Relational listening is best characterized as the ability to ______.

General Listening Types:

The two main types of listening - the foundations of all listening sub-types are:

• Discriminative Listening
• Comprehensive Listening

Discriminative Listening

Discriminative listening is first developed at a very early age – perhaps even before birth, in the womb. This is the most basic form of listening and does not involve the understanding of the meaning of words or phrases but merely the different sounds that are produced. In early childhood, for example, a distinction is made between the sounds of the voices of the parents – the voice of the father sounds different to that of the mother.

Discriminative listening develops through childhood and into adulthood. As we grow older and develop and gain more life experience, our ability to distinguish between different sounds is improved. Not only can we recognise different voices, but we also develop the ability to recognise subtle differences in the way that sounds are made – this is fundamental to ultimately understanding what these sounds mean. Differences include many subtleties, recognising foreign languages, distinguishing between regional accents and clues to the emotions and feelings of the speaker.

Being able to distinguish the subtleties of sound made by somebody who is happy or sad, angry or stressed, for example, ultimately adds value to what is actually being said and, of course, does aid comprehension. When discriminative listening skills are combined with visual stimuli, the resulting ability to ‘listen’ to body-language enables us to begin to understand the speaker more fully – for example recognising somebody is sad despite what they are saying or how they are saying it.

Example

Imagine yourself surrounded by people who are speaking a language that you cannot understand. Perhaps passing through an airport in another country. You can probably distinguish between different voices, male and female, young and old and also gain some understanding about what is going on around you based on the tone of voice, mannerisms and body language of the other people. You are not understanding what is being said but using discriminative listening to gain some level of comprehension of your surroundings.

Comprehensive Listening

Comprehensive listening involves understanding the message or messages that are being communicated. Like discriminative listening, comprehensive listening is fundamental to all listening sub-types.

In order to be able use comprehensive listening and therefore gain understanding the listener first needs appropriate vocabulary and language skills. Using overly complicated language or technical jargon, therefore, can be a barrier to comprehensive listening. Comprehensive listening is further complicated by the fact that two different people listening to the same thing may understand the message in two different ways. This problem can be multiplied in a group setting, like a classroom or business meeting where numerous different meanings can be derived from what has been said.

Comprehensive listening is complimented by sub-messages from non-verbal communication, such as the tone of voice, gestures and other body language. These non-verbal signals can greatly aid communication and comprehension but can also confuse and potentially lead to misunderstanding. In many listening situations it is vital to seek clarification and use skills such as reflection aid comprehension.

Interpersonal Skills

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Updated February 06, 2021

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Special Gift or Emergence?

Having briefly covered the methods used to study language acquisition and the basic phases in development, it is now possible to return to this question: Is language development best characterized as the use of a "special gift" or as an emergent result of various cognitive, neural, physiological, and social pressures? There are good arguments in favor of each position.

The special gift position views language as an instinct. People are often overpowered by the "urge to speak." Young children must feel this urge when they interact with others and have not yet learned how to use words correctly. It is important to recognize, however, that crickets, birds, snakes, and many other species can be possessed by a similar urge to produce audible chirps, songs, and rattling. In themselves, these urges do not amount to a special gift for language learning. Better evidence for the special gift comes from the study of children who have been cut off from communication by cruel parents, ancient Pharaohs, or accidents of nature. The special gift position holds that, if the special gift for language is not exercised by some early age, perhaps six or seven, it will be lost forever. None of the isolation experiments that have been conducted, however, can be viewed as providing good evidence for this claim. In many cases, the children are isolated because they are brain-injured. In other cases, the isolation itself produces brain injury. In a few cases, children as old as six to eight years of age have successfully acquired language even after isolation. Thus, the most that can be concluded from these experiments is that it is unlikely that the special gift expires before age eight.

The second form of evidence in favor of the notion of a special gift comes from the observation that children are able to learn some grammatical structures without apparent guidance from the input. The argumentation involved here is sometimes rather subtle. For example, Chomsky noted that children would never produce "Is the boy who next in line is tall?" as a question deriving from the sentence "The boy who is next in line is tall." Instead, they will inevitably produce the question as, "Is the boy who is next in line tall?" That children always know which of the forms of the verb is to move to the front of the sentence, even without ever having heard such a sentence from their parents, indicates to Chomsky that language must be a special gift.

