Key Terms

Chapter 1 

• Encoding is the process of turning thoughts into communication by the sender of the information.
• Decoding is the process of turning communication into thoughts by those that receive the information from others.
• Channel is a sensory route on which a message travels.
• Content dimension refers to the content within a message.
• Relational dimension includes the existing interpersonal history and type of relationship we have with a person.
• Physical needs include needs that keep our bodies and minds functioning.
• Instrumental needs include needs that help us get things done in our day-to-day lives and achieve short- and long-term goals.
• Relational needs include needs that help us maintain social bonds and interpersonal relationships.
• Identity needs include our need to present ourselves to others and be thought of in particular and desired ways.
• Sender is someone who encodes and sends a message to a receiver through a particular channel.
• Receiver is the recipient of a message and must decode (interpret) messages in ways that are meaningful for them.
• Message is the particular meaning or content the sender wishes the receiver to understand.
• Noise is anything that interferes with the sending or receiving of a message.
• External noise is environmental, such as a jackhammer outside your apartment window or loud music in a nightclub. 
• Internal noise includes psychological factors such as stress or nervousness or physical factors such as pain.
• The linear model (originally called the mathematical model of communication) serves as a basic model of communication and suggests that communication moves only in one direction from one source to another.
• The transactional model demonstrates that communication participants act as senders and receivers simultaneously, creating reality through their interactions.
• Physical context includes the environmental factors in a communication encounter.
• Psychological context includes the mental and emotional factors in a communication encounter.
• Social context refers to the stated rules or unstated norms that guide communication.
• Norms are social conventions that we pick up on through observation, practice, and trial and error.
• Relational context includes the previous interpersonal history and type of relationship we have with a person.
• Cultural context includes various aspects of identities such as race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, and ability.
• Intrapersonal communication is communication with oneself using internal vocalization or reflective thinking.
• Interpersonal communication is communication between people whose lives mutually influence one another.
• Group communication is communication among three or more people interacting to achieve a shared goal.
• Public communication is a sender-focused form of communication in which one person is typically responsible for conveying information to an audience.
• Mass communication is transmitted to many people through print or electronic media.
• Competent communication refers to the knowledge of effective and appropriate communication and the ability to use and adapt that knowledge in various contexts.
• Stages of Communication Competence:
  • Stage 1: Unconscious incompetence: Before you have built up a rich cognitive knowledge base of communication concepts and practiced and reflected on skills in a particular area, you may exhibit unconscious incompetence, which means you are not even aware that you are communicating in an incompetent manner.
  • Stage 2: Conscious incompetence: Once you learn more about communication and have a vocabulary for identifying concepts, you may find yourself exhibiting conscious incompetence. This is when you know what you should be doing, and you realize that you’re not doing it as well as you could.
  • Stage 3: Conscious competence: As your skills increase, you may advance to conscious competence, meaning that you know you are communicating well in the moment, which will add to your bank of experiences to draw from in future interactions.
  • Stage 4: Unconscious competence: When you reach the stage of unconscious competence, you communicate successfully without straining to be competent.

Chapter 2

• Perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting information.
• Selecting is the first part of the perception process; we focus our attention on certain incoming sensory information.
• Organizing is the second part of the perception process and involves sorting and categorizing the information we perceive based on innate and learned cognitive patterns.
• Interpretation is the third part of the perception process and is the point at which we assign meaning to our experiences using mental structures known as schemata.
• Schemata are like databases of stored, related information that we use to interpret new experiences; the singular form is schema.
• Salience is the degree to which something attracts our attention in a particular context.
• Vocal variety is altering the rate, volume, and pitch of your voice.
• Nonverbal adaptors, the nervous movements we make to relieve anxiety, are acts such as pacing or twirling our hair and can be distracting.
• Self-concept refers to the overall idea of who a person thinks they are.
• The looking-glass self, also known as reflected appraisal, is how we see ourselves reflected in other people’s reactions to us, then form our self-concept based on how we believe other people see us.
• Social comparison theory states that we describe and evaluate ourselves in terms of how we compare to other people.
