Self-disclosure is the interaction process through which an individual may continuously divulge himself to another party. For instance, revealing things like goals, thoughts, beliefs, fears, feelings, and weaknesses to another part is part of self-disclosure (Levinson & Brown, 2011). I self-disclose regularity to my father and a college friend. That is why I chose the two to participate in the questionnaire interview. I find it comfortable to self-disclose to these parties because we have nurtured a mature relationship of trust, respect, and complete support for each other.
The benefits of self-disclosure include emotional support, assistance, and security. Through self-disclosure, an individual is able to get the emotional support that may be needed to overcome some private challenges such as a relationship breakup. In addition, self-disclosure may be important in building trust and personal security. The demerits of self-disclosure include betrayal and opinionated judgment (Baack, 2009).
The third-party may easily betray confidentiality in self-disclosure and misuse the information to the disadvantage of the source of disclosed information. Besides, the third party may use the information disclosed to develop a negative opinion about the person disclosing the information. In the case of the interviewees, they agreed that I am a confident person and their trend in responses was consistent. However, my father was very consistent with my responses than the other friends.
Self mediated communication has the impact of increasing the level of self-disclosure. Since computer-mediated communication operates of the parameters of similarity, direct questioning, self-presentation, and self-awareness, unlike face-to-face communication, self mediated communication give an individual a sense of privacy and the ability to hide identity (Thomas, 2009). For instance, I am always more willing to update a lot of private information with my friends than share it on any other platform. My negative experience with language was during a heated argument with a friend on football.
The friend stopped being objective and started attacking my personality. He called me names such as a fat pig and a good for nothing nitwit. I felt disrespected and misjudged by these strong words, which do not represent my personality (Levinson & Brown, 2011). My positive experience with language was during a debate with a friend on political parties in the country. Unlike the friend who was not so much into politics, I was more of a tutor during the discussion. I admired my articulation and comprehension of the topic of discussion. I felt enlightened and smart, considering that I considered this friend as knowledgeable in political issues.
I can effectively deal with being offended by someone’s use of a word by ignoring what I feel is nonobjective and an attack on my personality. It is ethical to correct a stereotyping remark since its aim is to pass a wrong judgment of the victim. This is necessary to affirm the principle of objectivity and flexibility within the scope of a discussion. Correcting a stereotyping remark from an employer or a professor will guarantee a changed view when the same discussion is made in the future. I have learned that listening is part of communication since a good listener makes the communication channel to be objective.
I discovered that my listening behavior determines the type of response I give. I realized that I am an informative listener. The two ineffective listening styles are defensive listening and selective listening. In one of the group discussions, I was challenged by a group member to explain why I did not do my part of the team assignment (Modaff, DeWine, & Butler, 2008). Instead of offering a direct answer, I became a selective listener by reminding the ground member to direct the question to other members who had not submitted the first assignment.
When an argument ignited over my response, I became a selective listener by reminding the group member to mind his own business. In order to become an effective listener, it is important to stay focused, relaxed, attentive, and open-minded. Besides, it is necessary to maintain eye contact, avoid interruptions, and only ask relevant questions within the scope of the speaker’s topic.
Self-evaluation skills on the individual concentration level during communication encompass actual and expected outcomes. Through designing the relevant evaluation model, concentration evaluation will remain active in developing dependence of interest attached to an activity, creating proactive relationships, and monitoring their interaction with physical aspects of interaction evaluation (Thomas, 2009). Eventually, this pays off since that individual will learn to appreciate the essence of learning and need to stay active. In order to test the above personal communication skills, I opted for a personal test through a list of questions testing different elements of personal skills (Modaff et al., 2008).
I answered the questions in the most sincere way to determine actual attributes and weaknesses in communication. I then proceeded to check the percentile score, which was at seventy percent. This confirmed that my personal communication skills are above average.
A person who posses good speaking skills may easily capture attention, respect, and credibility. Conversing with purpose and grace is an important individual accomplishment, which is valuable and a life skill. Unfortunately, I am still not very assertive in expressing a personal opinion, especially when communicating with persons I perceive as seniors. I sometimes use inexpressive language, even in serious discussions.
Inexpressive language is complicit erosion that is corrupt (Modaff et al., 2008). The overuse of the phrase ‘like’ has been an extraneous and problematic issue that recurs whenever I am given an opportunity to speak. I need additional training on effective conversing skills that should eliminate speaking distortion. This is also a similar case to my written expression. Addiction to words such as ‘like’ and any verbal crutch may lead to affliction. The verbal virus poses great difficulty for persons who suffer from its effects. The person who encounters such effects does not impress in an oral conversation. I am currently an anecdotal, first-hand, and intuitive person (Modaff et al., 2008).
I need to affirm speaking skills from any learning process. Thus, I will endeavor to address and eliminate stylistic or verbal miasma that affects personal speaking skills. Besides, I should concentrate on the content of communication to grow into a professional communicator and a good listener. It is advisable to clean up the content of any conversation to escape from the effects of verbal miasma.
In the contemporarily civilized society, politeness defines the integral aspect of interactive communication to positively facilitate life effectiveness and promote social life interaction. Since the world consists of many cultures, a universal definition of the term politeness is not possible since it depends on the communicative dialects and symbols employed by each culture. According to the phenomena theory put forward by Levinson and Brown, there are four categories of linguistics politeness.
These include the social norm view, the facial saving view, the convectional maxim view, and the convectional contract view. Generally, linguistics politeness depends on the background of an encoder and decodes, noting that different cultures have different voice tones and meanings for each tone (Modaff et al., 2008). In my case, the third parties think that I am a very polite person. This feedback has confirmed my notion of the self-concept and ability to remain a dependable party in a relationship.
The application of linguistics and expression of politeness is heavily dependent on cross-cultural communication (Levinson & Brown, 2011). As a matter of fact, the heterogeneity of societies plays a significant role in understanding perceived and actual politeness in expression. Yaffe (2010) asserts that expectations against habits acquired over a long period of time control the semantic process rather than perception on the side of an encoder or decoder.
Thus, politeness, in my situation, has a direct relationship to communication level, intonation, listenership, and understandable ‘formulaic’ as captured in the reflected appraisal. The eight levels of linguistics politeness are in a position to decipher “when to talk; what to say; pacing and pausing; listenership; intonation and prosody; formulaic; indirectness; and cohesion and coherence” (Baack, 2009, p. 194). Interestingly, I have internalized these aspects, as confirmed in the social comparison of the responses from the two interviewees.
My use of Cascadia learning outcomes was very impressive since my score in all communication concepts were above average. In my case, the third parties are convinced that I am an open-minded, easy-going, fruitful, and ‘easy to interact-with’ person. However, they seem to suggest that I am impatient and unpredictable, especially when under stressful situations.
References
Baack, D. (2009). Management Communication. Alabama, Al: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Levinson, S., & Brown, P. (2011). Politeness: some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Modaff, D. P., DeWine, S., & Butler, J. (2008). Organizational communication: Foundations, challenges, and misunderstandings (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
Thomas, J. (2009). Meaning in interaction: An introduction to pragmatics. London: Longman.
Yaffe, P. (2010). Techniques of persuasive Communication. Web.