...Minimizing Interruptions Facts: Although some interruptions are signs of involvement and interest, and other s are genuine requests for information, interruptions are rarely appreciated. When you cut others off, the speaker thinks that you don’t care about their ideas or that you believe your ideas are better than theirs. When you interrupt, you may be perceived as rude, egocentric and controlling – someone who believes that what you have to say is more important than other’s ideas. Strategies on how to cut back interrupting: Count to three after the speaker seems to be finished. Concentrate on what the speaker is saying then paraphrase it back when he/she is finished. When you catch yourself interrupting, apologize and ask the speaker to continue. Ask another co-worker to count the number of times you interrupt in a day. Opportunistic Listening Look for Main and Supporting Points Sometimes it is appropriate to ask politely for the speaker’s thesis. E.g. “I’m trying to pull together what you’ve been telling me about the problems you’ve been, having meeting your quotas. Could you summarize for me?” At other times, however, it isn’t appropriate to ask the speaker outright. “Over all, then, would you say your division is losing its market share?” Take Notes You are unlikely to remember every deadline, every comment or even every topic in a meeting...
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...(a) intuition, (b) usable information, (c) the writer’s deepest impressions, (d) inspiration, or (e) none of these. 10. _______ The information in a technical document must be (a) entertaining, (b) accessible, (c) confidently judgmental, (d) prosaic, or (e) none of these. Chapter 2 Quiz Indicate whether statements 1–7 are TRUE or FALSE by writing T or F in the blank. 1. _______ Primary and secondary audiences read technical documents for different reasons. 2. _______ When unable to identify all members of an audience, you should aim at the least specialized members. 3. _______ Primary audiences usually expect a semi technical message. 4. _______ Information needs may be culturally determined. 5. _______ Audience analysis is only necessary when the document...
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...American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 2009, 99:2, 448–453 http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.99.2.448 Beliefs and disagreement in OrganizatiOns † Authority versus Persuasion By Eric Van den Steen* Managers often face a choice between authority and persuasion. In particular, since a firm’s formal and relational contracts and its culture and norms are quite rigid in the short term, a manager who needs to prevent an employee from undertaking the wrong action has the choice between either trying to persuade this employee or relying on interpersonal authority.1 Herbert Simon (1947) noted, for example, that “when … disagreement is not resolved by discussion, persuasion, or other means of conviction, then it must be decided by the authority of one or the other participant” and that “in actual practice … authority is liberally admixed with suggestion and persuasion.” Obviously, in choosing between persuasion and authority, the manager makes a cost-benefit trade-off. This paper studies that trade-off, focusing in particular on agency conflicts that originate in open disagreement, in the sense of differing priors. To that purpose, I will study a setting in which a principal and an agent are involved in a project. The project’s outcome depends both on decisions and on implementation effort by the agent, i.e., on effort to execute the decisions. A key issue is that the principal and agent may openly disagree on which decisions are most likely to † Discussants:...
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...Language Analysis “A word from our coach…” is an article published by the Club News, which written by Sam. In the article, the writer’s contention is mainly about to argues with that some parents now don’t behave appropriately during the games, they care more about the win and lose between two teams instead of the sportsmanship of the game. Writer uses some persuasive techniques like inclusive language, generalisation and rhetorical questions to emphasize his contention. At the bottom of the article, a visual image also been used to support his view. Reading through the whole article, many inclusive phrases are used by the writer, which can invite the readers to follow and join the way of writer’s thinking. “We all remember that Olympic runner…that was truly heroic!” In this phrase, a famous example of sportsmanship is used here, but by using the phrase “we all remember” is for reminding the audience of this example and link to the contention of that, sportsmanship in the game is more than win and lose. “We don’t want a repetition if this stuff around here”, before this phrase, a negative example has been shown, so using the inclusive language “we all…” writer put himself stand with the readers to criticise the unappropriated behaviours of parents during the game. By using these exclusive language, writer can lead the audience to think with him effectively and agree more with that the sportsmanship in a game is more important. In the middle of the article, a rhetorical question...
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...“equal” a lot. In the second sentence, President Obama connected the fundamental principles of this country to the notion that we are “all created equal” by repeating the word. By using the different vocabulary words like equal, equality, believe in our hearts, law by decision—he uses rhetoric as a “universal dialect” to persuade his audience of the unity that we as Americans supposed to fundamentally believe in (Aristotle Rhetoric book 1 chapter 1). Obama uses the laws of the land— which is ethos to establish credibility in his argument of unity and equality. Furthermore, President Obama’s personal character makes the audience think of him as trustworthy (ethos). According to Aristotle there are three ways to insert an effective mode of persuasion— logical reasoning, the common good in the character of the speaker, and the comprehension of emotions (book 1 Chapter 2). Aristotle also says that because things are “true and just” usually takes on the natural ability to prevail over anything that may oppose it. President Obama also implies the word “victory” (Kairos) to implicate a beneficial win for everyone since the court struck down this discriminatory...
