Human communication - Prof Barnhurst

Prof. Barnhurst

He started the lecture with an exercise of human story telling. The exercise was for student to turn towards another student and tell a story that needs to be recent and it needs to matter to the individual that is telling it. Then they need to get into the groups of four and tell their stories to the group.

The point of the exercise was to find a pattern within the stories and some commonalities. Some commonalities within different stories were location, note taking pattern, short sentences (so it could be easily remembered). When it came to similarities in content that they were similar it was found that topics about school or family is the content similarity.

We always use abstracts in order to tell a story for example, “this is what happened to me the other day….. ”. The reason we start this way is because we need to announce the start of the story so the listener know what is coming next. Right after abstract comes the setting which is often used to describe who, what, and when, which helps the listener picture themselves in the story. Then there is response or resolution which represents the ending.  At the end comes interpretation. Interpretation on the other hand is the product of the story. It represents how listeners perceived the story. Interpretation is used in order for us to organize, identify and interpret the information we have received from an individual.

To me this lecture is based on the first chapter and how we communicate with one another. The term communication comes to mind which means the way “we share experiences”. He also covers how we perceive other people in the terms of 3 elements. Those elements are the perceiver, the object of perception and in this context the object is a human being “and the context within which the object is viewed”. Since we are all different and come from different backgrounds and cultures, it is very easy to have predispositions to make negative or positive evaluations of others. We also need to remember that perception is always in transition and it changes over time and they never remain constant.

In order to for us to improve our perception we need to understand that our own perception can be inaccurate. In order to improve perception and communicational skills we need to accept the fact that our perception can be subjective. And the last requirement in order for us to improve our perception is empathy. It is often said “if you out yourself in my shoes, you would understand” which means that empathy involves experiencing the other’s perception, “that is seeing and feeling things as other does”. Perception will be always used but at least we can improve it.

             

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