Rationality, Perfectability, Mutability

I do not believe in the three premises. They seem a little... odd to me.

Rationality Premise
Believing that people will find truth through "logical analysis" and that "the average person can be trusted to make good decision," makes no sense to me. Have you met the average person? The average person will have tried several types of drugs by the time they are 21, and have had at least one run-in with the law. The average person is not capable of good decisions; if they were, we wouldn't have a million laws in place, like wearing your seat belt (come on really? The average person wasn't wearing it, so they made a law to NOT MAKE YOU DIE).

Perfectability Premise
That people are born in sin? We are not in the 1700s. I do not believe in god, like the premise states: is based on the old Puritan idea," and therefore believe this is the worst premises I have ever heard. Despite the foundation that we have a seperation of church and state, both seemed to be based on this premise. Some religions do believe that you have to work to become good. Most politictions have to fight to show how good they are.

Mutability Premise
I'm not even sure if I understand this one completely. From what I gather, this is what our culture does. It shapes who we are and believes we can improve ourselves through "physical and psychological circumstances." As in school, higher education, working out, and I would even argue surgury. One, surgury current falls in-line with our enviromental factors, and two, it improves our physical circumstances, even though we didn't work for it.

There ya go.

Creatures of our Culture

Ruth Benedict (1949) states that we are "creatures of [our] cultures ... its habits are [our] habits, its beliefs [our] beliefs, its impossibilities [our] impossibilities" (Patterns of culture, p. 2), and I agree - to a point. Yes, we are shaped by our cultures, and everything that we deem moral, immoral, right, wrong, good, bad, is what we learn through the society in which we live. How did those learnings first come about? Someone said, yes, this is what we should do, and from there it was up to the rest of civilization to either follow, break, and remake certain rules.

Everything thing that I have learned has been from my American culture. More percisely though, my Northern-California culture (we are so different from everywhere else). I had a friend in Canada, and one of the first things I asked him was "do you guys say "eh" in every sentence?" He replyed, "eh, dunno. Do you guys say "like" in every sentence?" To which I replied, "Like, I don't know." The only reason I remember that conversation: it was the first time some one asked me about my speech habits and how it pertained to the "silicon valley-girl talk." Did I grow up speaking like that? No. My dad was strongly against it. How did I learn it? My culture told me "you live in silicon valley, you are supposed to, like, you know, talk like this, ya know?"

China was different. New York was different. Tahoe, Reno, Vegas, Oregon, Washington, was different. Their cultures, though not every far away, is completely different from the one that I grew up with.

But...

We can change it. Everyday we see people who are "weird," but only to us. To them, they are normal. How can we change being "creatures of our culture?" By not assuming that everything we are taught, shown, or heard is the "right" culture to live by. If we have a open mind, and take everything that we learn and make a giant stew out of it, ladle that up, then we will be a mish-mosh of culture rather than meat and potatoes. There will be no difinitive line that says "you are from X" but a mix of "X, Y, and Z." Which I believe to be the better culture anyways. There will be no misunderstandings or offending someone of a different culture, because we will have some knowledge of "theirs" as well as "ours." Yes, there will still be a culture, but only one, so... everybody will be the same.

(I know it sounds like a Marx's Communist version of culture, but I think it is the only way to break the limits of cultures by elimnating them or condensing them into a singlarity.)

Perception

I don't know how people can perceive someone without judging them. To perceive someone is to become aware of, notice or understand them through the senses. Maybe for a split second we are "just" perceiving them, but when our mind takes over, there is a whole lot more that goes on without our knowledge. We perceive what the person is wearing, doing, saying, and (in some cases) if they smell nice or not. As soon as their attributes hits our sense, our cultural beliefs and norms take over.

They have a Louis Vuitton bag, which signifies money. You catch them mid-sentence talking about clubbing seals. Someone bumps into your car, leaves a dent, and then walks aways. There doesn't necessarily have to be an interaction with an individual to judge them. Judgements are not always right, and our cultural beliefs can trick us into judging someone wrong, or unfairly.

So, let's go through the list, one by one, and see how perception and judgement go hand in hand, shall we? (By the way, all the examples above either happened to myself or someone I know.)

1. Louis Vuitton: initial perception is observing in the bag, which your mind then relates to money. People get angry and assume this person gets everything they want. In reality though, it was a gift from a friend. The real kicker? It was a knock-off.

2. Clubbing seals: My friend and I were talking about a documentary we saw about people clubbing baby seals for their fur, and I said, "Yeah, let's go club some baby seals!" What they did hear was the discussion of "who the hell even tells someone about that? Do they say 'wanna do something fun?'" ... this girl thought I was being serious then yelled at me for being insensitive. I didn't have time to explain that I was against it and couldn't believe that people actually do that.

