Standpoint Theory

Life is all about status, social class, race and gender. But I feel that race is a person’s master status over all other statuses. For example, in the 1960s, race played a major role in how people viewed another person, especially in the South. Back then, to be racist was okay, and if you weren’t, you were considered an outcast to society. But all the situated knowledge the minority receives is from a weak objectively group (the characteristic of knowledge generated from standpoint of dominant group). George Hegel talks about the master-to-slave relationship, based on what group you are in, which determines who is the “knower”(the powerful) and also who controls who receives knowledge. What Hegel was saying still remains into today’s society. The government is the “knower” and it rations finds to public schools. The government knows which school’s funding to cut due to redlining— schools that always happen to be those in the inner city. The government gives inner-city children a basic education, which is just enough to get a job after graduation. But an inner-city education doesn’t even come close to those of other type of education, like those in the suburbs of America. In my opinion, the educational system is biased toward the minority, and for this reason the minority will always be oppressed and will never be the knowers in society.

Genderlect Styles Theory

When I first turned to read this chapter, I skimmed across the headline “Genderlect Styles” and the word genderlect stood out to me. It stood out because I had never heard of the word before. I soon learned that genderlect is a way of saying that men and women talk differently. The men’s communication type was call report talk and the women’s communication was call rapport talk. I agree 100% with Tannen's theory. I have a female friend and every time we talk, she tries to finish my sentences by saying what she thought I was going to say (Cooperative overlap). At times she can see the frustration on my face due to her constant interruption. Then she would say, “That doesn’t bother you? Right?” (Tags a question- to soften a potential conflict). I wish she would understand that I don’t like being interrupted and can speak effectively without her help.

Face-Negotiation Theory

My girlfriend and I argue all the time about nothing. Even though she is nine months pregnant, I try to be mindful and ignore her on-going mood swings. At times she gets so mean, she needs her friends to tell her that was rude of her (Third- Party Help). She feels that I don’t obliging enough toward her. But what I think is that she is always trying to dominate a relationship. I’m the one who always trying to avoid conflict by trying to compromise in situations that can be worked thought by using integrating. Now when we argue, I just use passive aggression to for solution to our problems. During the last past nine months my interactions skill have improved dramatically and so has her communication by telling me how she feels (Emotional Expression). I am glad the pregnancy is almost over and I can’t wait until she stops letting her emotions get the best of her.

Spiral of Silence Theory

Several decades ago, the majority of white people had pluralistic ignorance toward blacks. For a while, the African American community didn’t know Hard Core Nonconformists and black brothers or sisters could not really stand up and fight for what they believed in. Then came a man named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He spoke for the minorities, helping them to get speak their mind by speaking for them, by expressing their feelings and frustrations about racism through his mouth. The way Dr. King worked to get his point across, he would have been completely biased against the Spiral of Silence. In my opinion, Dr. King was the Quasi-Statistical Organ for the black community, because of the ways he spoke of equality and desegregation for African-Americans. Even though Dr. King was a minority he still stood up for what was right even if he was labeled a deviant (Train/Plane Test). Dr. King was a strong leader and did all he could to help people no matter how often he was threatened.

Anxiety/Uncertainty Reduction Theory

I wish I had read about Anxiety/Uncertainty Reduction Theory before I went to Jamaica a few years back. Things that Gudykunst talks about in this chapter, I have encountered. Myself and three of my friends went on a cruise to Jamaica and as soon as we got off the boat, we felt like strangers. We tried to use Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory while talking to the natives. They had very strong accents and broken English but we tried using hand gestures to explain what we were trying to say. But no matter whom we talked to, we couldn’t find any effective communication. Finally we just gave up and started walking, like we knew our way around Jamaica. We then we saw four underprivileged Jamaican boys asking for money on the path that we were walking on. They approached a white lady and I think she said something rude to them because they became very upset. They then took her purse and run into the woods (unconscious incompetence). After the boys took her purse, the lady ran up to us and asked her if we could help her catch them. I looked at her and asked her what she said to them. She told me that she told they boys to get away from her (conscious incompetence). I then knew why they took her purse, and I even though I wouldn’t have stolen her purse, I wasn’t going to run after children who she was rude to and obviously needed her help.

Agenda-Setting Theory

One day I was reading the newspaper, and an article caught my attention. The headline of the article read “Trans Fat” in big letters. The method to make the words stand out like they did is called framing, which the central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration. Not knowing much about the topic, I had uncertainty about it so I read the article. After finishing the article, it had more relevance to me and applied to me life as an athlete. This is the first level of agenda-setting because it included the transfer of salience of an attitude object in the mass media’s pictures of the world to a prominent place among the pictures in our heads. Now every time I go out to eat, I always ask the server how much trans fat is in the meal I am interested in ordering. This is the second level of agenda-setting, because it includes the transfer of salience of a bundle of attributes the media associate with an attitude object to the specific features of the image in our minds. By reading the article, I now know that trans fat stays in your body for the duration of your life and you can’t work it off. Because of this, I always watch what I eat. In this case, the media was making people more conscious about what they eat, and without the media publicizing topics like this, I would have never known about the potential dangers of trans fat.

Dramatism Theory

When I was in high school, everyday at the lunch table, my friends and I would always try to find failures about people walking past so that we could make fun of the person. But if we couldn’t find things wrong, we would pick on our friends, two friends in particular. For example, we would call my friend Brian, “Black” because he was as black as night. We called my other friend Fats (a type of identification method), even though is real name was Mo. Everything we said about each other were more devil terms, or that summed up everything we said as evil, instead of god terms that is more positive. My friend Leonard would always go overboard when it came to talking about people, causing the person he was talking about to feel bad about himself, and very embarrassed. As soon as Mo would sit down with his lunch Leonard would immediately call Mo a “fat ass” and criticize Mo by saying things like, “Don’t Mo look like one of the gorillas from Planet of the Apes eating a bushel of bananas?” Mo would respond by saying, “That’s why I have more money then you.” Mo’s response is an example of substance, a term that is used to encompass a person’s personal characteristics. In this case, it was Mo having money, which to Mo, was a type of value. Even though we all made fun of each other, (something behavioral scientists call homophily because there was a perceived similarity between all of us at the lunch table no matter who was the speaker or listener at that time. In this case the similarity was us all talking about each other.) I think the ringleader of it all, Leonard was going through something called the Guilt Redemption Cycle, or a method that when a person strives for perfection, ends up hurting themselves and others.