• Reference groups are the groups we use for social comparison, and they typically change based on what we are evaluating.
• Social comparison is how we evaluate ourselves based on our similarities to and differences from others.
• Self-esteem refers to the judgements and evaluations we make about our self-concept.
• Self-efficacy refers to the judgements people make about their ability to perform a task in a specific context.
• Self-discrepancy theory states that people have beliefs about and expectations for their actual and potential selves that do not always match up with what they experience.
• The actual self consists of the attributes that you or someone else believes you actually possess.
• The ideal self is made up of the attributes that you or someone else would like you to possess.
• The ought self consists of the attributes you or someone else believes you should possess.
• Perceived self is our subjective appraisal of personal qualities that we ascribe to ourselves.
• Motivation is the underlying force that drives us to do things.
• Being intrinsically motivated means that we want to do something for the love of doing it or for the resulting internal satisfaction.
• Being extrinsically motivated means that we do something to receive a reward or to avoid punishment.
• Attributions are links we make to identify the cause of a behaviour.
• Self-enhancement bias is often a cultural phenomenon and means that we tend to emphasize an individual’s desirable qualities in comparison to other people,
• Self-presentation, also referred to as the presenting self, is the process of strategically concealing or revealing personal information to influence others’ perceptions.
• Prosocial self-presentation entails behaviours that present a person as a role model and make the person more likeable and attractive.
• Impression management is a communication strategy that we use to influence how others view us.
• Attribution is our mind coming up with an explanation for what is happening.
• Internal attributions connect the cause of behaviours to personal aspects such as personality traits.
• External attributions connect the cause of behaviours to situational factors.
• Perceptual error occurs when we do not judge others, things, or situations fairly and accurately.
• Fundamental attribution error is our tendency to explain others’ behaviours using internal rather than external attributions.
• Confirmation bias results from finding evidence and support for already-held beliefs, even if that evidence doesn’t actually exist.
• Self-serving bias occurs when our behaviour results in some form of failure or a negative outcome, and we attribute the cause to external factors and not internal ones.
• The primacy effect leads us to place more value on the first information we receive about a person.
• The recency effect leads us to put more weight on the most recent impression we have of a person’s communication over earlier impressions.
• The halo effect occurs when initial positive perceptions lead us to view later interactions as positive.
• The horn effect occurs when initial negative perceptions lead us to view later interactions as negative.
• Personality refers to a person’s general way of thinking, feeling, and behaving based on underlying motivations and impulses.
• Self-fulfilling prophecies are thoughts and action patterns in which a person’s false belief triggers a behaviour that makes the initial false belief actually or seemingly come true.
• Empathy is the ability to share someone else’s feelings, experiences, or emotions.
• Sympathy is the feeling that you are sorry and care about the trouble and misfortune of another person, but it places the person struggling in a place of judgement rather than in a place of understanding.
• Stereotypes are sets of beliefs that we develop about groups, which we then apply to individuals from that group.
• Prejudice is negative feelings or attitudes towards people based on their identity or identities.
• Cognitive complexity involves being able to construct different frameworks and perspectives for seeing an issue.
• Perception checking is a strategy to help us monitor our reactions to and perceptions about people and communication.
• The pillow method is beneficial when a situation is too complex for perception checking and works to increase cognitive complexity. This tool is used to help build empathy and understanding of others and their point of view. It involves viewing a situation from five positions (four sides and a middle), similar to a pillow, and enables you to gain understanding of an issue from various perspectives.

Chapter 3

• Symbols are something that stands in for or represents something else. They can be communicated verbally (e.g., speaking the word hello), in writing (e.g., putting the letters H-E-L-L-O together), or nonverbally (e.g., waving your hand back and forth as a greeting).
• Codes are culturally agreed on and ever-changing systems of symbols that help us organize, understand, and generate meaning.
• Displacement refers to being able to talk about events that are removed in space or time from a speaker and a situation.
• The triangle of meaning is a model of communication that indicates the relationship among a thought, a symbol, and a referent, and highlights the indirect relationship between the symbol and the referent.