Although the details of Chomsky's argument are controversial, his basic insight here seems solid. There are some aspects of language that seem so fundamental that humans hardly need to learn them. Nevertheless, the specific structures examined by linguistic theory involve only a small set of core grammatical features. When looking more generally at the full shape of the systems of lexicon, phonology, pragmatics, and discourse, much greater individual variation in terms of overall language proficiency appears.

To explain these differences, it is necessary to view language learning as emerging from multiple sources of support. One source of support is the universal concept all humans have about what language can be. A second source of support is input from parents and peers. This input is most effective when it directly elaborates or expands on things the child has already said. For example, if the child says "Mommy go store," the parent can expand the child's production by saying "Yes, Mommy is going to the store." From expansions of this type, children can learn a wide variety of grammatical and lexical patterns. A third source of support is the brain itself. Through elaborate connections among auditory, vocal, relational, and memory areas, humans are able to store linguistic patterns and experiences for later processing. A fourth source of support are the generalizations that people produce when they systematize and extend language patterns. Recognizing that English verbs tend to produce their past tense by adding the suffix -ed, children can produce over-generalizations such as "goed" or "runned." Although these overgeneralizations are errors, they represent the productive use of linguistic creativity.

Individual children will vary markedly in the extent to which they can rely on these additional sources of support. Children of immigrant families will be forced to acquire the language of the new country not from their parents, but from others. Children with hearing impairments or the temporary impairments brought on by otitis media [ear infections] will have relatively less support for language learning from clear auditory input. Blind children will have good auditory support but relatively less support from visual cues. Children with differing patterns of brain lesions may have preserved auditory abilities, but impaired ability to control speech. Alternatively, other children will have only a few minor impairments to their short-term memory that affect the learning of new words.

Because language is based on such a wide variety of alternative cognitive skills, children can often compensate for deficits in one area by emphasizing their skills in another area. The case of Helen Keller is perhaps the best such example of compensation. Although Keller had lost both her hearing and her vision, she was able to learn words by observing how her guardian traced out patterns of letters in her hand. In this way, even when some of the normal supports are removed, children can still learn language. The basic uses of language are heavily over-determined by this rich system of multiple supports. As a child moves away from the basic uses of language into the more refined areas of literacy and specific genres, progress can slow. In these later periods, language is still supported by multiple sources, but each of the supports grows weaker, and progress toward the full competency required in the modern workplace is less inevitable.

Multiple Choice Quiz

1. The existence of dialectical tensions in relationships tends to contribute toward

   a. a tendency of absolute sequential movement through the stages of relationships.
   b. a tendency for back-and-forth movement across stages.
   c. a tendency to stagnate at one stage.
   d. All of these are correct.
   

2. In the film Breakfast Club, a group of teens are together for detention. One girl, Allison, seemingly self-discloses her bizarre sexual activity in an effort to get another teen, Claire, to disclose her sexual activity. Self-disclosing about oneself in an effort to get information from someone else may work because of which characteristic of self-disclosure?

   a. Self-disclosure usually occurs in increments.
   b. Self-disclosure usually is reciprocal.
   c. Self-disclosure usually occurs in dyads.
   d. All of these are correct.
   

3. You say, "SHUT THE DOOR!" in a loud, commanding, angry tone of voice, or you say, 'Shut the door" with a softer voice, using rising intonation to indicate a request. Which is true?

   a. The content is essentially the same, but the relational message is different.
   b. The content and relational messages are the same.
   c. The relational message is essentially the same, but the content is different.
   d. The content and relational messages are both different.
   

4. Which of these is NOT one of the guidelines your text suggests for gauging appropriate self-disclosure?

   a. Is the disclosure as in-depth as you can make it?
   b. Is the risk of disclosing reasonable?
   c. Is the other person important to you?
   d. Is the disclosure relevant?
   

5. Which is true of self-disclosure?

   a. It is viewed essentially the same way around the world.
   b. It rarely occurs incrementally.
   c. It is strongly influenced by culture.
   d. It usually occurs in large groups rather than dyads.
   

