Attribution Er Listening

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Communication is an important tool in portraying oneself to others and having strong communication skills allows an individual to seem more competent (Kepcher 2010). The observed communication event is between a mother and a son who are having a conversation over a meal at the dinner table. The mother is telling her son about the bad day she had, whilst taking her anger out on her son who seemed disinterested and annoyed at the conversation. The communication theories that are the most evident in this scenario are the use of paralanguage, kinesics and listening and feedback.

Paralanguage ‘provides important context for the verbal content of speech’ and has the ability to allow listeners to understand the emotions of the communicator (Sundaram …show more content…

However, this is attributed incorrectly by her son who connotes the raise in volume as his mother diverting her anger towards him. This is known as an attribution …show more content…

83) as ‘the process of hearing someone speak, processing what you’re hearing and demonstrating that you understand the speaker’s intent’. As the son has perceived his mother as being angry at him, he detached himself from the conversation and became judgemental towards what was being said, consequently only hearing parts of the conversation (Kline 2012). In this observed event, the son is not displaying active empathic listening which is traditional listening combined with a sense of empathy (Shrivastra 2014). Active listening would have resulted in the son demonstrating signs of concern and interest (De Janasz, Dowd & Schneider 2015). This would have allowed him to empathise with his mother, but due to his original disinterest and misattribution, he detached from the situation and did not provide feedback. This would’ve reinforced the desired behaviour from his mother and maintained their strong interpersonal relationship, whilst displaying an interest and appreciation in the conversation (Kline 2012). However, the mother was not participating in active listening either, ignoring parts of what was being said to her by her son, adding to the tense atmosphere. By analysing the use of listening and feedback in the observed communication event, it becomes evident that the limited active listening changed the dynamics of the event, as well as the relationship between the mother and the

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