  • The thought is a concept or idea that a person references.
  • The symbol is the word that represents the thought.
  • The referent is the object or idea to which the symbol refers.
• Definitions help us narrow the meaning of particular symbols, which also narrows a symbol’s possible referents. They also provide more words (symbols) for which we must determine a referent.
• Denotative meaning refers to definitions that are accepted by the language group as a whole; that is, the dictionary definition of a word.
• Polysemic words are words with more than one meaning.
• Equivocal language is similar to polysemic words in that it includes words, expressions, and phrases that can have more than one accepted definition.
• Monosemic words have only one use in a language.
• Connotation refers to definitions that are rooted in emotion- or experience-based associations people have with a word.
• Grammar refers to the rules that govern how words are used to create phrases and sentences.
• Phonetic rules determine the way words or phrases are said; for example, how to pronounce words and where to place the emphasis.
• Syntactic rules dictate the way symbols can be arranged as opposed to the meanings of those symbols; for example, how words are organized in a sentence.
• Semantic rules govern the meaning of language as opposed to its structure; for example, what a given word means within a society rather than where it is placed in a sentence.
• Pragmatic rules help communicators understand how messages can be used and interpreted in a given context; for example, what a promise is and when to use it.
• Neologisms are newly coined or newly used words.
• Slang refers to new or adapted words that are specific to a group, context, and/or time period.
• “We” language includes the words we, our, and us, and can be used to promote a feeling of inclusion.
• “I” language can be useful when expressing thoughts, needs, and feelings because it leads us to “own” our expressions and avoid the tendency to mistakenly attribute the cause of our thoughts, needs, and feelings to others.
• “You” language can lead people to become defensive and feel attacked, which can be divisive and result in feelings of interpersonal separation.
• “But” statements negate everything that was said before, even if it was positive or intentional, and should be avoided.
• The Ladder of Abstraction refers to the continuum of language from concrete to abstract.
• Jargon refers to specialized words used by a certain group or profession.
• Partial messages are missing a relevant type of expression and can lead to misunderstandings and conflict.
• Whole messages help keep lines of communication open, which can help build solid relationships.
• Affective language refers to language used to express a person’s feelings and to create similar feelings in another person.
• Similes are a direct comparison of two things using the words like or as.
• Metaphors are an implicit comparison of two things that are not alike or are not typically associated; that is, the speaker says something is something else.
• Personification means attributing human qualities or the characteristics of other living things to non-human objects or abstract concepts.
• Powerless language is marked by hesitancy and distracts from the certainty of a statement.
• Hedges are words and phrases that try to minimize something; for example, “kinda,”  “I think,” and “I’m kinda angry.”
• Hesitations are words and phrases that create a short pause; for example, “uh,” “ah,” “um,” and “Uh, can I talk to you about this?”
• Tag questions convert a statement into a question; for example, “It sure is hot today, isn’t it?” and “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?”
• Polite forms are words and phrases such as “please,” “sir,” “ma’am,” and “Excuse me, sir.”
• Intensifiers give force or emphasis to a statement; for example, “so,” “very,” and “I’m not really tired.”
• Disclaimers deny something; for example, “I know this sounds ridiculous, but …”
• Polarizing language presents people, ideas, or situations as polar opposites.
• Inferences are conclusions based on thoughts or speculation but not on direct observation.
• Facts are conclusions based on direct observation or group consensus.
• Judgements are expressions of approval or disapproval that are subjective and not verifiable.
• The receiving stage, sometimes referred to as attending, is the first stage of the listening process and is the physical process of taking in information through both auditory and visual channels.
• The interpreting stage, sometime referred to as understanding, is the second stage of the listening process and is where we combine the visual and auditory information we receive and try to make meaning out of that information using schemata.
• The recalling stage is the third stage of the listening process and is the act of recalling or remembering information.
• The evaluating stage is the fourth stage of the listening process and involves making judgements about the information’s credibility, completeness, and worth.
• The responding stage is the fifth stage of the listening process and involves sending verbal and nonverbal messages that indicate attentiveness and understanding or a lack thereof.
