Chapter 10

In this chapter we learn about small group communication. There are 6 main topics in this chapter which are small group and teams, small group stages, small group format, power in the small group, types of small group and problem solving group.

Groups are formed  in our natural part of life. But small groups are formed out of a few commons :

1. Purpose : It is formed  because of a reason, for example a group of students need to have a group to do their assignment or group projects.

2. Interdependence : We might have to depend on others to survive sometimes, for example we need others skill and talent to obtain a certain goal.

3. Organisation of rules : every house and family has their own rules. So does the small groups, it is the same goes to the small groups and teams. For example, formal meeting will have to wear formally and informal gathering like having a cup of tea to discuss about the plan will have least formal feel.

4. Self-perception as a group : everyone wants to feel belonged to a group that share common things like self beliefs, values, what they like.

Then we learn about small group stages. The picture shown below are the small group stages.

There are few types of group format. The first one is round table. They arrange themselves in circular or semicircular, it is informal type, they share information for example, group assignment or group projects. Then there is the panel. Panel's group members are experts, but it is also informal. There are audience in front to question them an to answer them like Q&A session. For example, the apple event that they wants to lunch a product, someone will speaks and then there are audience from outside or inside that can question them about the product. It can also be a talk show. Other that that there are the symposium, in this kind of groups, each member will deliver a prepared speech or presentation to everyone. This can be a seminars, public speaking or even conferences.

After that we learn that they are power in the small group. First there is legitimate power, it is run by ruler and appointed or lead by the group leader. Then there is the referent power, this power is ruled by agreement. This is chosen or voted by everyone in the group, this occurs because the group may like you or identified with you. Then there is the reward power. This is like something we learn in phycology of adjustment, it consist of positive reinforcement. For example, you did a good job in your company this month so your boss increase your salary. It is like you did something good and you get reward for it. After that, we learn about coercive power. This is by negative reinforcement, like punishment. This is when you did something bad, you will have to suffer the consequences. For example, you did something bad in your group or offended your leader, then you will get kicked out of the group. Then there is the expert power. The export power is you being established as the expert in the context. For example, you know something that everyone don't know so you have the power and authority to do the assignment or lead the assignment. Lastly there is the information power. This is when you communicate good and you will be supported. For example, the public speaker.

After this we learn about the sic critical thinking hat. The picture below will show about the six critical hats. Each shows different thinking:

Chapter 9..

After that lesson we venture into a new chapter which was very interesting. It is chapter 9, friends, lovers and family. First we learn about friendship. Friendship consist of a interpersonal relationship, it must be mutually productive because you have to talk with your friends to build good relationship in that friendship. It is also characterised by positive regards like trust, emotional support and  sharing interest together with each other.

There are three types of friendship we learn which are:

a) The friendship of reciprocity
This is an example of close friends, we share equally in giving and receiving the benefits and rewards in our relationship.

b) The friendship of receptivity
This consists of one person giving and one person receiving. For example, our lecture teaches us and we are receiving the knowledge.

c) The friendship of association
This is similar like the first one, but this kind of friendship does not consist of trust, loyalty, or equally shared relationship. For example, our classmates, neighbour or co-worker.

Furthermore, we learn about the reason for us to seek out friendship and close relationship. There are five reason, the first one which is utility purpose. Sometimes we need helps from our friends like when we do not know how to do our homework we seek out to our friends to help us out. This is to help you to achieve a specific goal. The second one is ego support. We have good and bad times in life, we need friends to support us during our sad times and they might have to ability to encourage us or to support us. And the third one is affirmation. We need friends to help us recognise our attribution, we do not know how good are we or how bad are we, so we need friends to help us recognise ourselves. Then it comes to stimulation. This will help you to expand your idea, they will give you idea and help you to expand your point of view. Lastly security, this is when your friends does nothing to hurt you and does not judge or call attention to your weakness.

The value of friendship will also be affected by culture, gender difference and technology. A different culture would bring different meaning. When you are with your friends you might think that it is good. But some would think that it is a distraction for your work or studies. Other than that, male and female have different point of view in relationships and friendships. Men are sometimes more keen to develop friendship but not true friend. For female are able to keep in touch with other girls friend but tend to get jealous easy. Men would also share less secret compare with females, one of the major reasons is because of ego. Friendship in technology are good for keeping in touch, but nowadays people do not just ignore their friends in the social network but prefer to have online chat rather than meeting up. This will also ruin peoples friendship.

Then we learn in the class is about romantic relationship. There are 6 types of love:

1.Eros : This is a love that people desire to have, this will refer to one's physical attraction or beauty and appearance. Mostly sex and lust becomes the result in this relationships.