3. Car dent: Walking my friend to her car during a break at work, some person slammed into her car, then took off. She, of course, yelled obscenities at the guy, called him a jerk, then we saw that he was chasing a run away shopping cart with his kid still in it. Yea, we felt bad about that one. The kid was alright though. No worries.

See, we might be able to perceive someone without judging them, but in order to do that, we cannot have any cultural knowledge what so ever. Our knowledge is what allows us to judge others. Even if we are saying that they are nice, we are still judging them.

Gender Language

First off, I have a qualm with the book in this area. I've studied a lot on gendered and cultural communication and it boggles my mind when people interchange "gender" and "sex," as the book did. Most of the time, with the exception to the area on masculine and feminine language traits, the book used "gender" instead of "sex." For those of you who do not know the difference: gender is what we perceive ourselves to be in relation to sexual orientation and communication styles (masculine or feminine); sex is our physical/biological attributes that tell us if we are male (penis and testicles) or female (vagina and ovaries). Henceforth, when I mention "men and women" I will be referring to the stereotypical SEX  portrayal of men and women, and all comments will be generalized.

Now, in regards to the question, yes I do believe that the men and women use language differently. I've read many studies (including Tannen who is mention in the book) about inflection, tone, proximity, social settings, non-verbal, and (of course) verbal differences between men and women. Most women tend to speak in inflections (raising of the voice at the end of a sentence) while men tend to lower their voice. The other day I was tried and helping my boyfriend pack for his camping trip with the guys and I told him that his phone was still in the bed room and to not forget it. Well, because I was so tired, I naturally added an inflection to the last word, and he actually had to ask me if I was asking him or telling him (I tend to have a more masculine style of speech so it confuses him when I ask questions sometimes).

Non-verbally, men tend to stand taller in a group and rarely face each other directly. Even if they are face to face, they are slightly turned out either with their shoulders or feet. Men are taught at a young age (from observing their fathers), close contact with someone of the same sex is not "manly" and that intimate boundaries should be shared with loved ones (I know, proximity is a whole other area). Women, on the other hand, need that close proximity to create a bond and show that they trust one another, hence the heads practically touching when they are leaned forward in conversation.

Chapter 5 Concept

Dress is one of the most interesting concepts in chapter 5. At least to me. Most people do not realize that what you wear conveys more than "just clothing." The book's example is one of business/courtroom attire, but there is so much more than just business. In particular, young ladies. What people my age wear is a huge tick for me. Why do women dress like they are hookers and then get offended when people stare? When they wear low-cut shirts and short skirts, they are sending a certain message about who they are, and what intentions they want for the day (or night).

In April when I was at my conference, there was a young lady, about my age, in a very low-cut, cleavage-baring top, a mini-skirt, and high heels. She expected us (as the audience) to trust her credibility in knowing that she knew what she was presenting. Her clothes on the other hand, conveyed a message that she was not intelligent or scholarly in any way (at least not at the higher education level).

So please, wear appropriate clothes for the situation. If you want people to look at you, then by all means, wear little to no clothes. If you want people to trust that you are dependable and knowledgeable, then be a little more modest and Google what you should be wearing for that particular situation.

Audience Adaptation

I have always been fascinated with the audience rather than the speaker. I find myself looking around, seeing the reaction of the audience. It is something that I have always done, and now being a communication studies major, I know why I look around and gauge the audience more than the speaker.

The speaker is nothing. Without and audience, there is no need for the speaker, and the speaker is not worthy of the attention of the audience if what they are saying is not connecting. I have been in a couple of situations while giving a speech, and noticing the audience is either disinterested, confused, or appalled in what I am saying. I remember in a history class, we were only allowed to use facts and first person accounts. I, wanting to push myself (and my teacher's buttons) decided to choose an era which as fascinated me since childhood: the holocaust. I have a morbid sense of humor to begin with, but I picked first person account that put the Nazi's in a good light, and some of the prisoners in a bad one.

I know it doesn't seem right, but I was trying to push myself into thinking outside of the box. That sentence is me trying to adapt my story to fit my audience (you) into thinking in a different way while keeping you interested. And that is also what I said mid-way through my speech when I noticed a very big guy clenching his fist. I am only human. I have fear, and I was (slightly) afraid.

I also noted that these were not norm cases, and there is both good in evil, and evil in good. Which is what my whole speech was about. Now, I understand how it is offensive, but I was in a safe, classroom setting, presenting exactly what I was assigned. I would have not presented this in a meeting with Holocaust survivors, because the speech was not made for that audience... and I would have probably been killed.

