Chapter 8

    

    Verbal communication is any written or spoken language that leads/ends with an interaction from people. We regularly use words to communicate in various ways. There are 5 characteristics of language. It is symbolic, it is governed by rules, it is flexible, cultural, and it evolves. "Language guides our interactions (page 208)." It shapes our interpersonal encounters, our thoughts, and our perceptions of reality. "We are mentally constrained by language to think only certain thoughts, and we cannot interpret the world in neutral ways because we always see the world through the lens of our languages. (Page 209)."

    In order to communicate effectively we must speak in a way that is easily understandable, take responsibility and ownership over what we are communicating/saying, and make others feel included. "To produce understandable messages, we have to abide by the Cooperative Principle: making our conversational contributions as informative, honest, relevant, and clear as is required, given the purposes of the encounters in which we’re involved (Grice, 1989)." (Page 216.)