2.Ludus : This is a relationship that people seeking for pleasure excitement. This kind of relationships are usually more on guys, they will tend to seek temporary fun and excitement to fulfil their wants and needs. For example friends with benefits, only pleasure seeking and nothing more.

3.Storge : This relationship is peaceful and slow. It is seeking for love but not passionate one. For example, the kings daughter have to get married with the prince even if they do not love each other.

4.Pragma : This relationship is practical by the traditional people. Parents would concern weather that guy could afford to buy you a house or can afford to support your family.

5.Mania :  This kind of relationships would have worries and depress, but at the same time the relationships is still going. For example, you are worried that your boyfriend only like you because you are rich, will he go for other girls if other girls is prettier or richer?

6.Agape : This relationship consist of unconditional love. This relationship has no favour or does not think about benefits like pragma. For example, a parents love their child unconditionally, the baby does not produce anything for their parents but their parents have to take care of the baby.

Lastly we learn about family, there are three types of families:

1. Traditional couples: The conventional form of a family, they shared values, beliefs, tolerance for one another.

2. Independent couples: Individuals in this family setting stresses individuality as the main theme in the family. Nowadays this is how the modern family is.

3. Separate couples: Family setting is not really a family but either one in this family stay together for a common benefit like paying the rent, sharing living space.

Chapter 8

Th next class continues, it is a new chapter but it is still related. We learn more about relationship stages and theories. After we developed a good sense and etiquette to bring out our conversations,  we can identify the effectiveness of interpersonal communication that can form and relate to relationships around us.

The picture above shown the relationship stages. The first one is contact, which one people are aware of another people existence, it is mostly impersonal and ritualise. In this stage, perception and interaction take place. The second stage of relationship is where people have tighter bonds and engagements with other people, expect light bonds of friendship and added into the friend zone. At this stage, testing and intensifying stages take place. At the testing stage people would ask: “Hey, do you want to go somewhere for a movie?”; “Do you like this subject?” Then the intensifying stage can be be identify as he amount of commitments you committed to that someone. For example, dating someone or having appointment with your friend. The third stage which is intimacy, during the third stage you would be comfortable and able to believe that person. Interpersonal commitment and social bonding will take place at this moment. After that comes the deterioration. This stage is where friends fall apart because some of the factors might or will affect each others relationship. For example, cultural factors, which your family or yourself do not like a certain culture. We would be consider very luck if we are still close friends with our primary school friends or childhood friends, because after we grow up we would have different thinking and that thinking might not satisfied you with your friends. After that it comes to repair, repair is the fifth stage of relationship which those who are affected in the fourth stage deterioration which you try to work things out with others. At this stage, intrapersonal and interpersonal repairs will occur. For example interpersonal, you may consider changing your behaviour or your thinking for your friends instead of changing your friends thinking. For interpersonal, you would talk and discuss properly with the problems your and your friends had. came back as angers like before. At this stage, interpersonal and social separation occurs. For example, you separate yourself from your friends because you don’t like people who smokes or people who irritates you that much. For interpersonal separation, you may not see each other anymore and may not return messages, for example you broke up with your girlfriend and you don't tend to talk to her anymore because she broker your heart.

After that we learn about relationship theories, there are 6 of them which includes:

1. Attraction Theory
2. Relationship Rules Theory
3. Relationship Dialectics Theory
4. Social Penetration Theory
5. Social Exchange Theory
6. Equity Theory

In attraction theory there are four types. The first one is similarity, it is the attraction to a certain someone who has belief or same ideas with you. Second is proximity, it is an attraction to someone who are close to you. For example in a range or a specific location. The third one is reinforcement, which attracts you to an individuals who reinforces your same personality and lifestyle. Lastly theres physical attractiveness and personality. It is an attraction to physical and mental attributes, for example your physical body like your charming face. Then the second relationship theory is the relationship rules theory there are four different relationships and they have different relationship levels and attributes. The first one is friendship rules. For example best friends and normal friends which we have to respect the rules and boundaries. The second one is romantic rules, it is almost same as the friendship rules but it is more to couple like in a relationships. The third one is family rule. Different family has different rules in their family, like traditional family it is a must to have dinner every night at home. Lastly there is the workplace rules. Different roles of your position in your workplace will affect the relationship. For example, the CEO of the company will have a gap between the waiters and chefs. After that, it comes relationship dialectics theory. There are three pairs of opposites which are closeness and openness, this i when an someone likes to have others attention and at the same time they like to be involve in one of a society or a group of friends. Then there is the autonomy and connection. This occurs when someone like to have both independency and dependency towards one another. Lastly there is the novelty and predictability. This is when someone that like special things, for example surprises or uniqueness and he or she is able to predict things and make it within the schedules planned. This is why there are people with high ambiguity and some other has low ambiguity. Furthermore, we learn about the social penetration theory,  when normal friends we will have normal activity like hanging out, when we are with our partners like girlfriends or boy friends we might hangout even more and even kissing. The relationship goes in deeper, the more you know the person the more you can or will talk with him, this will make the conversation deeper and more meaningful. After that, we learn the fifth relationship theory which is the social exchange theory, this will bring benefits when forming relationship with someone. Lastly there is the equity theory, this theory is more on forming professional relationship with people.