• Environmental noise interferes with the physiological aspects of hearing and can include other people talking, the traffic sounds, or music.
• Psychological noise interferes primarily with the cognitive processes of listening and can include stress and anger.
• Short-term memory is a mental storage capability that can retain stimuli for 20 seconds to one minute.
• Long-term memory is a mental storage capability to which stimuli in short-term memory can be transferred if the stimuli are connected to existing schemata and in which information can be stored indefinitely.
• Working memory is a temporarily accessed memory storage space that is activated during times of high cognitive demand.
• Back-channel cues are the verbal and nonverbal signals we send while someone is talking and can consist of verbal cues such as “uh-huh,” “oh,” and “right,” or nonverbal cues like direct eye contact, head nods, and leaning forward.
• Discriminative listening is a focused type of listening that is primarily physiological and occurs mostly at the receiving stage of the listening process.
• Informational listening entails listening with the goal of comprehending and retaining information.
• Critical listening is listening with the goal of analyzing or evaluating a message based on information presented verbally and information that can be inferred from context.
• Empathetic listening is the most challenging form of listening and occurs when we try to understand or experience what a speaker is thinking or feeling.
• People-oriented listeners are concerned about the needs and feelings of others and may get distracted from a specific task or the content of a message in order to address feelings.
• Action-oriented listeners prefer well-organized, precise, and accurate information.
• Content-oriented listeners are analytic and enjoy processing complex messages.
• Time-oriented listeners are concerned with completing tasks and achieving goals.
• Silent listening occurs when a person says nothing.
• Close-ended questions are very specific and do not allow elaboration. They are direct and often result in a “yes” or “no” response or a list of possible responses that are provided.
• Open-ended questions allow for more elaboration by the person responding, and specific response options are not provided. These forms of questions generally result in more discussion.
• Sincere questions are posed to find a genuine answer.
• Counterfeit questions are disguised attempts to send a message, not to receive one.
• Paraphrasing is restating in your own words the message you think the speaker just sent.
• Pseudo-listening is pretending to listen and appear attentive but not listening to understand or interpret the information.
• Selective listening involves the listener selecting only the information they identify as relevant to their own needs or interests.
• Insulated listening involves ignoring or avoiding information and certain topics of conversation.
• Defensive listening occurs when the listener interprets the speaker’s innocent comments as personal attacks.
• Insensitive listening involves focusing on information for its literal meaning and disregarding the other person’s feelings and emotions.
• Stage hogging involves listening to express one’s own ideas or interests and being the centre of attention.
• Ambushing is careful and attentive listening to collect information that can be used against the other person as an attack.
• Multitasking involves listening without full attention while attempting to complete more than one task at a time.
• Active listening refers to the process of pairing outwardly visible positive listening behaviours with positive cognitive listening practices.
• Mental bracketing refers to the process of intentionally separating out intrusive or irrelevant thoughts that may distract you from listening.
• Mirroring refers to a listener’s replication of the nonverbal signals of a speaker.
• Low-context communication style is one in which much of the meaning generated within an interaction comes from the verbal communication used rather than nonverbal or contextual cues.
• High-context communication style is one in which much of the meaning comes from nonverbal and contextual cues.
• Monochronic cultures favour a structured and commodified orientation towards time.
• Polychronic cultures favour a more flexible orientation towards time.
• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language shapes our view of reality and our cultural patterns.
• Communication accommodation theory explores why and how people modify their communication to fit situational, social, cultural, and relational contexts.
• Convergence means that a person makes their communication more like another person’s.
• Divergence means that a person uses communication to emphasize the differences between themself and their conversational partner.

Chapter 4

• Paralanguage is an aspect of nonverbal communication that is the vocalized but not verbal part of a spoken message, such as speaking rate, volume, and pitch.
• Mixed messages are messages in which verbal and nonverbal signals contradict each other.
• Deception is the intentional act of altering information to influence another person; it extends beyond lying to include concealing, omitting, or exaggerating information.
• Tie signs are nonverbal cues that communicate intimacy and signal a connection between two people.