6. Intimacy can best be defined as based on

   a. physical needs.
   b. emotional needs.
   c. shared activities.
   d. All of these are correct.
   

7. Marcia decided to end her friendship with Ann, who was always canceling plans at the last minute and borrowing money. This decision was likely based on

   a. the social exchange theory.
   b. self-clarification.
   c. self-validation.
   d. reciprocity.
   

8. Which is true of stages of relationships according to Knapp?

   a. Relationships always exist in many stages at a time.
   b. Circumscribing does not involve total avoidance.
   c. Stagnating is usually followed by bonding.
   d. The stage after bonding is integrating.
   

9. Self-disclosure is often gauged by two factors:

   a. depth and breadth
   b. high and low
   c. caring and respect
   d. significance and privacy
   

10. Which of these is a qualitative definition of interpersonal communication?

    a. It involves two persons.
    b. It occurs in dyads.
    c. It involves each considering the other unique.
    d. It is characterized as group or mass communication.
    

11. Which of these represents a type of dialectical tensions in relationships?

    a. connection and autonomy
    b. openness and privacy
    c. predictability and novelty
    d. All of these are correct.
    

12. A comment like, "Let's talk about the way we talk to each other in front of my parents." is most obviously a type of

    a. metacommunication.
    b. self-disclosure.
    c. impersonal communication.
    d. dialectical tension.
    

13. Jourard wrote, ". . . when you permit yourself to be known, you expose yourself not only to a lover's balm, but also to a hater's bombs. When he knows you, he knows just where to plant them for maximum effect." This statement relates to risks of

    a. dialectical tensions.
    b. equivocation.
    c. self fulfilling prophecy.
    d. self disclosure.
    

14. The Johari Window is

    a. a model of metacommunication.
    b. a model of self-disclosure.
    c. a model of relational stages.
    d. a model of contextual communication.
    

15. A Johari Window of someone who shares a lot of himself or herself with another and knows the other well would look like this:

    a.
    
    b.
    
    c.
    
    d.
    
    e.
    
    

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Stages of Relational Interaction

Communication is at the heart of forming our interpersonal relationships. We reach the achievement of relating through the everyday conversations and otherwise trivial interactions that form the fabric of our relationships. It is through our communication that we adapt to the dynamic nature of our relational worlds, given that relational partners do not enter each encounter or relationship with compatible expectations. Communication allows us to test and be tested by our potential and current relational partners. It is also through communication that we respond when someone violates or fails to meet those expectations [Knapp & Vangelisti, 2009].

There are ten established stages of interaction that can help us understand how relationships come together and come apart [Knapp & Vangelisti, 2009]. We will discuss each stage in more detail, but in Table 7.1 “Relationship Stages” you will find a list of the communication stages. We should keep the following things in mind about this model of relationship development: relational partners do not always go through the stages sequentially, some relationships do not experience all the stages, we do not always consciously move between stages, and coming together and coming apart are not inherently good or bad. As we have already discussed, relationships are always changing—they are dynamic. Although this model has been applied most often to romantic relationships, most relationships follow a similar pattern that may be adapted to a particular context.

Table 7.1 Relationship Stages

ProcessStageRepresentative Communication

Coming Together	Initiating	“My name’s Rich. It’s nice to meet you.”
Experimenting	“I like to cook and refinish furniture in my spare time. What about you?”
Intensifying	“I feel like we’ve gotten a lot closer over the past couple months.”
Integrating	[To friend] “We just opened a joint bank account.”
Bonding	“I can’t wait to tell my parents that we decided to get married!”
Coming Apart	Differentiating	“I’d really like to be able to hang out with my friends sometimes.”
Circumscribing	“Don’t worry about problems I’m having at work. I can deal with it.”
Stagnating	[To self] “I don’t know why I even asked him to go out to dinner. He never wants to go out and have a good time.”
Avoiding	“I have a lot going on right now, so I probably won’t be home as much.”
Terminating	“It’s important for us both to have some time apart. I know you’ll be fine.”

Source: Adapted from Mark L. Knapp and Anita L. Vangelisti, Interpersonal Communication and Human Relationships [Boston, MA: Pearson, 2009], 34.