Jake Pellegrino

DP-1 Professor Berkos

Communications 491

In chapter, one I learned about communication and the vast misconception that
communication is easy, and viewing a short four-minute video will make you proficient. I read
about Dances definitions of communication: level of observation, intentionality, and normative
judgement. People sometimes take different approaches when viewing Dances definitions, some
people take a receiver orientation approach while other people take a normative judgement
approach, these all show the flexibility of communications. I then learned about the nine
different contexts of communication: cognitive, individual and social, interpersonal,
intercultural, persuasive, group, organizational, mediated, mass communication, and how they
are applied. I then read about communication competence and the successful balance between
effectiveness and appropriateness. The chapter explains that in order to be an effective
communicator you have to know when to be assertive to be effective and when to back off to be
equally as effective. Next, I read about different kinds of theories, commonsense, working, and
scholarly. All of these theories work well for different situations, commonsense are theories that
you make up from your own experience or an experience someone close to you had. The
Working theory is simplifications made in the workplace to help make specific jobs easier.
Along with these three types of theories, I read about how to evaluate theory in general. The
book explains that there is certain criteria needed when evaluating theory, accuracy, practicality,
succinctness, consistency, and acuity.

Last week during class, we talked about the definition of communication and how many
different ways it can be defined. In class we broke up into groups, every group had a different
definition of communication but they were all very similar. This chapter helped clear up some
uncertainties I had from class, now I can give people a clear definition of communication when
asked. This chapter was helpful to clarify the differences between theories, concepts, and
models. I had a good idea at the differences between all of them but I have struggled in the past
differentiating them. When doing research for class or for future endeavors it is going to be
helpful to know the differences between them, in research methods it would have been nice to
have this information. This chapter talked about three different theories that will also help me in
future research, commonsense, working, and scholarly. The biggest take away from the three
different theories, knowing the difference from a scholarly theory and the other two theories.
Later in the chapter they talk about evaluating theories, this is going to go hand in hand with
knowing the difference between the three theories. Having the ability to distinguish what theories
are the best to use for research, especially when using scholarly theories, will be huge for me to
find the best theories to use. Communications is very flexible depending on the situation that you
are in; knowing the context of communication is going to help when interacting with people in
the future. Having the ability to know when it is the right time to use communication theories
related to interpersonal communication, talking face to face, and using theories related to
different social situations I may be in will put me ahead of non-comm majors. Having the basic
knowledge from this chapter will help me communicate with my future employees, boss, co-
workers, and people in general. The first chapter helped refresh my memory on a few basic
communication information that I will be able to use in the work force almost immediately.
Since the information will be so fresh in my mind, I can apply this information in upcoming
interviews and interactions with future employees.