• Touch behaviours are the most frequently used tie signs and can communicate much about a relationship based on the area being touched and the length of time and intensity of the touch.
• Artifacts are the objects and possessions that surround us and that also communicate our identities.
• Kinesics is the study of hand, arm, body, and face movements.
• Adaptors are touching behaviours and movements that indicate internal states typically related to arousal or anxiety.
• Emblems are gestures that have a specific, agreed-on meaning.
• Illustrators are gestures used to illustrate the verbal message they accompany.
• Postures include body positions such as standing, sitting, squatting, and lying down.
• Oculesics is a term for eye behaviours, including eye contact.
• Haptics refers to the study of communication by touch.
• Vocalics is the study of paralanguage, which includes the vocal qualities that go along with verbal messages, such as pitch, volume, rate, vocal quality, and verbal fillers.
• Speaking rate refers to how fast or slowly a person speaks, which can lead others to form impressions about our emotional state, credibility, and intelligence.
• Verbal fillers are sounds that fill gaps in our speech as we think about what to say next.
• Proxemics is the study of how space and distance influence communication.
• Territoriality is an innate drive to take up and defend spaces.
• Chronemics is the study of how time affects communication.
• Biological time refers to the rhythms of living things.
• Personal time refers to the ways in which individuals experience time.
• Physical time refers to the fixed cycles of days, years, and seasons.
• A nonverbal cluster is the combinations of multiple types of nonverbal communication; for example, posture may be combined with a touch or eye behaviour.
• Nonverbal congruence refers to consistency among different nonverbal expressions within a cluster.
• Mirroring refers to the often-subconscious practice of using nonverbal cues in a way that matches those of others around us.
• Emotional contagion is the spread of emotion from one person to another.
• Truth bias leads us to believe that a person is telling the truth, especially if we know and like that person.
• Lie bias means we assume that people are lying more often than not.
• Nonverbal leakage refers to nonverbal behaviours that occur as we try to control the cognitive and physical changes that happen during states of cognitive and physical arousal.
• Contact cultures are cultural groups in which people stand closer together, engage in more eye contact, touch more frequently, and speak more loudly.

Chapter 5

• Personal relationships meet emotional, relational, and instrumental needs; they are intimate, close, and interdependent relationships such as those we have with best friends, partners, or immediate family.
• Social relationships are relationships that occasionally meet our needs but lack the closeness and interdependence of personal relationships.
• Knapp’s relational model has 10 established stages of interaction that can help us understand how relationships come together and come apart:
  • Initiating stage: Individuals size each other up and try to present themselves favourably.
  • Experimenting stage: Individuals exchange basic information.
  • Intensifying stage: Individuals indicate that they would like or are open to more intimacy, and then wait for a signal of acceptance before proceeding further.
  • Integrating stage: Two people’s identities and personalities merge and a sense of interdependence develops.
  • Bonding stage: A public ritual takes place that announces a formal commitment.
  • Differentiating stage: Individual differences present a challenge, and communicating these differences becomes the primary focus of the relationship.
  • Circumscribing stage: Communication decreases, and certain areas or subjects become restricted as individuals verbally close themselves off from each other.
  • Stagnating stage: The relationship may come to a standstill as individuals wait for the relationship to end.
  • Avoiding stage: Individuals intentionally avoid contact as a way to end the awkwardness that comes with stagnation, signalling that they want to close down the lines of communication.
  • Terminating stage: The end of a relationship; it can occur shortly after the initiating stage or after a 10- or 20-year relational history has been established.
• Social exchange theory entails weighing the costs and rewards in a given relationship
• An equitable relationship involves costs and rewards being balanced, which usually leads to a positive evaluation of the relationship and satisfaction.
• Interdependence refers to the relationship between a person’s well-being and their involvement in a particular relationship.
• Intercultural communication competence (ICC) is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in various cultural contexts.
• Self-disclosure is the purposeful disclosure of personal information to another person.
• Social penetration theory states that as we get to know someone, we engage in a reciprocal process of self-disclosure that changes in breadth and depth and affects how a relationship develops.
