My 1st COM 101 blog..

There are some interesting aspects of communication perspectives that were discussed in lecture 2.Communication perspectives can take in several forms, such as the psychological perspective that is looking at an individual’s factors contributing to communication while social constructionists’ perspective emphasizes on symbolic factors, cognitive customs, shared roles & rules and cultural traditions shape communication. Subsequently, pragmatic perspective draws attention to communication & individual patterns and lastly, cultural perspective believes that any given culture is a web of interconnected acts of communication. Looking at all of these factors, I believe that each one of the factors is essential to contribute to an effective communication. It is wise to look at four of them as interconnected. Only when one is considering the four factors as a whole therefore a successful communication may be achieved. The illustration is as followed: It is the 1st day of new semester. With a burst of energy and enthusiasm, Derek is ready for the new semester’s syllabus, new challenges, new instructors and most importantly, new classmates. It was still early in the morning when he reached the school. As he entered his new class, he saw a sweet, feminine girl with a bright pink headdress sitting at the front row. She looked up upon hearing the cracking sound of door handle being turned, but after she saw Derek, she continued to progress in her reading. Ignoring her action, Derek smiled and greeted her warmly as he entered the class and spontaneously reaching out his right hand to introduce himself. As Derek is aware of, such gesture is a perfectly normal thing to do when 2 strangers meet at the 1st time. However, to his surprised, the Muslim girl responded with a shrug in her shoulders “I’m Rokiah, nice to meet you”. Her reluctance to respond to his handshake confuses Derek. Let’s analyze the above situation. Derek probably only possessed social perspective when trying to communicate with Rokiah, because he thinks that it is perfectly acceptable to greet and give a handshake when meeting a stranger for the 1^st time. However, he forgot to consider the individual and cultural factor as such that for someone who is brought up in a conservative Muslim environment, Rokiah is unfamiliar with his social code and she is not supposed to have physical contact with men unless her own family members. Furthermore, Derek has also ignored the pragmatic approach as he did not notice Rokiah’s body language pattern after seeing him entering the class. In this case, Derek might have the first sour impression with Rokiah by thinking that Rokiah is an unfriendly classmate. In conclusion, miscommunication might easily occur to someone who does not understand and consider all of the four communication perspectives. One should not expect to establish an effective and efficient communication only with one or few of the perspectives. Should Derek and Rokiah understand the four perspectives well and use them as a whole, they should achieve a better understanding of each other.