TABLE OF CONTENTS Now we come to the more familiar communications issues that surround verbal communication. There are many reasons why words that are spoken are not received as intended. We might think the other person didn t hear us, so we repeat ourselves, speaking more clearly and perhaps louder. If that doesn t work, we might think we are dealing with someone who is stupid or does not speak English very well. While either of these may be the correct assessment, it is more often something else. More commonly, the cause can be found in our use of the language. The following topics will be covered in this section:
English as a second language.
Different versions of English.
Silence.
Underlying language assumptions.
Background noise.
Speaking face to face versus side by side.
Accents.
Acronyms/abbreviations.
Direct and indirect communication.
Humor.
Sports English.
Connotations.
Greetings.
Anyone who has attempted to learn a second language knows how tiring and frustrating the process can be. Until one becomes fluent, understanding and making oneself understood can be an exhausting process.
For the past few weeks, I have been using a voice recognition program on my computer. The program is sophisticated enough to learn from the mistakes that it makes. But I must first point out those mistakes. The software interprets some of my words wrong. I must go back and correct them. It s frustrating. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just type in the words myself rather than using...