• Depth refers to how personal or sensitive the information we share is.
• Breadth refers to the range of topics discussed between individuals.
• Social comparison theory states that we evaluate ourselves based on how we compare with others.
• The Johari window is a theory of self disclosure the can be applied to a variety of interpersonal interactions in order to help us understand what parts of ourselves are open, hidden, blind, and unknown.
• Self-focused reasons for disclosure include having a sense of relief or catharsis, clarifying or correcting information, or seeking support.
• Other-focused reasons for disclosure include a sense of responsibility to inform or educate.
• Primary emotions are innate emotions that are experienced for short periods of time and appear rapidly, usually as a reaction to an outside stimulus; they are experienced similarly across cultures.
• Secondary emotions are not as innate as primary emotions and do not have a corresponding facial expression that makes them universally recognizable; these vary between cultures.
• Mixed emotions are two or more emotions experienced at the same time; for example, you can be both joyful and sad at the same time. 
• Emotions are our physical reactions to stimuli in the outside environment. They can be objectively measured by blood flow, brain activity, and nonverbal reactions to things because they are activated through neurotransmitters and hormones released by the brain.
• Feelings are the conscious experience of emotional reactions.
• Emotional vocabulary involves knowing different and varied words for one’s emotions and being able to express them. The more specific we can be when we are verbally communicating our emotions, the less ambiguous they will be for the person decoding our message.
• Debilitative emotions are harmful and difficult emotions that detract from effective functioning.
• Facilitative emotions are emotions that contribute to our effective functioning.
• The fallacy of perfection is thinking we should be able to handle every situation perfectly with no room for error.
• The fallacy of helplessness is when people are convinced that powers beyond their control can determine their satisfaction or happiness.
• The fallacy of catastrophic expectations is when people work on the assumption that if something bad can possibly happen, it will.
• The fallacy of overgeneralization occurs when we base a belief on a limited amount of evidence and when we exaggerate shortcomings.
• Display rules are sociocultural norms that influence emotional expression.
• Emotional intelligence (EQ) refers to a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.
• Self-awareness refers to a person’s ability to understand their feelings from moment to moment.
• Self-management refers to our ability to manage our emotions and is dependent on our self-awareness.
• Social awareness is our ability to understand social cues that may affect others around us.
• Relationship management refers to our ability to communicate clearly, maintain good relationships with others, work well in teams, and manage conflict.

Chapter 6

• Communication climate is the overall feeling or emotional mood that is found between different people.
• Content is the substance of what is being communicated (the “what” of the message).
• Relational dimensions are not the actual thing being discussed and instead can reveal something about the relational dynamic existing between two people (the “who” of the message).
• Face refers to our self-image when communicating with others.
• Confirming messages result in positive climates that demonstrate our value and worth to those with whom we have a relationship.
• Disconfirming messages result in negative climates, which suggest someone is devalued and unimportant.
• Recognition messages can confirm or deny another person’s existence.
• Acknowledgment messages go beyond recognizing another person’s existence by confirming what they say or how they feel.
• Endorsement messages go one step further by recognizing a person’s feelings as valid.
• An impervious response fails to acknowledge another person’s communication attempt through either verbal or nonverbal channels; for example, failure to return phone calls, emails, and letters.
• An interrupting response involves one person starting to speak before the other person is finished.
• An irrelevant response is a comment that is completely unrelated to what the other person was just talking about, indicating that the listener wasn’t really listening at all and therefore doesn’t value what the speaker had to say.
• A tangential response acknowledges the speaker, but with a comment that steers the conversation in a different direction.
• An impersonal response is when the speaker offers a monologue of impersonal, intellectualized, and generalized statements that trivializes the other person’s comments.
• An ambiguous response is a message with multiple meanings, and these meanings are highly abstract or may be a private joke to the speaker alone.
• An incongruous response communicates two messages that seem to conflict along the verbal and nonverbal channels.
• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a metaphor developed by couples therapist Dr. John Gottman that describes the counterproductive communication and behaviours that can predict relationship failure if left unchanged. It involves the following four “horsemen”:
  • Criticism is an attack on another person that focuses on their defects rather than the actual issue or complaint.
