COMMUNICATION THEORY (DQ’S)

 
Humans forget by nature, even if they did not want to. Texts help achieve tasks faster and in complete, and although oral narratives can help achieve tasks and is a great way of communication, texts always help the person achieve the task in complete. For example, when someone buys furniture from IKEA, it always comes with instructions onto how to build the product; imagine if that peace of paper did not come, and every time you buy something from IKEA, they just tell you orally how to build it before you leave the store; most likely, we will forget some of the steps if not the bigger percentage of it; this is one of the cases that show the importance of texts.
Moreover, texts make people expect more from other people, if person A tells person B to call the doctor, person B could forget and not call, and person A would not be able to say anything about it; on the other hand, if person A sent a text to person B telling him/her to call the doctor and to put a reminder for it, person B will not be able to use the “I forgot“ excuse. Because person A will reply with: did you not see my text message? did you not have a reminder?

Both methods of communication are useful and important; but, texts indeed are much easier to follow logically and sequentially and can sometimes save a lot of time.

Jad

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ATTACHED TWO (THE TEXTUAL MIND)

Whenever it is necessary for me to organize my thoughts in a careful manner, I write down my thoughts word by word so I can see better how these texts can be used in achieving a specific goal I have in mind in this run of the communication. It is not only easier for me to be logical when using texts in communication when I can move around sentences so they make better sense to the person I am attempting to communicate; it also helps me to express thoughts I might not be able to communicate if it were done verbally. For example, in my culture, for some reason our love to our parents is not usually traditionally expressed by simply saying “I love you”; instead, it will be easier for us to express our feeling of love to our parents through a nicely worded card. I suppose same logic may apply to the reason why some of us write love letters or even apology letters.

However, the downside of using texts as a way of communication is that it sometimes takes more time to do. Making a phone call to my husband explaining why I am having a rough day today can be done less than 5 minutes of time, but it might take more than 10 minutes if I were to present my feelings to my husband via email. Also, even the simplest texts can sometimes be tricky to interpret, without clues such as tone of voice adding more meanings to the context. For instance, if my husband needed to be home late and he notified me by texting and I simply replied with the word “ok”, there is a possibility he might be thinking that I was upset by only replying so briefly with a word “ok”; whereas if he called me and heard I responded with a delightful tone saying “ok”, he would know in the instant that I was completely fine.

In my opinion, texts can sometimes be deliberately used to avoid verbal communication and therefore could cause negative communication outcomes. On the other hand, texts can be also positively constructed to encourage better communication practices. As a result, it goes back to the conclusion that every communication approach has its function and only through effective use of necessary approaches is the way to achieve quality communication.

Makayla
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ATTACHED THREE (GUTENBERG’S GALAXY)
When I was in middle school, before cell phones for teens were popular, passing notes was the way the kids in my school communicated. Not only was it a great way to avoid paying attention in class, while still talking to our pals, but the rush of trying not to get caught was the cherry on top of the cake. My friends and I were constantly scribbling gossip on the torn off corners of our note books, dropping them on the ground and kicking them to one another. Even though there was nothing private about our form of communication, my friends and I still wrote as if we were writing in invisible ink. The gossip was always full of expletives, slanderous accusations and of course fashion tips. The unfortunate thing with girls and gossip, is that the combination is not always quiet. So, naturally, on a few occasions we got caught passing notes, and as crazy as this sounds, we only wish that the notes were picked up by the teacher. When our notes were snatched off the ground, it was more often than not picked up by a fellow student and because I went to a small school, that student was often likely to be someone we scribbled about in the notes. The things we talked about, although sometimes hurtful, mean, crude, and/or distasteful, we never had any intention of anyone ever seeing the notes, or getting hurt by the notes. We were only writing the notes to have fun, and maintain the social norm of middle school, what we wrote in the notes was never anything that we would speak out loud. After being disgusted with us, hurt, upset, and shedding a few tears, our fellow scorned classmates, eventually came to realize that our notes were just torn off corners of our notebook, that belonged in the trash.

When I was younger, an old saying was constantly uttered by my elders, “Never do, say, or write anything, that you wouldn’t want to see on the front cover of a newspaper.” Even though our notes never made it to the front page of a newspaper, we did upset quite a few fellow classmates and stir up a bit of news and trouble throughout our tiny school. As the years went by, and the pencil marks faded off of the crumpled up notes, our classmates were able to see that our middle school shenanigans were just that, although, they were not so secret. Passing notes made my friends and I able to express things we would not normally express. The thrill of maybe getting caught made it easier to write ridiculous things. Under any other circumstances, we would not have said the things that we did, and after watching our friends writhe with hurt and anger, we realized that note passing did not make us invincible, it made us mean girls.

Samantha

References:

Heckenlively, K. (2012, July). Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the new york times!. Age of autism. Retrieved from http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/07/dont-do-anything-you-wouldnt-want-to-see-on-the-front-page-of-the-new-york-times.html

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ATTACHED FOUR (GUNTENBERG’S GALAXY)

One of the best bosses I’ve ever had gave me terrific advice for communicating at work: Stick to the facts.
When we write with emotion, we are prone to later regretting what we wrote & who we wrote it to.
It happened to me during a work conference. I was approached by the leading quality assurance team director from another division and the director stopped me in the elevator and coyly tried to put down my boss and offered me a position on his team.