comm101-conflict

Deetz describes in an overview in chapter 36, that conflict can be more beneficial than people might think.  It allows people in workplaces to voice their complaints and vent their frustrations.  It could also be applied to media as well.  Let's say for instance that a company wrongfully took money from a client and the client didn't even know until much later.  A good tool for that client to use in such a case is their local news station.  I've seen reports on people who had complaints to file on a particular company and they in turn go to their news station with their story as a result of the accused company taking no action to right the wrong bestowed on the client.  

Another way conflict can work for the benefit of a group or organization is that it can help shape and re-evaluate company procedures and policies.  At my work we have opinion surveys that print out on customer's receipts and we tell them about it.  They basically have the power to grade the entire store on the service and overall experience and add comments or complaints on the store.  

Comm101-shared interpretation

Mead notes that humans act toward eachother on the basis of the meanings they assign to people.  So to make things clear, I guess we can either act civil or just plain mean to people based on the meaning we apply to them.  Where does the meaning come from? It can come from experiences or previous interaction.  The point is that we apply meaning to everything which determines our actions in the future. 

Pearce and Cronens coordinated management of meaning basically tells us that we create meaning socially.  Meaning, that part of our actions towards others can be stemmed or influenced by other people.  We tend to go with what makes us not a target for just about anything.  Have you ever been in a meeting at work and they ask if there is anything that they would like to talk about?  What do you think happens?  Nobody wants to talk.  Even though you know some people want to say something, it's easier to just remain quiet because you don't want to be the minority in the spiral of silence.  But in this case, everyone just wants to get out of the darn meeting early and the person who does want to say something is viewed as the one who ruins their chances of that.

comm101-soical exchange theory

In chapter 36 the theory of social exchange is overviewed.  It states that we hold our relationships based on benefits and costs of keeping them.  Let's take our jobs for instance.  How much can we tolerate from our co-workers and our bosses if they make our job difficult?  The benefit would be to keep the job for financial reasons but then the cost would be our possible sanity.  

Or how about a friend that you had that was so annoying but he always invited you to go to cool places like sports events or concerts.  Our book states that communication is motivated by our basic social need for affiliation, achievement, and control.  If we didn't have any other friends would we continue to keep them as a friend?

Do we look at our current friendships and evaluate them based on what our  needs are?  Do we only call certain friends for certain occasions or ask them certain questions?

comm101-problem of translation

In chapter 35 it talks about how translation between men and women's dialogue can be misinterpreted or not understood.  Kramrae states that" in order to participate in society women must transform their own models in terms of the received male system of expression."

I can say that its hard for me to understand women sometimes.  And I can imagine that it's more than impossible for women to understand us men sometimes.  Sorry about that.  But when it comes expressing and telling about feelings, I have to say that guys aren't the greatest at expressing their feelings in words.  "I don't know" seems to be a frequent answer to the "how do you feel?" question.  For women to express their emotions to us, it may just go over our heads.  So naturally our response would be, "what do you want me to do?"

But there is always room for improvement.  I've learned a lot due to the fact I've made a lot of mistakes on certain levels of communication.  I think it's alright that there are communication differences between men and women.  More often that not, people learn something new everyday because of it.

Comm 101-muted group theory

In chapter 35 the idea of muted group theory is explained with the differences in both men and women.  

I'd like to think that most cultures give women a chance for equality in voice, both in its value and worthiness.  But somehow I don't think its possible.  It's hard to believe that women in some parts of the world, and even here, don't have as much of a voice because, one, they probably aren't allowed to speak when they're husband is talking with other men, and two, the perception that just because "she's a woman" she wouldn't know anything about it mentality is still occurs.  I've seen it happen before where guys hang around with other guys and a women doesn't really linger around because for some reason she knows it's "guy time."

It could also be an expectation imprinted in our genetic codes where when a couple goes out to a get together, the guys will generally go and hang out with the other guys while the women congregate with the other women.  Not much quality time spent together I would say.  

My father is very much like this in a lot of ways.  Although there was someone who he kind of befriended as "just one of the guys."  She had just got hired on to his fire department and she was the only woman.  Naturally there were doubts about her abilities.  But he took it upon himself to teach her all the things he knew and he became best friends with her despite what everyone else thought.  He respects her for all the things she learned and could already do in the department.  In fact, he said that she could do a lot of things better than some of the other fire fighters.  She put up with all of his lame jokes and pranks and in turn she learned from an old-school firefighter like my dad.  Gender was never an issue with the two.  In fact, she was the only one he liked out of the whole department.  I still find this surprising of a story because my Dad has a chauvinistic side to him that doesn't stay dormant for very long.  But he does have his good moments.  

CoMM 101-gender

In chapter 34, Wood explains that gender is a cultural construct rather than a biological characteristic.  Now that I think about it it kind of makes sense.  Everything that is in this world, material things, jobs, relationship roles, you name it, it is constructed to fit the presumed characteristics of male or female.  

When we were kids we got toys that were gender specific.  Boys toy's were soldiers, or trucks, and girls toys were dolls and anything pink.  Why is that?  It is part of society that allows this construct to continue.  And it has become a societal rule for some reason.  Which cases do not reflect this social construct?  I can't really think of a case.  I can only think of cases where the female construct is rebelled against.  For example, I had a friend that used to dress in very "manly" clothes.  Although she did kind of act like a guy she always got picked on for that.  Other people expected and sometimes told her she should dress more feminine.  

I also bought a gift for my unborn niece.  I bought her some infant sized Converse shoes.  I was going to go with black or red but something made me go with pink.  I figured, why not pink, at least they're Converse shoes.  I thought they were a little out of the ordinary for a girl anyway.  

Comm101-framing

In chapter 28, the theory of framing is discussed and it almost sounds like agenda setting.  It is a little different though.  Let's say for instance you see a report on a robbery of a quik mart or gasoline station.  If the report sets up the possible reason for the robbery a certain way, like if it was a bad neighborhood and it was bound to happen, then that is an example of how it was framed.  Under a community perspective.

Other stories that we may hear or read about are also framed differently.  Newspapers tend to catch our attention with sometimes excited headlines or headlines with a direct intent.  Typically they use a person's name to get your attention.  Depending on the reputation of that person, the person whose attention this does catch, will think, "what has he done now"  or emphatically think "what's going on with him."

Framing not only  gets us to prepare specific feelings but it also has the intent to do so.