Introduction
Interpersonal communication is the process of sharing one’s opinion, ideas and thoughts with the vis-à-vis, as Baran (2011) explains. Therefore, interpersonal communication skills can be considered an acquired behavior that can be developed with help of further practice. As Weiten (2011) clarifies, interpersonal communication includes sending message and receiving message between two or more individuals and can include all aspects of communication such as listening, persuading, asserting, nonverbal communication and more (p. 243).
As a rule, the communicative act carried out between few people is considered the essence of interpersonal communication, whereas the conversation within a large group of people is usually related to another idea of a communicative act. It must be kept in mind that the process of communication covers not only the delivery of certain information, but also includes certain emotional relationships within the people involved, as DeVito (2009) explains.
One of the keys to effective interpersonal communication is trying to relate to the people you are interacting with and share something at a basic level. When sharing the interaction, people satisfy their need to make a part of a social community and to get their fair share of affection and attention, as well as help the participants display control over cognitive function (DeVito 2009).
He’s just not that into you summary
He’s just not that into you, a movie released in 2009, talks about nine people trying to overcome the challenges of reading human behavior while in relationships. The movie is based on a book of articles, He’s just not that into you, by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. In the movie, all nine lives intertwine with one another, with each of the duets being a couple, friend or one’s friend’s friend. Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) cannot read signals from any of the men she dates in her search to find Mr. Right and have her happy ending but finally gets advise from Alex (Justin Long), a bar owner, who is sweet but cynical when it comes to love affairs. Janine (Jennifer Connolly) and Ben (Bradley Cooper) are the loving married couple, until Ben meets Anna (Scarlet Johansson) in a checkout line.
Anna and Ben have an affair while Connor Barry (Kevin Connolly) is still trying to pursue her. Neil (Ben Affleck) has been dating Beth (Jenifer Aniston) for seven years when she finally dumps him because he doesn’t want to marry her. Mary (Drew Barrymore) is an advertising agent, trying to find love online (Behrendt & Tuccillo 2004). As one can see, the plot is quite complicated, with all these twists and turns.
Analysis of the scenario
The movie portrays the story of nine people seeking true love and in their search they demonstrate the different stages of building and maintaining a relationship. There are some communication skills that Gigi learns in her up and down movements trying to find true love and she applies them to communicate in her relationship better while in the search for a happy ending. Gigi is hopeless in search of Mr. Right as she has a problem with using interpersonal communication to escalate on the relational development model. She usually skips the preinteraction stage and enters the acquaintance stage by being set up on blind dates.
The blind dates do not allow her to form an initial impression through passive strategy meanwhile, Gig and Janine are friends who share all sorts of secrets hence, Janine talks about the affair her husband had with Gigi because she trusts and believes Gigi is just a good friend and the two have a relationship that withstands triumphs since they talk about anything with each other.
Alex became a good friend to Gigi and Gigi always went to him for almost all her relationship advice indicating the amount of between them. Before Gigi met Alex she never followed anyone’s advice, which shows the great trust she puts into Alex’s advices and guidance. Alex and Gigi at first are friends, Alex obviously patronizing his new acquaintance, but the relationships between them develop rather fats, which can be considered from the information – persuasion dyad: it is evident that on the early stage of their relationships, the couple exchanged information about each other, while on the latter stages of their relations, both tried to persuade each other in their irresistibility and create more intimate relationships.
Their conversations are honest and they spend a lot of time together which makes Gigi jump to conclusion that Alex likes her because of the signs that she’s seen, “like it was good to hear from me, you talked to me even when you were with a girl, and I felt something,’’ Gigi explains to Alex some of the signs. Gigi obviously misread the signs as an invitation to proceed to a romantic intimate level since Alex denied any feelings and their friendship ended but Alex later realized that she is the one for him and showed up at her door step and apologized. The above-mentioned situation can also serve as an example of the dyad of people and the world – the image that people build and the image that the rest of the world sees.
