COM101 Blog Entry 07
What is an organisation? An organisation is a system consisting of a large number of people working together in a structured way to accomplish multiple goals. (Trenholm, 2005) An example is a business company. Business companies in different countries have different cultures. I’ve worked in Takashimaya before. If I remember correctly, as I have always taken the 2nd shift, the national anthem of Japan will be played before the shopping centre opens in the morning. The Japanese value their country and their emperor to a great extent; thus, they will sing the national anthem before they start work in an organisational company. Furthermore, I had to use punch cards to allow the company to monitor my ‘reporting to work’ time and ‘knocking off’ time. It was rather strict as it’s a Japanese company. No tea-breaks were allowed, partly because I was a sales assistant. We would always avoid our department head, as she would somtimes give us things to do when she sees us. There isn’t much of an organisational script for new hire of temporary staff. The existing staff will just teach the new temporary staff when it’s needed only; the new temporary staff will just hang out with the existing temporary staff and learn some ropes from them, especially learning from them how to communicate well with the permanent staff, because they don’t really like temporary staff. I learnt which permanent staff whom I had to praise and how to praise. Rather stupid, I found it so, but it was just a script to follow, a need perhaps, for me to get into their good books and to be able to get help from them when I need.
The organisational culture varies between different companies within the same country, but it varies much more between companies of different countries. The differences between a United States company and a Japanese company are distinct and are a lot. There are a number of key concepts of a Japanese company. Firstly, once a worker is hired by the company, he or she will stay on in it until he or she retires, unless the worker doesn’t want to collect his or her full remaining salary when he or she retires. Compared to a United States company, this is so different. Even in companies in S’pore, they are like United States companies; workers come and go, they either quit, get fired easily or get retrenched. An average American has 6-8 different jobs and 3-4 different occupations over the years. The second main point about a Japanese company is that workers are assigned various jobs within a company, the workers’ careers are developed within a company; the business system is cross functional. For e.g., a marketing senior manager can be promoted to be a Human Resource vice president. However, on the other hand, for United States companies, the business system is vertical functional, which means that the workers are promoted within a department only. Their workers’ careers are developed within a market. For a Japanese company, many metaphors, stories and rites reflect the communication practices in them. There is a heavy empahsis and usage of such methods. Employees have to be smart enough to be able to read between the lines and learn the company values etc. However, for United States companies, it is mostly verbal instructions given for everything, one most of the time can just take the face value of the communications going on.
COM101 Blog Entry 06
Today, I will be talking about CMC. Guess what’s that? I guess it’s not really a common term like SMS (short message service), but it’s a very common kind of communication that we all use, or at least most of us use everyday. It’s Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). It refers to any form of communciation using computers and computer networks, such as emails, electronic conferences, newsgroups and Web chats. It allows access and interaction between people and databases all over the world. Even for this assignment in my COM101 module, it’s through CMC. My lecturer can check whether we have done our blog entries on time at any time she wishes, though she said that she’ll check after the dateline only. This is CMC. As long as the computer is the medium of the communication, it is CMC.
What do you all think about CMC? Is it good or bad? I think, most of the time, there are two sides of a coin. CMC can be both good and bad; and in the society now, it is more good than bad. The main bad part about it is the internet crimes. There have not only been cases of hacking accounts and stealing money through the internet, but also sex crimes with the help of the internet. Secondly, we lose the social contact that we have with people, it becomes ‘cold’ and ‘impersonal’. Thirdly, we can take on different identities and personae; in the end, we suspect the real identities of people over CMC through the cyberspace. On the other hand, the advantages of CMC flow out non-stop. There are an uncountable number of advantages.