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...Part I: Theoretical discussion of some concepts on Persuasion 1. Define persuasion and distinguish it from other forms of communication. Persuasion is a form of communication that involves the ability to convince others to change his/her position on a certain subject. But unlike negotiation, which suggests some degree of backing down or meeting in the middle. “Rather than compromising, as in negotiation, effective persuasion will actually convince the opposing party to abandon their previous position and embrace yours (http://westsidetoastmasters.com/resources/laws_persuasion/chap1.html).” In other words, effective persuasion enables you to get other people to willingly do what you want them to do. Looking closely at the definition of Perloff (2003) “Persuasion is a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behavior regarding an issue through the transmission of a message, in an atmosphere of free choice.” The two most important component of this definition are: (1) the deliberate intention to change the attitude or behavior of another person, and (2) voluntary compliance, that is, not by force. Therefore, although persuasion is like any other form of communication such that it is a “process of stimulating meaning in the mind of another by means of a message (Putnam, 2014).” it is different from the accidental type since in the accidental form there is no intention to change attitudes or behavior but simply to transmit...
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...Discuss the relationship between persuasion and attitude change? Persuasion is the use of appeals to reasons, values, beliefs, and emotions to convince a listener or reader to think or act in a particular way. We face persuasive advertisements particularly on a daily basis; from the television to magazines. To explain the psychology of persuasion there are various models; the Hovland-Yale model and the elaboration likelihood model. The Hovland-Yale model states that there several factors that will affect how likely a change of attitude through persuasion is, after all behavioural change cannot occur without attitude change also having taken place. The three most prominent factors are the source, the message and the audience. Hovland et al found that source characteristics played an important role in determining the persuasive nature of any communication. The theory states that people more likely to be persuaded when a source presents itself as credible. For example, people were more likely to be persuaded when hearing the information from an expert. This was supported by Bochner and Insko study, where they found that people were more likely to trust a sleep expert than a non-sleep expert, on matters surrounding sleep. The creditable sources were more influencing towards the audience, where with the non-expert source the audience tried to find ways of discrediting the communicator. The Hovland-Yale model says the content of the message is an important factor. When trying...
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...Threat Persuasion in Advertising: The Effects of Humor, Threat Intensity, and Issue Involvement Hye Jin Yoon Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA Spencer F. Tinkham University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA 2010) or ads that ridicule nonusers of the brand (Voss 2009), but these studies researched “humor types” and should be distinguished from humor effects studies in threat persuasion ads. By looking into both the humor and threat persuasion literature, we set out to understand how humorous threat persuasion works in advertising and for whom it may be most effective. Threat persuasion, otherwise known as fear appeal in advertising, deals with critical issues that might have negative consequences for the consumer or the public (e.g., health and environmental issues) (Freimuth et al. 1990). In the ad, threatening information presents the problem, and attitudinal or behavioral suggestions are given as solutions. Threat information is valuable in that it can help protect us from harm but is negative in valence and out of the ordinary in our daily lives. Such substantive yet negative and out-of-the-ordinary information is known to be unpleasant and cognitively arduous to process (e.g., Rozin and Royzman 2001; Schimmack 2005). When humor accompanies threat information, it can function as a buffer. By providing a positive surface cue that attenuates the negative thoughts and emotions and facilitates processing, humor can make a threat persuasion ad more...
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...Persuasive communications The European commission have recently released there latest figures reviling UK women are the fattest in Europe. Obesity rates have been on a slow climb for the last 10 years which is why it has become one of the NHS main focuses. According BBC health, “Obesity is caused by two simple factors - an unhealthy diet (typically too rich in sugar and fats and not enough fibre and carbohydrate) and not doing enough exercise to burn off the calories consumed.” In 2009, 16% of boys aged 2 to 15, and 15% of girls were classed as obese between the ages of 2-15 The Health and Social Care Information Centre. This large percentage of obesity amongst children needs to be addressed before it become out of hand acceptable in society. David Cameron announced earlier this year that obesity costs the NHS £4 billion a year and that is looking to grow. This issue does need to be tackled to stop the growth of obesity not only to save money but lives too. This essay will be outline Tesco’s ‘great school run’ and the NHS ‘get fit with the Olympics’ campaigns to encourage people to become more active and analyse how they communicate with their publics differently in striving for the same result. It will also look at the similarities and differences applying different theories to each of the campaigns to come to the conclusions of their overall effectiveness. With participation in sport dropping between 2009 and 2010 (Mintel) and obesity levels growing, changes need to be...
