118 Part 1 Basic Communication Processes
THINGS TO TRY
Video clips that illustrate key concepts, highlighted in
teal in the Real Reference section that follows.- Record a new episode of your favorite scripted television show. Try watching it with
the sound turned all the way down (and closed captions turned off ). Can you guess
what’s going on in terms of plot? How about in terms of what the characters are
feeling? Now watch it again with the sound on. How accurate were your interpreta-
tions of the nonverbal behaviors shown? How successful do you think you would
have been if it were an unfamiliar show, one with characters you don’t know as well? - Shake up your clothing and artifacts today. Wear something completely out of
character for you, and consider how people react. If you normally dress very
casually, try wearing a suit, or if you’re normally quite put together, try going
out wearing sweatpants, sneakers, or a T-shirt; if you’re normally a clean-shaven
man, try growing a beard for a week, or if you’re a woman who never wears
makeup, try wearing lipstick and eyeliner. Do you get treated differently by
friends? How about strangers (such as clerks in stores) or any professionals (such
as doctors or mechanics) with whom you interact? - Observe the nonverbal behaviors of people leaving or greeting one another at an
airport or a train station. Do you think you can tell the relationship they have
from their nonverbal behaviors? Describe the variety of behaviors you observe,
and categorize them according to the codes and functions detailed in this chapter. - Try smiling (genuinely) more than you usually do—and with people you might
not usually smile at. See what happens. Do you feel differently about yourself
and others? Do others respond with more smiles of their own? (A group of thirty
of our students tried this one day and reported back that they thought they had
made the whole campus a happier place—though there were a few people they
encountered who remained their solemn selves.) - Play with text-to-speech features on your computer. Compare the way the ma-
chine reads a passage of text to the way you would read it. Do you have a choice
of voices from which to choose, and is there one you prefer? Would you rather
listen to an audiobook performance by a noted actor or a computer-generated
voice reading the same material?
If Carl moved like eight-year-old Russell, the credibility of the film would be
compromised.
c It takes talented voice actors to bring a script to life. The veteran actor Ed
Asner breathed life into Carl, delivering not only his lines, but also believ-
able vocal cues—grunts, sighs, speaking through clenched teeth—that
made those lines more human and real. But for the roles of young Ellie and
Russell, the directors chose nonactors who would give genuine, unpolished
performances full of childish energy—the goal was for them to sound more
like real children than actors reading from a script.Activities
- LaunchPad for Real Communication offers key term videos and encourages self-
assessment through adaptive quizzing. Go to bedfordstmartins.com/realcomm
to get access to:
LearningCurve
Adaptive Quizzes.