Saturday, November 12, 2011

Making Assumptions

In the show “Uncle Buck” I assumed the man was transporting his daughter to class and he attempted to advice her but she wanted no guidance. She was very angry so she withheld her speech.  On reaching her destination, she alighted from the vehicle in disgust.  The man later telephoned a lady, I assumed she was his wife.  She became angry and he was seen reminiscing on some better days as he viewed an album.  Later he returned for his daughter who being accompanied by her boyfriend.  There were angry exchanges again between daughter and father until they arrived home.  Young brother assisted in the kitchen, before calling his mother and the girls seem very unhappy, the bigger one was complaining to her mother before the father spoke to the mother using another line while the daughter was seen ease dropping.

 On watching the show with the sound turned on, I realized that the man was not the girl’s father he was the caretaker.  While transporting her to school he was enquiring from her whether he should return for her, that she was not pleased.  On his return the young girl was in the company of her boyfriend.  The caretaker attempted to converse with her but she was not very please.  He asked her the guy’s name and added a derogatory surname to the name in a bit to humiliate her so she tried to defend herself.  The young brother assisted happily with the chores.  The phone rang, spoke to children. The daughters were very displeased that their mother left them in the company of the caretaker.  The bigger daughter told her mother that the caretaker was ruining her life.  She was ease dropping for a while when the caretaker took the call on another line. 

My assumptions would have been more accurate if I was familiar with the show.  We must exercise caution when relying on non-verbal communication alone to arrive at conclusions.  Reception and attention are important factors in perception.  By not being able to hear the exchanges at first would have affected my ability to accurately determine the communication.  A person whose hearing or sight is affected is likely to experience inaccurate perception (O’Hair, Friedrich & Dixon, 2011).

Reference
O’Hair, D., Friedrich, G. W., & Dixon, L. D. (2011). Strategic communication in business and the professions. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

5 comments:

  1. Evlyn,

    I have deaf people in my family who have been trained to read lips and watch non-verbal cues. I must say they are on target when it comes to reading lips. One of family member was born deaf and the other lost his hearing at early age. Both of them are good communicators despite fact of being deaf. As for me, I have a hard time reading lips.For them, the body is able to compensation for the deficit in hearing by giving other senses to use.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Evlyn,
    I did not think about the people whose hearing is lost. It has to be really tough because these shows do not come with the American sign language. Once I tried to learn American Sign Language. I completed the course but it was no use now, because it was so hard and I did not continue practicing.
    Thank you for sharing!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Evlyn,
    I agree with you that we should be careful when relying on verbal cues alone to draw conclusions. Nonverbal cues can be contradictory, deceiving, and can channel discrepancies (O'Hair, & Wiemann, 2009). We need to connect verbal communication with nonverbal communications as much as possible to indicate the intended messages.

    Resources
    O'Hair, & Wiemann, (2009). Real Communications: An Introduction. Bedford/St. Martin's

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello Evlyn,

    You wrote a very informative blog. I agree that using nonverbal cues mainly to intrepret commuication can be very misleading. As for deaf people, which is a concept that I did not think about, nonverbal commuincation would be very contradicting. I will keep this concept in mind when working with deaf people because I want to establish good communicating with all people I meet or work with.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Evlyn,
    Perceptions can be misleading, and if we relied on perceptions alone in communication this would cause many inaccuracies. I found this exercise to be helpful in understanding the many components of communication and how verbal and nonverbal cues both play important roles in communicating and effective listening. Also this was a great lesson in dispelling assumptions.

    ReplyDelete