Recently, there is a new free online virtual world called ‘Second Life’, apart from all these virtual cyberspace online games which children or people play. People in this world can live almost like the way they live in real life, and better still, if their real life is not what they want, they can live this desired life in this virtual world! This is sooo cool! =D CMC is definitely here to stay. So we should just make the best out of it and enjoy it. So what do you all think about CMC? =D
COM101 Blog Entry 05
Did you ever know that the ‘thumbs up’ non verbal sign implies a cue of insult or obscenity in Nigeria, Bangladesh and Greece? Adding on, did you know that a head nod implies a ‘no’ in Greece and Turkey and that a ‘OK’ sign means worthless in France and obscenity in Brazil? This is because each country has a different culture and each culture has its own somewhat distinct set of non verbal communication called emblems. (Emblems are commonly used gestures or other body moveements that are used to substitute words.) Our interpretation for these non-verbal cues is similar to many other countries I guess, and it’s definitely the same as the United States. For U.S. and Singapore, the ‘thumbs up’ cue means ‘I agree’ or ‘good’, the head nod means ‘yes’ and the ‘OK’ sign means okay. It all depends on the culture one is in. In fact, in a high context/collectivist society, non-verbal communication is placed with a greater emphasis and is more prevalent, than a low context/individualist society.
To me, culture is basically the way of life, in simple terms. The proper definition is culture is a ‘template for living’. It tells us who we are, what groups we belong to and how we live our lives. There is a general culture in society, and in society, there are many cultures; corporate cultures, school cultures, race cultures, religion cultures and even family cultures. The culture in Singapore’s society has changed so much. My grandmother never had an education, and this is her only regret in life. Back then when she was young, her father did not allow her to go to school; he wanted her to learn how to do housework as in the society back then, women were deemed as not important and were full-time housewives. She would cry and protest, and go on hunger strikes, to try to persuade her father to let her go to school, but it was all in vain and her mother would ask her to give up trying. The culture was such back then. It was a very collectivist society. Families would conform readily and almost fully to the culture in their society. Her father wanted to follow and followed strictly to the culture in the society back then, I think he also wanted to save his face from criticisms from friends and relatives if he were to allow his daughter to go to school. This is also a characteristic of a collectivist society – face-saving. My grandmother had to listen to her father, because I think that she was a very obedient girl/daughter and her father could also stop her fully from going to school even if she had rebelled. Children at that time mostly listened to their parents and took care of them when they grew up. Anyway, this was like around 80 years ago as my grandmother is 92 or 93 this year already. The culture in Singapore’s society has changed sooo much since then. Now it’s getting towards an individualist society, with the influence of the West. There is freedom to study. Everyone has a right to study and in fact, it is compulsory that every Singapore child starts going to school at the age of six or seven. What do you guys think about the culture in Singapore now? =p
COM101 Blog Entry 04
Group Communication. Trenholm (2004) said that a group is “a collection of individuals who, as a result of interacting with one another over time, become interdependent, developing shared patterns of behaviour and a collective identity”.
Yup, I feel that this is very true. Let me describe the characteristics of a group in general/theory, and then describe the characteristics of the groups that I’ve been in (in practical/real-life). I feel that the biggest primary characterisc of a group is the Interaction between the group members; there has to be communication between the members. We either interact in a group to do a task and/or satisfy social or relational needs of a group. Secondly, and also in relation to the task interaction, we have Goal Orientation as the second biggest primary characteristic of a group; some goals are well defined while some are not; nevertheless, they are still goals of that group which cause an influence on the behaviour of that group. Goal Orientation then defines the Structure of the group. Structure is defined as a relatively stable pattern of relationships among the group members. It is based on two elements, which are the roles and norms of the group. Group roles refer to the responsibility or responsibilities the individual member takes upon while norms are requirements of acceptable or expected behaviours. Fourthly, the degree of Cohesion is a primary characteristic of a group too; this refers to how united or how much of the ‘we-ness’ spirit/mentality the group members have. There are two forms of cohesion: interactional cohesion and perceptual cohesion. Interactional Cohesion is the ‘efficiency of collective efforts by group members to reach group goals’. Perceptual Cohesion is ‘based on individual member’s feelings of solidarity with other members and their degree of loyaly to the group itself’ (Adler & Rodman, 2006). The fifth characteristic of a group is Social Identity. It is the perceptions by individual members of their individual social identies that are derived from being in that group.