After that we learn about the dark side of interpersonal relationship. When our relationship gets complicated, it may lead to ugly things in life and with one people, this includes siblings and close friends.

One of the most common example is jealousy, or the other words called envy.

Below are the different types of jealous that may occur in our daily life:
a. Cognitive jealousy
b. Emotional jealousy
c. Behavioral jealousy

Cognitive jealousy occurs in our everyday life. For example, your groups of friends went out together for a movie but they didn't invite you because they could not contact you and you do not believe them, this is an example of cognitive jealousy. For emotion jealousy, it is seeing someone you like react to something that you could not control. For example, you are jealous that your girlfriend replying another guys text messages. Then there is the behavioural jealousy, this occurs when something changes and take place and that individual starts to get jealous. For example, you read your boyfriends text message to see weather he cheated on you or not.

At the end of the chapter, we learn the last thing which is relationship violence. This occurs when a relationship with someone is bad or it is hanging around. There are three types which are physical abuse, verbal or emotional abuse, it can also be from the internet like Facebook, and sexual abuse. 

Chapter 7

Next we learn about interpersonal communication, it is between sender and receiver from one to another and it requires more than 1 person.

Next the lecture taught us about the conversation process:

1. Opening – First step in conversation. For example, "Hello."

2. Feedforward – The second step of conversation, to open the channels of communication. For example “it is a nice day, isn’t?”.

2) preview future message “Hey, I have some good news”.

3. Business – The third stage and the ‘message’ portion.

4. Feedback – The fourth stage and response stage. “I understand what you're saying”.

5. Closing – The last stage. Most people say “goodbye!”



Then we learn about principles of conversation. There are three types which are principle of turn taking, principle of dialogue and principle of immediacy. Principle of turn taking is the conversation exchange of roles of between a speaker and listener, it can be consider as an exchanges of cues which it is called the conversational turns.

The picture above are the principles of turn taking. The first one which is turn maintaining are used by speaker. It is used to maintain the conversation with the listener, for example using eye contact or paralanguage. Then next there is the Turn yielding. Turn yielding are also used by speaker but this action occur when the speaker are done talking and they want to listen or wants to know the feedback, the speaker will give a gesture or giving some cues like "what do you think?" Furthermore, there is turn requesting. It is used by listener, when they wants to speak or to give feedback. The listener will gives a sign like butting in conversation or gives a sign that they wants to talk. Lastly, there is turn-denying. Turn denying are used by listener, this is to indicate that the listener is not responsive for example, shaking his head or not paying attention.

After that, we learn about the everyday conversation which we use everyday, this includes small talks, excuses and apologies, complimenting and advice. In our daily life we use excuses and apologies a lot. There are a few types of excuses that we use everyday which are the etiquette to maintain for excuses:

1. I Didn’t do it : This is when you strongly decline that you did it

2. It wasn’t so bad : Mid to neutral stand. You will tend to make the situation from worst to bad or  neutral.

3. Yes, but : This is when you admitted that your wrong but  you are still defensive towards your involvement

Beside the etiquette of excuse there are also etiquette for apologies. This is to maintain an open position and apologize if you are in the wrong. For example you say what you did like you really mean it. Then there is the etiquette of compliments. There are two types of compliments which is qualified compliment and unqualified compliment. For qualified compliment are used to praises someone who really justifies the words. For example someone who score very for a certain behaviours or intentions. For example, you told your teacher that she is very beautiful just because you want some tips from her it is not because that she is really beautiful.  Besides that, there are also complimenting and advice, everyone will have two options when they receives compliments, which is denial and acceptance. For example, people who says your welcome or thank you, or even smile with you are consider as acceptance. Then for denial, if you think that she is beautiful and you told her that she is beautiful but she denied it and said she looks terrible, that is denial.  Further more, there are also a few types of advices, this is also called meta-advices. The first one is explore options this is to advise others to seek out alternatives. For example, your friend never bought a car before, how will you advice her? Next, there is the expert advice or called second opinion. This is to advise others to emphasize or de-emphasize their beliefs and inclinations. (For example, your friend having a high fever, how would you advice him? Then there is the delay decision, this is too delay his or her decision, they wait for others to act. For example, your friend has two weeks to decide whether to go out with his family or friends, how would you advice? 