  • Defensiveness is an automatic batting away of someone else’s issue or complaint and is often a response to criticism. It demonstrates an unwillingness to take responsibility and accountability for one’s own actions and includes the inability to listen and validate someone else’s perspective.
  • Contempt is communicating to someone else an attitude of superiority and that you look down at them, implying someone else is inferior, less than, or worthless. It is used to create a position of moral superiority.
  • Stonewalling is when a person shuts down interaction and stops responding to someone else. It is a form of defensiveness.
• Metacognition is thinking about our thinking.
• Metacommunication requires mindfully elevating awareness beyond the content level of communication, but also requires us to actually discuss aloud things such as needs and relational messages.
• Mindfulness refers to paying attention on purpose and being present.
• Climate-centred message planning (CCMP) refers to the conscious encoding (planning and forethought) involved in meeting communication goals.
• Relational transgressions occur when people violate implicit or explicit relational rules. These rule violations can be events, actions, or behaviours that violate relationship norms or rules.
• Explicit rules tend to be relationship-specific rules, such as those prompted by the bad habits of a partner or those that emerge from attempts to manage conflict.
• Implicit rules tend to be those rules that are accepted as cultural standards for proper relationship conduct.
• The competing style of conflict management indicates a high level of concern for self and a low level of concern for others. When we compete, we are striving to “win” the conflict, potentially at the expense or “loss” of the other person.
• The avoiding style of conflict management often indicates a low level of concern for self and a low level of concern for others, and no direct communication about the conflict takes place.
  • Indirect strategies of hinting and joking also fall under the avoiding style.
• The accommodating style of conflict management indicates a low level of concern for self and a high level of concern for others, and is often viewed as passive or submissive in that someone complies with or obliges another person without providing personal input.
• The compromising style of conflict management shows a moderate level of concern for self and others, and may indicate that there is low investment in the conflict and/or the relationship. Even though we often hear that the best way to handle a conflict is to compromise, the compromising style isn’t a win-win solution—it is a partial win-lose.
• The collaborating style of conflict management involves a high level of concern for self and others, and usually indicates investment in the conflict situation and the relationship. Although the collaborating style takes the most work in terms of communication competence, it ultimately leads to a win-win situation in which neither party has to make concessions because a mutually beneficial solution is discovered or created.
• Passive-aggressive behaviour is a way of dealing with conflict in which one person indirectly communicates their negative thoughts or feelings through nonverbal behaviours, such as not completing a task.
• Crazymaking is a form of passive-aggressive behaviour and often includes indirect attacks that are done unconsciously.  Examples include the following:
  • The Contract Tyrannizer is a person who refuses to let a relationship change from the way it was. The roles, expectations, and beliefs about the relationship are set in stone and cannot ever be allowed to change.
  • The Withholder involves someone not being open and honest about something that is upsetting them. They instead punish their partner by withholding something else, such as affection, humour, or some form of courtesy.
  • The Goat-Getter is someone who does not share underlying resentments, but instead does little things to irritate others. This can take the form of not putting things away, playing music loudly, or when asked about their behaviour, they deny it.
  • The Joker is a person who does not talk about conflict, but instead makes jokes and avoids the topic when someone wants to discuss it. As a result, it is not possible to have a serious conversation with the person, and when pushed, their behaviour becomes worse, and they act in a similar way to the Goat-Getter.
  • The Benedict Arnold uses sabotage to get back at someone else. This can even take the form of encouraging ridicule from others outside the situation or failing to defend someone from attack.
  • Beltlining refers to a boxing move that involves hitting “below the belt.” In terms of conflict, this metaphor refers to using intimate information against another person to cause hurt and anger.
  • Gunnysacking is an imaginary bag we all carry into which we place unresolved conflicts or grievances over time. Holding onto the way things used to be can be like carrying a stone in your gunnysack and influence how you interpret your current context. Gunnysacking may be expressed by bringing up previous behaviours the other person has engaged in or previous arguments you felt were unresolved.