Yup, this is very relevant for my different groups of friends (from past to present), and my different Core Curricular Activities (CCAs) that I was in when I was in my primary and secondary school and junior college. In primary school, I was in the ensemble; I loved to play the recorder and was very good in it. We all had a common goal in this CCA, which is to play nice and good music with our instruments, be it in concert practices or concerts. An individual goal which I had was to train my recorder skills to the maximum; thus, to be super good at it. This was also a related sub-goal of this CCA – to train the individual members’ skills, so there were sectional practices and individual testings, which works to the goal of this ensemble. Another sub individual goal was to show off my recorder skills, which I managed to do so, when some of my group members responded to my superb playing of the recorder, praising me repeatedly and telling the conductor that i was good. Because of this, I was chosen to play quite a lot of solos in concert practices and concerts. This is getting too wordy so I’m going to cut short on this CCA. It had good structure, the group roles in it were not many, but sufficient. We had a high degree of cohesion, both interactional and perceptual. For interactional perception, we really went all the way to help each other out in our different parts that we had to play in a song. Whereas for perceptual cohesion, from my perception at least, I could feel and tell that we were all happy and having fun when we were communicating together as a group; therefore, I presumed that the individual members’ feelings to other members were good and united, like my feelings to the other members. Our attendance was always almost perfect; I can infer from this that we were all very loyal to this ensemble group. Our social identities were influenced too. We thought of ourselves as musicians. I remember that we played really well and so, fellow students and teachers referred to us as good musicians; thus, whenever there was something about music that we talked about or when someone was asked to play the piano, along this line, we were the (first) ones to be pointed out.
Hmmm, this post has become quite lengthy. I think I’ll stop here for now. If I feel that my other groups are worth mentioning, then I may write on some more another time. So what do you guys think of the five characteristics of a group? I’m sure that these characteristics explain a lot of stuff in your different groups that you are in, be it social, academic, sports etc, right?
COM101 Blog Entry 03 – Test of a Great Love
This week’s topic is on interpersonal communication. I refer to an article in the Lifestyle magazine, Feb issue, pg. 82,83 (Singapore’s largest circulating magazine, audited by ABC). I’ll scan the article later. =) My scanner isn’t working! So I’ll just include a brief story of the article here.
William and Carolyn met through a mutual friend in 2004 but got together only after a year – just months before William left for a posting in Brunei. They kept in touch by phone every night and 12 months later, William returned to Singapore for good, looking forward to spending more time with his girlfriend. But less than 2 weeks affter their reunion, tragedy struck. Carolyn was struck by lightning. Carolyn had then been in a coma, survived neurosurgery, undergone a transfer to another hospital and endured numberous rehabitilation therapy sessions. However, William never left her side and took great care of her.
William is truely in love with Carolyn. They went through the first five stages of the Knapp Model of Relational Development. When the lightening struck Carolyn, they were in the third or fourth stage of the Knapp Model. I think it is in the fourth stage already, as William was set on marrying Carolyn even while she was in hospital; his perception of himself and Carolyn must have already been ‘we are a couple’. Though Carolyn ‘constantly pushed William away, calling him stupid for not finding another girlfriend’, which would include breaking up with her, William stayed faithfully by her side. William is quite a rare boyfriend to find, some guys will just break up with the girl, so, from stage 3-4, straightaway head to stage 10, as she was in a coma for six months, bore a tracheotomy scare at the base of her throat and two depressions in her scalp. It must have been true love that kept William going, taking great care of her throughout the years.
After their marriage, William said this, “Nothing has changed after our marriage. It was just to legalize our relationship. I still treat Carolyn like my girlfriend and buy her gifts regularly because sometimes, when you treat your loved one as your spouse, you tend to take each other for granted. And I never want that to happen.” I feel that William has said it very well; I like this point of view and action from William. It’s quite true sometimes, that guys usually change after marriage. It was very evident in my parent’s marriage, in fact, extremely evident. My dad became a devil, from an angel. anyway, back to this. By following William’s way of maintaining a relationship after marriage, I feel that it’ll most likely be successful. The relationship will never go to stage 6 and beyond. (Stages 6-10 will be the coming/breaking apart stages.) It’ll stay at stage 5 always. However, that is if one considers stage 6 as part of coming apart. Stage 6, which is the differentiating stage, can be a benefit to the relationship too; thus, if it is a benefit, then I will consider it as the last stage of the coming together stages. Differentiating is ‘simply a reaffirmation of individuality’. Some extent of differentiating can be considered as natural, and even healthy. If a couple can reassert enough of the individual identities while maintaining their relational committments, differentiating can benefit and strengthen a relationship. For William and Carolyn, I don’t think that they will come to stage 6, as William will always treat Carolyn as his girlfriend, so the formal bonding of marriage was done, but the intensifying committment and blending that may gradually intensify and reach its culmination in the bonding stage 5 will most likely not occur, in my opinion, therefore, stage 6 is likely not to come. Or we can look at it in another way, if William treats Carolyn as his girlfriend forever, after his marriage, i think that they will go back to stage 4, which is the integrating stage, as in William’s eyes, he isn’t married, and Carolyn is his girlfriend. Therefore, it’ll be great if they stay in stage 4 forever, without a chance to go to stage 6 at all, as stage 6 may lead to stages 7-10 still, when differentiation continues to unfold and intensify without a satisfactory solution.
