Low-context cultures: Cultures in which messages are direct, specific, and detailed.
High-context cultures: Cultures in which messages are indirect, general, and ambiguous.

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Feminine styles of language: Use words of empathy and support, emphasize concrete and personal
language, and show politeness and tentativeness in speaking.

Masculine styles of language: Use words of status and problem solving, emphasize abstract and
general language, and show assertiveness and control in speaking.
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Specific words: Words that clarify meaning by narrowing what is understood from a general category
to a particular item or group within that category.

Concrete words: Words that appeal to the senses and help us see, hear, smell, taste, or touch.
Precise words: Words that narrow a larger category to a smaller group within that category.

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Dating information: Specifying the time or time period that a fact was true or known to be true.
Indexing generalizations: The mental and verbal practice of acknowledging the presence of individual
differences when voicing generalizations.

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Vivid wording: Wording that is full of life, vigorous, bright, and intense. simile a direct comparison of
dissimilar things.

Metaphor: A comparison that establishes a figurative identity between objects being compared.

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Emphasis: The importance given to certain words or ideas.

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Jargon: Technical terms whose meanings are understood only by select groups.
Linguistic sensitivity: Language choices that demonstrate respect for listener(s).

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Slang: Informal vocabulary used by particular groups in society.
Generic language: Using words that may apply only to one sex, race, or other group as though they
represent everyone.
 Chapter 4:
Communicating verbally (Book page 67-76)

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Nonverbal communication: Behaviors bodily actions and vocal qualities that typically accompany a
verbal message.

Emoticons: Typed symbols that convey emotional aspects of an online message.

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Kinesics: The interpretation of how body motions communicate.
Gestures: Movements of our hands, arms, and fingers that we use to describe or to emphasize.
Illustrators: Gestures that augment a verbal message.
Emblems: Gestures can substitute for words.

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Adaptors: Gestures that respond to a physical need.
Eye contact or gaze: How and how much we look at people with whom we are communicating.
Oculesics: How and how much we look at others when communicating.

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Facial expression: The arrangement of facial muscles to communicate emotional states or reactions to
messages.

Posture: The position and movement of the body.

Body orientation: Posture in relation to another person.
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Body movement: Movement that helps clarify meaning (motivated) or movement that distracts
listeners from the point being made (unmotivated).

Haptics: What and how touch communicates.

Vocalic: The interpretation of the message based on the paralinguistic features.
Paralanguage: The voiced but not verbal part of a spoken message.

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Pitch: The highness or lowness of vocal tone.
Volume: The loudness or softness of tone.
Rate: The speed at which a person speaks.
Quality: The sound of a person’s voice that distinguishes it from others.
Intonation: The variety, melody, or inflection in one’s voice.

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Vocalized pauses: Extraneous sounds or words that interrupt fluent speech.
Proxemics: The interpretation of a person’s use of space and distance.
Personal space: The distance you try to maintain when you interact with other people.

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Physical space: The physical environment over which you exert control.
Artifacts: Objects and possessions we use to decorate the physical space we control.

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Chronenics: The interpretation of a person’s use of time.
Monochronic time orientation: A time orientation that emphasizes doing one thing at a time.
Polychromic time: Orientation a time orientation that emphasizes doing multiple things at once.

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Endomorph: Round and heavy body type.
Mesomorph: Muscular and athletic body type.
Ectomorph: Lean and little muscle development.
 Chapter 6:
Communicating across cultures (Book page 112-130)

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Culture: The values, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underlying assumptions prevalent among
people in a society.

Culture shock: The psychological discomfort you may feel when you attempt to adjust to a new
cultural situation.

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Intercultural communication: Interactions that occur between people whose cultural assumptions
are so different that the communication between them is altered.

Dominant culture: The attitudes, values, beliefs, and customs that the majority of people in a society
hold in common.

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Co-cultures: groups of people living within a dominant culture but exhibiting communication that is
sufficiently different to distinguish them from the dominant culture.

Ethnicity: A classification of people based on combinations of shared characteristics such as

nationality, geographic origin, language, religion, ancestral customs, and tradition.

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Religion: A system of beliefs shared by a group and that supplies the group with an entity(ies) for
devotion, rituals for worship, and a code of ethics.