Chapter 6 (Part B)

The next part is all about communication, but it is a non-verbal communication. The video below is some examples of non-verbal communication.            

So for everyone including your friends, family, your lecture, or even boss will have a proxemic distances it is the specific distances you maintain between you yourself and others. It also depends on a variety of factors for example, cultural, gender, age, and personality. Edward Hall distinguishes four distances that define the type of relationships between people which is intimate space, personal space, social space and public space. The picture below shows the four types of distance that represent types of relationships between you and other people.

After that we learned about three types of territoriality, which is primary, secondary and public territories. The primary territories are areas which is your own, like your room, your seat or your school desk. The secondary territories are areas that you do not own, but you have already occupied. For example, you always eat at the same place in the canteen, or the place you always seat during english class. Public territories are open to everyone, for example the cinema hall or shopping mall.

Our primary and secondary territories are designate with 3 types of markers. First one is central markers. An item is placed to reserve a territory, for example leaving your bag on the seat that you want. Second is boundary markers. This is to set boundaries between your territory and that of others, such as the arm-rester separating your seat from other people on each side of the seat at a movie theater. The third one is ear markers. This is to identify the marks that indicate your possession of a territory or object, for example, name tags, trademarks, your signature.

Then we learn about artificial communication. In artificial communication there are colour communication. Colour communication evidence and suggest that colours that may influence our psychology or our perceptions and behaviour. Next is clothing and body adornment, people make inferences about who you are by the way you dress,  your hairstyle, your clothing, and even your tattoos. The last one is space decoration,people make inferences about you based on how you decorate your personal spaces for example your home, your office. How you decorate your private spaces communicates who you are. For example if you are a lazy person you would leave the house messy, or if you are a creative person you would paint your room with colourful colours.

After that we learn about smell communication. There are four types of category in smell communication which is attraction message, taste, memory and identification messages.

Then we learn about time communication. Time communication is use to treat, organise, and to react to time. Then the lecture taught us about culture and gestures Not all gestures is usable in all the country. For example, using the thumbs up meaning in Brazil or Argentina is a bad word.

Chapter 6

We learn about verbal message and in this chapter it is all about non-verbal message and non-verbal communication. Some of us had already learned about this non-verbal communication in oral communication last semester. But in this chapter we learn even deeper about the non-verbal message and communication. It is actually a communication but without words, but using gestures, body language, eye contact and everything that you can sense or develop other than hearing words. And then we learn about the benefits that most of us did not realise at all, which is the greater your ability to send and receive nonverbal signals, the higher your attraction, popularity, and psychological well-being are likely to be, and the other one is the greater your nonverbal skills is, the more powerful you will likely to be at influencing others.

 Then the lecture taught us about the integrating non-verbal and verbal message. It may use to form or complement impression. The picture below are some of the examples that made to you and from you.

Then we learn about the importance of non-verbal gestures and communications that used in various stages of relationships. When you are with employers, you appear professional and smart during work so they will give you respect and feel conformable to talk with you. For normal friends you adopt a openly and fluently look so that your friends would like to talk with you. Then for your best friends, most people would not hide anything by just letting it all out. Lastly, for your first few dates with your girlfriend or boyfriend you would be more polite and generous, but after that you would not care much about each other image in front of each other.

After that we learned about tun taking cues. For example, you would want others to reply you or want  others to answer you. The most common one that people use for example "what do you think?" or "is this good?" But most of them are non verbal, nod of your head, eye contact and more.

Then the lecture taught us about the channels of non verbal communication. The picture below are the channels of non-verbal communication:

Chapter 5 (Part B)

Then chapter 5 continues. We learn about disconfirmation and confirmation towards racism, sexism and ageism. Racism is anything to make race looks inferior to another race. For example, an employer only hire Chinese worker and do not want black skin people to work with him. Sexism is to support only towards a specific gender. For example  only trust male worker instead of female worker. Then there is ageism. It is also one of a discrimination based on age. For example, old people in the society are not welcome compare to the young generation teenagers.

Then we learn more about using verbal messages effectively.

1. Symbolise reality 

2. Express both facts and inference

3. Be relatively static

4. Obscure distinctions 

Before the class ends, the lecture grouped us into a pairs and find out any relevant racism, sexism, heterosexism and ageism examples in our daily lives.