Equity theory doesnt apply here, after the tragic incident of the lightning strike to Carolyn, which is most likely at the 4th stage of the Knapp Model. Before that, it most likely would have applied, like any other normal relationships. There was no balance of costs and rewards that was equal to Carolyn and William. William under-befitted from the relationship; he had much more costs than rewards. Before the accident, William was very playful and enjoyed clubbing and outdoor sports, and was generally carefree, but after the accident, he had to mature very fast and take care of Carolyn painstakingly, never losing his temper or showing sadness in front of Carolyn. However, this would be from a view of an onlooker/outsider. William himself may think that the Equity Theory is still prevalent in the relationship after the accident. The care, recovery and happiness Carolyn got from William could bring happiness to William too, and in the end, William managed to marry Carolyn; thus, in William’s view, it could be a balance of costs and rewards that are relatively equal to William and Carolyn.
<For those who want to know about the 10 stages of the Knapp model, here they are:
Knapp’s Relationship Escalation Model
Stage 1: Initiation
This stage is very short, sometimes as short as 10-15 seconds. In this stage, interactants are concerned with making favorable impressions on each other. They may use standard greetings or observe each other’s appearance or mannerisms. Some level of filtering is done in this stage, which is to access the attractiveness, availability and potential suitability of the other person as a relational partner.
Stage 2: Experimenting
In the next stage, individuals ask questions of each other in order to gain information about them and decide if they wish to continue the relationship. Many relationships progress no further than this point.
Stage 3: Intensifying
Self-disclosure becomes more common in the intensifying stage. The relationship becomes less formal, and statements are made about the level of commitment each has to the relationship.
Stage 4: Integrating
The individuals become a pair in the integrating stage. They begin to do things together and, importantly, others come to see them as a pair. A shared relational identity starts to form in this stage.
Stage 5: Bonding
During the bonding stage, a formal, sometimes legal, announcement of the relationship is made. Examples include a marriage, “best friend” ritual, or business partnership agreement. Few relationships compared to all the relationships that started, reach this level.
I don’t really like to talk about the last five stages of the Knapp Model, but here they are:
Stage 6: Differentiating
Stage 7: Circumscribing
Stage 8: Stagnation
Stage 9: Avoiding
Stage 10: Terminating>
COM101 Blog Entry 02 – WALL-E Movie
The non-verbal cues in this particular part of the movie are very interesting and I shall go through them one by one. This part of the movie is when Wall-E and Eva first met each other! It’s a very funny and cute scene. Wall-E saw something new and white floating in the air and approached it. It kept a short distance from it first, and it made a noise; a ‘beep’. This is the use of a type of non-verbal cue called paralinguistics. The beep is a non-fluency cue of a paralinguistic. This should indicate that Wall-E didn’t quite know what to say and this beep was to get the attention of this new and white thing floating, which was Eva. Eva turned rather abruptly to look at Wall-E, and then saying something of her own language. Wall-E fell backwards onto his back in response to this; this Kinesics cue of body movement showed an affect display of shock and/or fright. We don’t know whether Eva decoded this non-verbal cue from Wall-E, but it’s not important. Eva said some words in an unknown language, and then a word, ‘directive’, which is in English. It was said in a low-pitch to high-pitch, indicating this question – ‘What is your directive?’ This should be a non-verbal cue. After this, I’m not sure whether Wall-E used a non-verbal cue here, but he said something like ‘oh!’ (it could be another non-fluency paralinguistic cue) in a high pitch voice, this quality of voice further indicates that he knows what the word ‘directive’ means and is enthusiastic about it. The way Wall-E answers this question is totally a non-verbal cue. Kinesics is used, Wall-E showed Eva what his directive is, instead of answering verbally (as I think that Wall-E doesn’t really know how to speak any language), by compacting some of the planet Earth’s rubbish, to clear up the rubbish on Earth. Wall-E said ‘Ta-da’ after he compacted the rubbish, which is a non-verbal cue; I think this is to indicate to Eva that what he just did was amazing. There were a few more non-verbal cues but I shall skip them, to the part when Wall-E had difficulty pronouncing his name, when Eva asked him what his name is. Eva said it after him very fluently. This made Wall-E say something like ‘orh’ or ‘oh’, in a tone that indicated he liked it the way Eva said his name fluently. Qualities of the voice and perhaps non-fluency (if it’s ‘oh’, then it should be considered a verbal cue) paralinguistic cues were used again. After which, Eva laughed at Wall-E, displaying a vocalics paralinguistic cue. Vocalics are sounds other that words that have a particular meaning associated with them. Affect display cue of kinesics is also usually used with vocalics, as Eva laughed with her eyes growing smaller and shaking her body. Both cues tell that she’s amused by what Wall-E said. Soon after, there was a sandstorm stampede. Wall-E tried to warn Eva, but he couldn’t speak any language, so he held out his hand, almost touching Eva. Eva decoded this wrongly as Wall-E trying to harm her, so she pointed her ‘gun’ at him. This non-verbal cue conveyed this: “If you try to harm me, I’ll shoot you!”. Wall-E backed off and the sandstorm approached nearer, Eva then realised it. Wall-E led Eva to his house and the next scene comes along.
In this scene, there is no talking at all. Wall-E showed Eva his stuff that was in his house. I think it was all based on non-verbal cues, as there is no verbal communication at all. One part is nice, whereby Wall-E shows Eva a cassette tape, and Eva pulls the strip of tape out of the tape. Wall-E throws his hands up into the air and exclaimed: “ah!”. This non-verbal cue of kinesics body movement and paralinguistics show that Wall-E was shocked and worried that Eva did that. Wall-E quickly used something to wind the tape back into the tape and went to play the tape. The body movements (kinesics) and the sound (paralinguistics) made by Wall-E tell me that he’s very concerned whether the tape works still and hoping that it works still. When the tape plays and works, he thrust his hand into the air again and clapped. This shows that he is happy that the tape works, instead of the earlier emotion, which was of shock and worry. The tape was played and Wall-E followed the tape and danced, trying to get Eva to follow. Eva got this non-verbal cue and tried to dance, but she almost brought the whole place down. Another nice part is when Wall-E looked lovingly at Eva, but Eva did not look back into Wall-E’s eyes, it was a non-verbal cue to the audience. It can be said to be an Oculesics cue; Wall-E likes Eva and looks lovingly at her (eyes). Next, Wall-E tried to hold her hand; this kinesics cue of an emblem indicates that Wall-E wants to express his liking for Eva and wants to be with her, as a couple.
This movie promotes non-verbal communication to a large extent! If you want to get interested in non-verbal communication, you should watch this movie! The cute characters and interesting plot makes the non-verbal communication all the more interesting! There’ll be verbal communication too, I think at the last one quarter part, so it will be a nice mix of verbal and non-verbal communication, but with an emphasis on non-verbal communication.
