Task 2. In the following situations communication is unsuccessful. Applying the psychological model analyze the reasons.

1. Two friends are talking to each other in a bar. But they can hardly hear each other because the music is very loud and there are lots of other people talking and shouting.

2. A passer-by has been approached by a stranger in the street. The stranger addresses the passer-by in English as he is a foreigner. He needs to find the way to his hotel but, unfortunately, he gets no reply.

3. A qualified architect from India came to Britain. He found it very difficult to understand the British mind: sometimes travelling to the office by train he started a conversation with some people and he was even given their telephone numbers. But when he rang and heard the surprised “Who?” he felt embarrassed and hung up.

Task 3. Provide at least one rule to improve communication in the situations given above.

Task 4. Working in pairs, analyze the moves of the communicative partners from the pragmatic point of view. Then compare your results with the group-mates’.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t mind. What’s the matter?”

He looked up at me. “I can’t go through with it,” he said abruptly.

“What?”

“I can’t go through with it,” he said again, a touch of desperation in his voice. “I can’t, Isobel. I need some time. I want to postpone it.”

“The wedding?” I stared at him. “You want to postpone the wedding?”

“Yes,” he nodded.

“You are joking,” I croaked finally.

“I’m not joking, Isobel.” His look was anguished. “I need more time.”

Task 5. Analyze your class interaction from the point of view of the context and the elements of communication developed by Dell Hymes.

Unit 3

Decoding Messages: Perception, Information Processing and Listening

I. NOTES

Message decoding is a cre­ative, highly selective process by which people assign meanings to communicative messages. This process is not as simple or as automatic as you might think. Decoding is often highly subjective. Different people exposed to a single mes­sage can come away with very different understandings, as the following true story shows.

A group of scientists attending a professional conference was waiting for a meeting to begin when a door opened and two men, one wearing a clown’s cos­tume and the other wearing a black jacket, red tie, and white trousers, rushed in. The two men yelled at each other and scuffled briefly. Suddenly a shot rang out, whereupon both men rushed out of the room. The chairperson immediately asked everyone in the room to write a complete description of what had hap­pened. The scientists did not know that the incident had been staged to test the accuracy of their perceptions.

How accurate were their perceptions? Of the forty scientists who respond­ed, none gave a complete description of the incident. Twelve reports missed at least fifty percent of what had happened, and only six reports did not misstate facts or add inaccurate details. The eyewitnesses could not even identify the color of the second man's suit; it was variously described as red, brown, striped, blue, and coffee-colored. In relating this story, William D. Brooks comments on the limitations inherent in perception:

Man does not perceive all he sees, nor does he necessarily perceive accurately what falls on the eye's screen; and yet his intrapersonal communication is limited to and based on the information he has via the process of perception from all the senses.

Despite the fact that decoding may be a fallible and risky business, accu­rate communication is possible. By understanding how perception and infor­mation processing work, you can improve your sending and receiving skills.

What Is Perception?

Perception is a social, cognitive process whereby indi­viduals assign meaning to raw sense-data. It is cogni­tive because it involves mental effort, and it is social because the categories used to process information are shared with others and are validated by social consensus. People engaged in perception use social knowledge to make sense of the world.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16