Gigi struggled with her interpersonal communication not only in the escalation stages but also in the de-escalation process, especially in the separation with Alex as friends. This episode can be considered an example of the dyad concerning people’s behavior and the relationships they maintain – or try to maintain, as in Gigi’s case – unfortunately, in vain.
Looking closer at the relations between Gigi and Alex, one can also trace the dyad of the verbal and non-verbal elements of communication. It is clear that each of them cannot speak their minds as they fall in love with each other. At this point, the contradictions between what they say and what they do become absolutely evident, which adds a specific humor to the situation. However, as DeVito (2009) reassures, such difference between the verbal and non-verbal messages is nothing out of the ordinary, and is quite understood in the delicate situation the characters are trapped in.
People apply social categories to themselves and others to clarify their perception of the social world and their place in it and thus render it more meaningful and predictable- identification reduces subjective uncertainty. Our social identities tend to be activated when we communicate with strangers because we define strangers as being different from us in terms of some group membership. The social identity activated depends on how we categorize ourselves and the strangers with whom we are interacting with. The way people feel how they perceive others and how they perceive the world all comes from effective communication due to the fact that people have different opinions on different things, as Baran & Davis 2011 claim.
Duncan & Moriarty (1998) suggest that it is impossible to have relationships without communication. As Duncan & Moriarty (1998) explain, communication is the human activity that helps to build relationships among people despite their differences.
Verbal communication presupposes any forms of a certain information delivery, whether the message is written or spoken. Verbal communication is used to inform the people around about the needs and wants of an individual or to offer the others certain valuable information. It must be taken into account that the essence of communication is clarification. People often act in such a way that their actions are misunderstood and their deeds are misinterpreted. Verbal communication helps to solve the misconceptions arising inevitable in the process of interaction and helps to restore the missing information. Verbal communication is also used to correct a wrong thus saying, “I’m sorry,” is often more effective than an action.
Verbal communication can also be used to make people act in a certain way or to dictate them certain ideas. However, verbal communication also allows to debate on a number of issues and discuss complexities, helping people to share their opinions and reach a consensus. Along with verbal communication, there is non-verbal communication, which can affect the way people perceive the new information and exchange messages considerably, though rather subtly. Non-verbal communication presupposes a conscious or subconscious use of body language, that is, making use of gestures and facial expressions, establishing eye contact and taking certain posture. It is quite curious that the non-verbal messages that people send to their vis-à-vis can both confirm and deny what they say. A phenomenon belonging to the sphere of subconscious, non-verbal language cannot lie.
Relationships are developed when a person is an effective listener and when there is a lot of communication between two parties. Listening doesn’t simply mean hearing; it presupposes the necessity to understand another person’s point of view, which means that one has to consider the message that (s)he is going to convey to the audience before speaking, taking certain time. Meanwhile, the other people can ask for clarifications, digest the information they have just received and offer their own arguments.
Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the way the other people speak, the facial expressions they have and the body language they use. The tactics that incorporates the use of both verbal and non-verbal language enhances better understanding among individuals. There can be times when the combination of a verbal and non-verbal language makes a contradiction – for instance, a smile on one’s face when expressing regret, or frowning while saying the words of gratitude to someone. Trust also plays a major role in developing a relationship without trust, a relationship between two or more people deteriorates easily (Baxter & Braithwaite 2008).
A person’s goal in speaking to a group is to inform, persuade or entertain them. To attain any or all of those objectives, one should know their interests, likes and dislikes therefore, speaking to a group of people it is important to learn as much about them and their interests as possible. Find information about them and their mood at the beginning and during one’s speech then tailor the speech to their needs and to better assure a positive reaction from them. Confidence also comes with good speech skills. Informative speeches routinely include humor or interesting comments to entertain the audience.
A speech to inform has a primary goal of increasing listeners understanding awareness, or knowledge of some topic, a speaker might want listeners to understand the rights guaranteed in the bill of rights, so the primary purpose is to enrich the listeners’ knowledge. On the other hand, a speech to inform may take the form of demonstration in which the speaker shows how to do something while giving a verbal explanation (Foss et al. 2007).
