Communications 110 - Term Paper

Communications 110

Term Paper

Shawn Dhillon

301161298

TM: Tahmina Inoyatova

 Word Count: 2459

In the primary decade of the twentieth century, a stallion named Hans attracted overall consideration in Berlin as the first and most popular "talking" and thinking creature. Hans settled estimations by tapping numbers or letters with his foot keeping in mind the end goal to answer questions. Later on, it worked out that the stallion could give the right answer by perusing the minute flags despite the scrutinizing individual. This perception brought about an upheaval and as a result, experimenters kept away from entirely any eye to eye contact to learn about intellectual capacities of creatures, a basic lesson that is as yet not connected thoroughly. The horse could count the number of persons in the audience, perform arithmetic operations, read the clock, recognize and identify playing cards, and knew the calendar of the whole year. In response to a question he would tap with his hooves either to indicate a number or the right option among many given.  While exploring the story of Clever Hans, it is arguable that interpersonal communication can take place below the threshold of awareness by using all of our other senses to communicate as well.  

Furthermore, The Clever Hans story shows us how telling and informative nonverbal and barely noticeable actions can be in communication. Hans noticed non-verbal cues from the people around him and it gave him the correct answer to the questions being asked of him. None of the people who addressed Hans the horse realized they were essentially giving Hans the answer, as many of us don’t realize how many non-verbal clues and signals we give out in the presence of others. Our group discussed how you can’t control the clues you give off - you might think your expression is “blank” or a “poker face” but that even says something about how you’re feeling. We can’t control very subtle twitches or expressions, especially when nervous, under stress or lying.

In connection to this people, are often unaware of the signals they are picking up from other people. Take, for example, the experiment mentioned in the reading modules about the pupil size adjustments - many men who viewed the image of the woman with the larger pupils could tell they felt different about her, but they didn’t know why.  These cues are passed back and forth “below the threshold of awareness”. Our brain works like a powerful computer, picking up cues and processing them unconsciously. If we had to specifically analyze every part of a conversation, conversations would be full of awkward silences and be quite lengthy. We touched on intuition: how sometimes you have a good or bad feeling about something but you’re not sure why. We’ve all met someone before and disliked them, despite them not having done anything wrong.

Non-verbal cues are prominent in face-to-face communications. For example, if you’re speaking with someone and they keep yawning or blinking, you may realize they’re tired or bored of this conversation. Facial expression and body language are also examples of non-verbal cues. Texting and phone calls, don’t provide as many opportunities for non-verbal cues to take place, non verbal communication explores the idea of emojis and the use of grammar to give hints at how someone is feeling or the intention beyond their words. Animals and humans alike use these non-verbal cues in communication, perhaps animals more so than humans since animals lack verbal skills. Furthermore, how some animals predict and assist when there owners are about to have a stroke or heart attack – surely some non-verbal cue alerted them.  

Further support of my argument concerning face-to-face interaction and communication comes from Erving Goffman’s book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman argues, that people, as they interact together in social settings, are constantly engaged in the process of "impression management," wherein each tries to present themselves and behave in a way that will prevent the embarrassment of themselves or others. This is primarily done by each person that is part of the interaction working to ensure that all parties have the same "definition of the situation," meaning that all understand what is meant to happen in that situation, what to expect from the others involved, and thus how they themselves should behave.

Goffman organizes his claims into what he calls a Dramaturgical Framework. He begins with the idea of Performance. Goffman uses the term ‘performance’ to refer to all the activity of an individual in front of a particular set of observers, or audience. Through this performance, the individual, or actor, gives meaning to themselves, to others, and to their situation. These performances deliver impressions to others, which communicates information that confirms the identity of the actor in that situation. The actor may or may not be aware of their performance or have an objective for their performance; however, the audience is constantly attributing meaning to it and to the actor.