COM101 Blog Entry 01 – on a Japanese drama series, “Proposal Daisakusen”
more about “Proposal Daisakusen Episode 11 | Watc…“, posted with vodpod
<Sypnosis of ‘Proposal Daisakusen’ drama series: Yamashita Tomohisa and Nagasawa Masami play a young man and woman who have been friends since elementary school. Yamashita’s character, Iwase Ken, is obstinate and unskilled in love, but he fell long ago for the lively and cheerful woman, Yoshida Rei, who actually likes him too, played by Nagasawa. But Rei is about to get married to another man. While Ken and other friends from high-school attend the church wedding ceremony, a fairy in the church appears and sends Ken back in time, over a number of times, giving him a second chance to win the girl he loves.>
I find this drama’s plot very unique, original and creative. I recommend it to everyone out there. Anyway, the main point of me blogging about this drama is to relate it to the art of communication. For this drama, the simple verbal communication of Ken telling Rei “I Love You” was so difficult that he could do it only after 15 years! It was to the extent that he almost lost her to another man whom she was going to get married to, and not being able to say it when he went back to the past for a number of times. He went back to the past but he could not convey that simple verbal communication of “I Love You”. It was some of the times, on the verge of saying it, while in other times, he conveyed indirect verbal communication and non-verbal communication of the confession of love. Rei was the receiver, but she decoded the message from the sender, Ken, wrongly, and this led to a miscommunication. Ken’s intended message was to tell her simply that he loves her, but he didn’t say it out in the actual words, so she did not get the right message and thought he was just playing around with her. He did non-verbal communication acts to show that he loves her too; such as kissing her suddenly, but then getting a playful slap from her, as she thought that he was just playing around with her, and as a last resort, hugging her and telling her not to marry the other man but to marry him instead. However, Rei rejected him and continued on with the wedding. This could be a case of miscommunication and misunderstanding again, as she still did not get it that he loves her as he did not say the simple ‘I love you’. However, I don’t think that’s the case. I think it could be just because Ken did not say out simply the words of ‘i love you’, but she knew it from these gestures, which means that she decoded the message correctly, that Ken loves her. On the other hand, it could be because it’s too late already; she decoded the message correctly, but it was just a few days before the wedding and it was just all too ridiculous to cancel the wedding. I’m also a little puzzled by it; but that’s the beauty of it. (In the earlier times when he went back to the past, he did not really think of confessing to Rei, but to get closer to her, and trying to stop the other man from proposing to her.)
I think in Rei’s view on the communication of love, it is from a social constructionist perspective. She relies on the direct verbal communication of the confession of love, rather than through direct experiences. Direct experiences may include non-verbal acts of communication, which she never considered them as the communication of the confession of love. She was so particular and did not want or understand other indirect verbal acts of communication too, other than the simple direct verbal expression of “I Love You’ as a confession of love.
The video posted here is a part of the last episode of this nice romance drama, don’t watch it if you are planning to watch this drama series, it’ll spoil the whole series for you. Speaking honestly, I recommend you all not to watch this video posted here, but to watch the whole drama series from the start. I posted this part of the drama show here because it’s the confession part whereby Ken really confesses to Rei finally. In this confession speech to Rei, it was said in front of the audience and the couple of the wedding ceremony. To me, it’s really not a ‘logical’ or practical time to say it, it’s one of the worst times, but as a matter of fact, Ken did not have the courage to say it until then, so he had no choice but to say it then. The logos part of the rhetoric speech certainly isn’t working for me, as in the place and time (kairos) of this speech, but the lexis part of the speech is very adequate. Pathos was used to a large extent, Ken shed tears of sadness while giving his speech and his speech was very touching. It was used well as some people in the audience and especially the bride, Rei, shed tears too. (On a joking note, I wonder whether you all ‘teared’ while watching the speech. However, they got together in the end, so there’ll be tears of joy instead at the end.) Ethos was used well too, there is credibility in what Ken says as he is Rei’s childhood friend, and he talked about Rei in a way showing that he knows her very well too. He expressed modesty too, when he said this at the end of his speech: “Congratulations on your marriage. Please be happy. If you’re not, if you’re not,(he repeated), I won’t forgive you”. By congratulating the marriage, he is being modest already, as he knows that she likes him too, but they aren’t together. Adding on, he wants her to be happy, that’s the main thing to him, and he won’t forgive her if she’s not happy as he really wants her to be happy, moreover, she chose the other man over him. (just because the simple direct verbal communication of “i love you” wasn’t sent from him to her) I would say that this is true love, it was just because the guy lacked courage and almost lost her forever, but they got togther and were together happily in love at the end of the show, and with this, I end my blog entry.
*(A brief explanation on some of the communication terms used: 1) Logos – The logical content of a speech 2) Lexis – The style and delivery of a speech 3) Kairos – The opportune occasion for speech 4) Pathos – a persuasive style of communication that appeals to emotion 5) Ethos – the persuasive appeal of one’s character)
(p.s. – i hope this blog entry is not too long, if not, people may not read it, or may not read it till the end. =p)
Hello everyone. =)
Hello everyone. Welcome to my blog on communications. Hope you enjoy your stay here. =)
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