  • Silencers are behaviours that stifle and silence conflict, such as crying, shouting, and heavy breathing.
  • Kitchen sinking refers to bringing up past conflicts, even those that have been resolved, to gain leverage in a conflict.
  • Counterpunch is a defensive response to conflict in which rather than responding to the initial topic of conflict, the other person reacts by sharing their own, often unrelated criticism.
  • Manipulation is an unproductive conflict strategy that includes one party being extremely charming and even generous to help sway the conflict outcome in their direction.
• Blame involves trying to place responsibility for the conflict on another person.
• Labelling occurs when you assign negative terms to another person’s behaviour.
• Self-construal refers to the concept that individuals will vary in the degree to which they view themselves as part of the group or as a separate individual within a larger culture.
• Criticism is making comments that evaluate another person’s personality, behaviour, appearance, or life choices, and may lead to conflict.
• Cumulative annoyance is a building of frustration or anger that occurs over time, eventually resulting in a conflict interaction.
• Serial arguing is a repeated pattern of disagreement over an issue.
• One-upping is a quick reaction to communication from another person that escalates the conflict.
• Mindreading is communication in which one person attributes something to another person using generalizations.
• Negotiation in interpersonal conflict refers to the process of attempting to change or influence conditions within a relationship.
• Forgiving is not the act of excusing or condoning, but rather, it is the process whereby negative emotions are transformed into positive emotions for the purpose of bringing emotional normalcy to a relationship.
• The intrapsychic dimension relates to the cognitive processes and interpretations associated with a transgression (i.e., one’s internal state).
• Interpersonal forgiveness is the interaction between relational partners concerning forgiveness.
• Facework refers to the communicative strategies we employ to project, maintain, or repair our face or to maintain, repair, or challenge another person’s face.
• Face-detracting strategies involve messages or statements that take away from the respect, integrity, or credibility of a person.
• Face-saving strategies shift the emphasis from the individual to the issue, avoiding power struggles and personalities, and providing the parties involved space to save face.
• Face negotiation theory argues that people in all cultures negotiate face through communication encounters and that cultural factors influence how we engage in facework, especially in conflict situations.
• Framing is the act of intentionally setting the stage for the conversation you want to have. In framing a conversation, you express why you want to engage in a particular topic, what your intent is, and what you hope the outcome will be for resolving the conflict, as well as the impact on and importance of your relationship.

Chapter 7

• Informational listening involves focusing listening on gathering new information and facts, and then identifying key points. This is then followed by recording the information so that we can access it later by committing it to memory or taking physical notes.
• Comprehensive and evaluative listening seeks to understand and organize the information we have gathered. Paraphrasing and questioning communication skills are used when seeking to align the new information with what we already know or believe.
• Empathic listening is active and seeks to identify and understand the feelings and emotions behind the information being presented.
• Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from or generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication as a guide to belief and action.
• Critical ignoring helps us evaluate information and decide what to keep and what to discard.
• Self-nudging involves ignoring temptations by removing them.
• Lateral reading is used to determine how trustworthy a source and the information provided is by investigating the background of a website and its author, and by comparing the information across a wide variety of sources.
• The top-down outline is a way to organize the ideas you know you need to include in the message you want to convey. The ideas are arranged in a logical order, often numerically, and there is always an introductory idea and a concluding idea.
• Mind mapping is used to visually associate and/or explore multiple aspects of a topic or concept. If ideas are not fully developed or if a person is a visual thinker, they may prefer a mind map to a formal outline. After you create a mind map, you can then make decisions about the logical flow of ideas when presenting the information to your audience.
• Bottom-up outlining is essential when you have lots of information but need to impose structure and direction. This form of outlining is a great way to get over writer’s block and can be done when writing alone or in a group.
• SMART structure is a way to determine how to deliver information to an audience. It stands for Story, Main idea, Agenda, Reasons, and Task.
• Digital citizenship is the appropriate use of the internet, computers, and any other type of digital device.
• Netiquette refers to etiquette, or the protocols and norms, for communication on the internet.