Speaking without an audience in mind is not speaking. It is mindless ranting. A speaker without audience is just a person talking to themselves for no reason. But a speaker must adjust their content, vocabulary, hooks, tones, even speech patterns to accommodate those who really matter: everyone else but themselves.

Speakers

2). Have you ever been influenced by a speaker? Think of the best speaker you've ever heard. What was in about that speaker that made his or her communication memorable? Think of the worst speaker you've ever heard. What do you remember about his or her message

I haven't heard very many speakers, but there are a few who stick out to me the most. First, the good speaker. This past April, I participated in the Bay Area Undergraduate Communication Studies Research Conference, and the keynote speaker was amazing. Not the people welcoming you and congratulating you in participating, but the speaker who shared their research about what they are interested in.

His name is Dr. Brian Spitzberg or San Diego State University, sharing his paper on “Stalking and the Cultural Corruptions of Courtship.” My first thought, and his first remark, was "stalking is not an easy subject; one often not associated with communications," but stalking communicates more than we think. I learned that, in order to be considered "stalking," the person doing the stalking has to inflict fear within their victim. Though the conversation was heavy in statistics and analysis, I was completely enthralled with him - not the subject necessarily, but how he present it.

His voice was clear and welcoming, something I believe was hard to do considering the subject at hand. His gestures were purposeful and his tone kept with the topic at hand, and maintained eye contact with the audience. Due to the nature of the subject, he included cartoons and comics to make light of the situation, as well as news clippings of what we consider (or not) stalking. He related the event of stalking to the media and movies that portray stalking in a good light (like Something about Mary). I was wishing that I had him for a professor and (maybe) help him on his research.

Unlike Dr. Spitzberg, there was a student present I remember who did not do so well. She went over her time limit, read directly (no joke) off her paper, and wasn't loud enough to be heard from the back of the room. Also, she did not seem to have a plan for her speech and was jumping around from topic to topic, even confusing herself a couple of time. She had no poise and I could tell she did not want to be there at all.

I just hope my presentation was more like Dr. Spitzberg, rather than the young lady. I honestly can't remember what she was speaking about either....

Social Constructionist Perspective

In accordance to the reading, I believe that we "build worlds" through communication just by speaking. I have always thought that what we say is makes us who we are. Many things can be learned through listening to someone speak: education level, where they live, even the era in which they were raised. Speaking is more than just saying words; it is an act that shapes our lives and others around us.
A real world example (though I am not entirely sure it is correct), one that I still do not fully understand, is the construction of "slang" and the cultural use of it. My boyfriend still has to explain slang words to me when I hear them on the radio. I do not understand why we have it, what good it is, and if it is so awesome, then why isn't it used worldwide?

I do not believe slang contributes to my happiness or success. Every generation has their own slang, but by knowing what those words mean, people form a bond and are able to relate to one another very easily. Unfortunately for me, I cannot nor do I wish to know slang. Other than the occasional "awesome" and "cool," very few slang words will be spoken. Of course, mocking is entirely different... :)

Introductory Post

Hello class!

A little bit about myself: I'm five-foot-two, [redacted] pounds, brown hair, amber eyes, and overall awesome. I am a graduating senior; I've already walked, but am short four credits so, here I am! When I'm not on my computer or phone (playing games is my weakness), I am working at Safeway as a cashier, and lately, looking for a "real" job.

My communication experience is extensive -- at least I like to think so. I studied in Beijing, China last summer for three weeks, have been working customer service for eight years, studied in Canada for a French immersion program in high-school for two weeks, and I was a tutor for the old comm lab, then a writing consultant for the new comm center. I presented a paper at the Bay Area Undergraduate Communication Studies Research Conference this past April on masculinity in Fight Club.  If you haven't figured it out yet, my major is Communication Studies, with no minor.

What interests me? Television. Lots of it. Now that I'm (almost) done with school though, reading and writing will hopefully occupy most of my free time. Another thing that interest me, is this idea of social media. Maybe it's because I do not have a social media account (I don't think my other blog counts since the only person following is an old professor), that it fascinates me, or this revolution that sitting at a computer for a few hours at a time with your friend constitutes "hanging out." Also, this whole passive-aggressive backstabbing that happens when someone post something about someone else, and they think it is meant for them but it's not (huh?). Yeah, confusing I know, but as an outside observer, I find this whole Facebook fad fascinating.

Enough about me. Actually, no. This is MY blog, so, it will always be about me. But I'll be reading yours too, so we'll get to know each other quite well.

Over and out.