A speech to persuade aims to change listeners’ attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors or to motivate them to take some action. Persuasive goals are to influence attitudes, to change practices, and to alter beliefs. Influential speeches aim to persuade, to change what people believe, think or do therefore, its communication requires, form, content and function. Learning how to advance communication, one needs to work in a more sophisticated level, be more aware and more sensitive to the impression that they might give others. The function of communication is about creating and keeping contact between people, this could be whether it is for a short or long duration.
The ‘form’ of communication can come in various ways. It is verbal and non-verbal; it could be a letter, e-mail, telephone conversation or a reciprocal interaction in person. The content, however, is about what is meant by that communication. It could be what it is said, how it is said and what is written. In order to improve communication, an idea of the structure of communication is vital. It teaches us to be organized in how to express what we want to say in the most appropriate of times.
In the process of interpersonal communication, complexities inevitably arise, which somewhat hinders the effective delivery of the message and makes the participants of the communication upset. There is no doubt that building effective interpersonal communication can bring certain benefits, yet one has to understand that these benefits can also prove the pitfalls for the participants of the communication to avoid. On the one hand, constant interaction with the world around helps the people build the basis for their social skills and live comfortable in certain environment. Making people stronger, these interactions prove the most valuable experience that must not be neglected. Adding to the self-image that one builds throughout one’s entire life, constant communications help one to become a part of society. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the results of some communications can be deplorable because of the misunderstandings arising.
It must be kept in mind that the lack of communication results in certain deviations in one’s social development. Without proper socializing with the rest of the humankind, one can feel that (s)he does not belong in the environment that surrounds him/her. Hence, communication, both verbal and non-verbal, is an essential part of any personality’s development.
It is also essential that the development of communication skills, once started, goes on constantly, enriching one’s record with the most essential experience that is bound to help one build further relationships based on the models created. Moreover, because of the close proximity, which a typical communication between two individuals occurs, one can get an invaluable experience of comprising the verbal and non-verbal elements of communication; however, with the modern technologies, a distanced communication that presupposes only the verbal interaction, occurs. Though one cannot predict with one-hundred percent certainty whether the restriction to only verbal communication, sometimes excluding even the process of listening, like sending and receiving an email, can lead to, the prognoses for the future are not quite satisfying, since the computer mediation in people’s interaction is rather undesirable (Berger & Calabrese 2005).
Conclusion
Interpersonal communication skills are a collection of processes used to interact with other people, and they are an important component of the relationship building process. These skills presuppose putting certain ideas and thoughts into words and written speech, as well as reading or the audio perception of a certain message. These are the main levels of interpersonal communication, and the capability to excel at one or all dictates an individual’s expertise at interpersonal communication since it is the way you interpret the spoken word or the gesture, according to your own rights, which is going to make all the difference between understanding what was being conveyed or one ending up looking at the speaker with a complete blank look on one’s face. It is advisable to be able to understand the speaker and know how to interpret his or her message well.
References
Baran, S. & Davis, D. (2011). Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future. Melbourne: Cengage Learning. Web.
Baxter, L. & Braithwaite, D. (2008). Engaging theories in interpersonal communication: multiple perspectives. New York: Sage Publications. Web.
Behrendt, G. & Tuccillo, L. (2004). He’s just not into you. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment. Web.
Berger, C. R. & Calabrese, R. J. (2005). Some Exploration in Initial Interaction and Beyond: Toward a Developmental Theory of Communication. Human Communication Research. Web.
DeVito, J. (2009). Interpersonal Communication. Harlow: Pearson Education Group. Web.
Foss, K. et al. (2007). Theories of human communication. Cengage Learning. Web.
Weiten, W., et al. (2011). Psychology applied to modern life: Adjustment in the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Cengage Learning. Web.