Terms list of all content from both the literature and the lectures

IHC TERMS LIST

CHAPTER 1 – OVERVIEW OF COMMUNICATION
- Communication  the transactional use of symbols, influenced guided and understood in
the context of relationships
o Affected by culture, relationships, context and identity
o Communication as an action: sender sends a message (Irrelevant whether or not the
message is received)
o Communication as an interaction: sender sends a message and the receiver
responds (exchange of info between 2+ persons)
o Communication as a transaction: the construction of shared
meanings/understandings between 2+ persons
o Constitutive approach of communication: communication can create/bring to
existence something that want there before (relationships, symbols…)
- Symbol  arbitrarily chosen representation of something (object, person, place)
o Either verbal (VC) or non-verbal (NVC involves signs, anything that represents
something other than itself)
- Socially construction  the way in which symbols take on meaning in a social context or
society as they are used over time
- Sign  Indicator of something specific (Wet streets are a sing of rain)
o Direct connection with what it represents
- Medium  means in which a text is conveyed
- Meaning  what a symbol represents
o Can be related to different symbols
- Representation communication  describes facts or conveys information (contrast with
presentation)
- Presentational communication  one person's particular version of, or "take" on, the facts
or events
- Communication Frame  a boundary around a conversation that pulls one's attention
toward certain things and away from others
- Frames  basic forms of knowledge that provides a definition of a scenario
o Because both people agree on the nature of the situation
o Because cultural assumptions are built into the interaction

CHAPTER 2 – HISTORIES AND CONTEXTS OF COMMUNICATION
- Historiography  the study of the persuasive effect of writing history in particular ways and
the reasons why particular reports and analyses are offered by specific authors
o Social cultural positioning of authors influences what they write (writing about social
propaganda during the World War II)
- 3 approaches to the study of communication
o Social Scientific approach  view world as objective and is based on facts
 Seeks to describe communication/discover connections between
phenomena and causal patterns
 Involves experiments and questionnaires
 For them truth exists and is independent
o Interpretivist approach  views communication as creative and unpredictable
 Rejects idea of a single reality
 Seeks to understand communication experience
o Critical approach  seeks to identify hidden symbolic structures that create
disadvantages in a society

, - Interpersonal communication  direct, face-to-face communication between two or more
people FAMILY COMMUNICATION
- Group communication  communication among members of a team or a collective about
topics such as goals, strategies, and conflict
- Mass communication  the communication of a concept or message to large audiences
- Health communication  the study of communication that has an effect on human health
- Organizational communication  the study of human communication as it occurs within
organizations or workplaces
- Political communication  the use of media to convey messages or information related to
government issues, campaigns or public offices
- Rhetorical criticism  the process of using a method or standards to evaluate the
effectiveness and appropriateness of messages

CHAPTER 3 – IDENTITIES, PERCEPTION AND COMMUNICATION
- Identity  a person’s uniqueness, presented by descriptions, self-concept and inner
thoughts, is symbolized in interactions with other people, and presented for their
assessment and moral evaluation
o Interconnected with communication and relationships
o People construct an identity throughout life
- Perception  Involves how a person views the world
o Process of actively organizing, interpreting and evaluating all things that make up
your world
- Identities, relationships, cultural membership are created through communication with
others
- The onion model  sees identity as an onion, each time you go to a deeper layer, more
intimate the information about a person will be (says that there is a core self)
- People do not have core self
o Multiple experiences in everyday life challenges the idea of having a core self
 Different moods: sometimes feeling outgoing and other times more
reserved
 Different situations: person may seem unfriendly at school but sociable at
work
 Different relationships: people transact identities given the many different
relationships shared with others
 Different evaluations: people can evaluate the same person in different
ways
- Everyone selects/focus more on somethings than others, our beliefs, attitudes and values
affect the selection process
o Selective Exposure: Idea that you are more likely to expose yourself to things that
support your beliefs, attitudes, values
 Explains why people are more likely to interact with those similar to them
o Selective Perception: idea that you are more likely to perceive things that support
your beliefs, attitude, values
 Explains why different people might evaluate the same person differently
o Selective memory: Idea that you might recall thins that support your beliefs,
attitudes and values
- When you receive info, it is connected to previous info, already organized/stored in your
head
o Disadvantage: the more you behave in a certain way, the more often you view the
world in the same way
o 3 ways of organizing info:

,  Schemata: mental structure used to organize info by clustering associated
material (info about relationships can be connected in relationship
schemata)
 Prototype: the best case-example of something (you may have a prototype
of a romantic partner)
 Personal Constructs: Individualized ways of understanding the world (can be
used in the dev. of prototypes, determine how close someone may come to
meeting all the criteria
- Identities are symbolically transacted through communication with others
o Master identities: Identities that a person may be born with, but are
socially/symbolically created/performed
o Symbolic self: the self that is transacted in interaction with others, that arises from
social interaction, does not belong to you
o Symbolic interactionism: the way social forces affect an individual’s view of them
self
o Attitude of reflection: thinking about how you look in other people’s eyes
- People stablish identities by telling others about themselves
o Self-description: description that involves info about yourself that is obvious to
others through appearance and behavior (French accent=I’m French)
 Positions people into categories
o Self-disclosure: the revelation of personal information, that others couldn’t know
unless the person told them
- Narratives: people use stories to tell others something about themselves and help shape a
sense of who they are for others
o People adapt stories of their identities for a social context
o Stories are influenced by society/culture, and by the specific person whom they are
being told
- Identity construction takes place because of others
o Altercasting: How someone’s communication can impose, support, reject someone’s
identity
o Interaction with others shape how you view yourself
o Facework: how someone present their identity in public (intended to look good)
o Front region: when your professional self is performed
 Place where social interaction is regarded under public scrutiny, so have to
present your best self
o Back region: when social interaction is not under public scrutiny, people don’t have
to present their public face
o Structural perspective
o Functional perspective

CHAPTER 4 – VERBAL COMMUNICATION (VC)
- Verbal Communication  the usage of language to connect with another mind
- Polysemy  multiple meanings for the same word/symbols
 Creates ambiguity (the better you know the, the less ambiguity there is)
- Words are given two types of meanings:
o Denotative meaning: general meaning of a word ( “this is a cat”)
o Connotative meaning: additional meanings associated with a word/object
 About understanding the implications/background behind the same words
- The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis  the idea that it is the names of objects and ideas that make
verbal distinctions and help you make conceptual distinctions rather than the other way
around; the language you speak impacts how you view the world