Social class: An indicator of a person’s position in a social hierarchy, as determined by income,

education, occupation, and social habits.
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Individualistic culture: Emphasizes personal rights and responsibilities, privacy, voicing one’s opinion,
freedom, innovation, and self-expression.

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Collectivist culture: emphasizes community, collaboration, shared interest, harmony, the public good,
and avoiding embarrassment.

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Low uncertainty-avoidance cultures: Cultures characterized by greater acceptance of, and less need
to control, unpredictable people, relationships, or events.

High uncertainty-avoidance cultures: Cultures characterized by a low tolerance for, and a high need
to control, unpredictable people, relationships, or events.

High power-distance: The cultural belief that inequalities in power, status, and rank are “natural” and
that these differences should be acknowledged and accentuated.

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Low-power distance: The cultural belief that inequalities in power, status, and rank should be
underplayed and muted.

Masculine culture: A culture in which people are expected to adhere to traditional sex roles.
Feminine culture: A culture in which people, regardless of sex, are expected to assume a variety of
roles based on the circumstances and their own choices.

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Ethnocentrism: The belief that one’s own culture is superior to others.

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Stereotypes: Attributions that cover up individual differences and ascribe certain characteristics to a
group of people.
Prejudice: A rigid attitude based on group membership.

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Altruism: A display of genuine and unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
Egocentricity: A selfish interest in one’s own needs, to the exclusion of everything else.

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Intercultural empathy: Imaginatively placing yourself in the dissimilar other person’s cultural world to
attempt to experience what he or she is experiencing.

Flexibility: the ability to adjust your communication to fi t the other person and the situation.
 Chapter 8:
Communicating skills in interpersonal relationships
(Book page 158-178)
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Comforting: Helping people feel better about themselves, their behavior, or their situation by creating
a safe conversational space where they can express their feelings and work out a plan for the future.

Buffering messages: Comforting messages that are phrased very politely in ways that address another
person’s face needs.

Positive face: Needs the desires to be appreciated and approved, liked, and honored.

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Negative face: Needs the desires to be free from imposition and intrusion.
Other-centered messages: Comforting messages that encourage relational partners to talk about and
elaborate on what happened and how they feel about it.

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Reframing the situation: Offering ideas, observations, information, or alternative explanations that
might help a relational partner understand a situation in a different light.

Giving advice: Presenting relevant suggestions and proposals that a person can use to resolve a
situation.

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Disclosure: Revealing confidential or secret information about others as well as yourself.
Privacy: The right of an individual to keep biographical data, personal ideas, and feelings secret.
Privacy management: Exercising personal control over confidential information in order to enhance
autonomy or minimize vulnerability.
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Describing feelings: The skill of naming the emotions you are feeling without judging them.

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Describing behavior: Accurately recounting the specific behaviors of another without commenting on
their appropriateness.

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Praise: Describing the specific positive behaviors or accomplishments of another and the effect that
behavior has on others.

Constructive criticism: Describing specific behaviors of another that hurt the person or that person’s
relationships with others.

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Establishing a boundary: Effectively respond to people who expect you to disclose information you
prefer to keep private.

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Passive behavior: Not expressing personal preferences or defending our rights because we fear the
cost and are insecure in the relationships, have very low self-esteem, or value the other person above
our self.

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Aggressive behavior: Belligerently or violently confronting another with your preferences, feelings,
needs, or rights with little regard for the situation or for the feelings or rights of others.

Assertive behavior: Expressing your personal preferences and defending your personal rights while
respecting the preferences and rights of others.
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Interpersonal conflict: When the needs or ideas of one person are at odds with the needs or ideas of
another.

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Withdrawing: Managing conflict by physically or psychologically removing yourself.
Accommodating: Managing conflict by satisfying others’ needs or accepting others’ ideas while
neglecting our own.

Forcing: Managing conflict by satisfying your own needs or advancing your own ideas, with no concern
for the needs or ideas of the other and no concern for the harm done to the relationship.

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Collaborating: Managing conflict by fully addressing the needs and issues of each party and arriving at
a solution that is mutually satisfying.

That’s the end folks.

Allah aap sab ko kamyab kare Aameen.