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...Question 2: What are attitudes and how do they influence message reception and attitude change? The influence communication has on our lives is often taken for granted. How we have been taught to communicate shapes our behaviour, opinions, perceptions and entire value system. How we then communicate with one another reflects our attitude towards our social environment. According to Baron and Byrne (1997), “Attitudes are lasting evaluations of various aspects of the social world” (p. 112). It is essentially the mental state when responding to objects and situations through the opinions, perceptions and value systems formed, which are all as a result of early socialisation. Communication, whether verbal or non-verbal, is essential in human interaction. Therefore, the study of communication is essential in understanding human behaviour. The field of social psychology deals with how we think about and interact with others, so it is no surprise that this field will be the basis of reasoning in this paper. Relationships are very important in our social reality; however, they are also very fragile. Building relationships instead of destroying them will depend on our understanding of our ongoing interaction with people. Our attitudes will always tell a very interesting story as they are deeply imbedded in our self identity. As individuals we tend to get passionate about specific concepts, this passion really demonstrates our attitudes on social information. For this reason, the influence...
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...Page 104 Priority publics/stakeholders are those most important to an organization in terms of their potential to an organization in terms of their potential impact on the organization. Page 105 Psychographics are increasingly important for describing diverse publics. One system for analysis of U.S. consumers is VALS tm (values, attitudes and lifestyles), which puts consumers into eight categories. Because people are more interconnected globally, reactions to issues and events are communicated responses. Interactive media have contributed to multiple message sources and thus a fragmentation of publics. As a global source of information, the internet draws users because it is participatory, offers anonymity and affords the development of “communities”. Employers are always an important public because they often have direct contact with a number of other publics. With their insiders’ experience and information, they are perceived as knowledgeable and credible. Keeping employees informed and loyal is crucial for maintaining this PR “front line”. Women in the workplace and women customers can create serious problems with an institution’s reputation if they are victims of harassment or discrimination and make that case publicly. Sensitivity to a minority culture is as important as being aware of and using the language of that minority effectively. Handling issues demands an integrated approach to communication in which an issue, the public and the situation in which...
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...Rhetorical analysis is your way of persuasion. In other words, how to use your words to convince someone or some people of something. There are three types of appeals: Ethos, Logos, Pathos. Ethos, which is a Greek word that means ethical appeal; it means credibility. In other words, is that you talk about a specific field where you are considered an expert in it, where you use yourself as the source of your words. In order to be an expert in a field or to be considered an expert, you will have to do a research about the topic and ready some articles about it. Sometimes you can be considered an expert in a field by just working in same field or if you have been in a situation about the same topic. An everyday example of this is the weather man. The weather man is considered an expert in the climate changes,...
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...years after attending college I decided I did not want to become a doctor anymore. I learned that after undergraduate school that I still had to attending medical school and would most likely not be out of school until I was approximately thirty years old. I also learned that I did not like blood or needles, so that would not work well with the profession I was trying to pursue. Finally, I realized that my decision to become a pediatrician was not my decision. I had made the decision for other people and based on what I was told to do. I realized that I was not pursuing this career path for myself and it was not my passion in life. Therefore, I had decided to drop out of college without telling anyone including my parents. Persuasion and Risks Persuasion...
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...Persuasion ‘’You can't persuade your listeners if you don't know much about them. Knowing your listeners helps you to shape your message in a way that's most likely to gain their acceptance. That's all the more important when your goal is to persuade, and not simply to inform, your audience. Persuasive speaking aims to convince people to take some form of action. To achieve that goal, you must get your listeners to change their attitudes and beliefs. Or you must reinforce the attitudes and beliefs they already hold. That means you must have a thorough knowledge of your audience before you prepare your presentation’’. When I know that my job is good and I need a raise I have to persuade my manager to give me a raise but I must do it in appropiate way which means I need to communicate with him/her. I know that I will have to to tell them that I need a raise because of the cost of living or my I am working many hours and I have been at this job for 7 years and I have had only 4 raises. So I have not had a evaluation in over 2 years. ‘’Effective peer-to-peer communication can go a long way toward helping to establish mutually respectful relationships that can not only improve employee satisfaction, but that can boost productivity as well. building strong, respectful communications with peers in the workplace they're one step closer to making it happen. Taking personal responsibility for effective communication means being open-minded and willing to change behavior and communication...
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...The art of persuasion, rhetoric, contains three major forms of persuasion. Let’s analyze the three major forms of rhetoric in the written text of professional emails as well as featured Wikipedia pages. Ethos is the technique of establishing credibility within the information being presented, just like when a toothpaste commercial can put any actor in a dentist coat and say that their toothpaste is the number one dentist recommended. Wikipedia articles utilize this technique with the use of footnotes after every sentence which reveals that the information presented is from a credible source like a publication. A professional email employs this tactic when either background information about the writer is provided in a brief introduction at the beginning of the email like Alice Clark’s...
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