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Архитектура Аудит Военная наука Иностранные языки Медицина Металлургия Метрология Образование Политология Производство Психология Стандартизация Технологии |
ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИЯ КОММУНИКАТИВНОГО ПОВЕДЕНИЯСтр 1 из 22Следующая ⇒
ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИЯ КОММУНИКАТИВНОГО ПОВЕДЕНИЯ INTERPRETING COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOUR
Учебно-методическое пособие
Минск 2011
УДК 811.111’243 (075.8) ББК 81.432.1 – 923.1 Л13
Рекомендовано Редакционным советом Минского государственного лингвистического университета. Протокол № 1 (29) от 04.01.2011 г.
Рецензенты: кандидат филологических наук, профессор И.И. Панова (МГЛУ); кандидат филологических наук, доцент Н.А. Новик (БГЭУ)
Лавренко, Е.В.
Основной целью данного учебно-методического пособия является развитие коммуникативной компетенции студентов и совершенствование навыков адекватного коммуникативного поведения в различных ситуациях. Структура пособия представляет собой организованные по тематическому принципу разделы, которые формируются из теоретических вопросов для повторения, аутентичных текстов и практических заданий к ним. Предназначено для студентов старших курсов факультета межкультурных коммуникаций МГЛУ, обучающихся по специальности «Лингвистическое обеспечение межкультурной коммуникации» в рамках дисциплины «Интерпретация коммуникативного поведения», и может быть использовано как для аудиторной, так и для контролируемой самостоятельной работы. Оно также может быть интересно студентам, изучающим английский язык на продвинутом этапе в других вузах или на других факультетах.
УДК 811.111’243 (075.8) ББК 81.432.1 – 923, 1
CONTENTS Introduction.......................................................................................... 5 Unit 1. Defining Communication........................................................ 6 Task 1. Just Good Friends......................................................... 6 Task 2. Mr. Know All................................................................ 7 Unit 2. Models of Communication...................................................... 8 Task 1. Psychology.................................................................... 9 Task 2. On Time......................................................................... 9 Task 3. Dear Sylvia. Dear Hugo............................................... 10 Task 4. En Garde!.................................................................... 10 Task 5. The Luncheon.............................................................. 12 Task 6. The BBC’s Digital Strategy in a World beyond Boundaries............................................................................... 14 Task 7. Faith and the Media..................................................... 19 Task 8. Assumed Identities...................................................... 26 Task 9. Hazards....................................................................... 30 Task 10. Chancery Lane........................................................... 32 Task 11. The Quest.................................................................. 32 Task 12. Warren Street............................................................ 33 Task 13. Notting Hill Gate....................................................... 33 Task 14. After the Movie......................................................... 34 Task 15. A Doll’s House.......................................................... 39 Unit 3. Decoding Messages: Perception and Information Processing 40 Task 1. Four Short Crushes..................................................... 41 Task 2. The Way We Are......................................................... 45 Task 3. Queensway.................................................................. 46 Task 4. Checkmate................................................................... 47 Task 5. Broken Routine........................................................... 47 Task 6. The Challenge of Straight Talking............................... 48 Task 7. Sizing up the Sexes...................................................... 51 Task 8. Remember This............................................................ 58 Task 9. Capturing the Digital Opportunity for the Whole UK. 65 Unit 4. Encoding Messages: Spoken Language................................ 70 Task 1. More than Words........................................................ 70 Task 2. Choices and Change: Commencement Address........... 71 Task 3. The Promise................................................................. 73 Task 4. A Happy Life as a Stay-at-Home Mom....................... 74 Task 5. The Wisdom of Promoting Diversity........................... 77 Task 6. Public Service Media in the Digital Age....................... 79 Task 7. Big is Beautiful............................................................ 85 Task 8. HIV/AIDS: Universal Action Now.............................. 92 Task 9. WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic........... 95 Task 10. Twisted Logic............................................................ 97 Task 11. Verbal Aggression................................................... 102 Unit 5. Encoding Messages: Nonverbal Communication............... 105 Task 1. Body Language.......................................................... 105 Task 2. Decoding the Subtle Injustice of Ugliness.................. 108 Task 3. Six Ways to Get along Better.................................... 110 Task 4. Dressin’ Texan.......................................................... 112 Task 5. Passing...................................................................... 114 Task 6. A Dill Pickle.............................................................. 116 Unit 6. Interpersonal Communication............................................. 117 Task 1. New York to Detroit.................................................. 117 Task 2. Romantic Stories....................................................... 118 Task 3. Love Poems............................................................... 122 Task 4. Postnuptial Depression............................................. 124 Task 5. History of a Disturbance........................................... 127 Unit 7. Group Communication........................................................ 131 Task 1. Winnie-the-Pooh........................................................ 131 Task 2. King’s Cross.............................................................. 135 Task 3. The Destructors......................................................... 135 Task 4. The Great Mouse Plot................................................ 136 Task 5. Honorary Gun Moll................................................... 136 Unit 8. Mass Communication.......................................................... 137 Task 1. President Bush’s Radio Address............................... 137 Task 2. Iraq Needs Capitalism, Not Foreign Aid................... 139 Task 3. Greenhouse Emissions............................................... 141 Task 4. Jimmi Carter’s Nobel Prize Lecture........................... 148 Task 5. Mending Broken Hearts............................................. 153 Task 6. Here’s What He’s Hiding from You.......................... 159 Unit 9. The Role of Communication Strategies in Interaction....... 161 Task 1. Louise........................................................................ 161 Task 2. The Perfect Murder.................................................... 162 Task 3. The Lumber Room..................................................... 162 Task 4. Clean Sweep Ignatius................................................ 163 Task 5. Cheap at Half the Price.............................................. 163 Task 6. No! A Thousand Times, No!.................................... 164 Reference.......................................................................................... 167
INTRODUCTION This practice book has been designed for specialists in communication and is aimed at providing them with skills requisite for the analysis of communicative behaviour in different situations and spheres of human activity. The book is framed for individual work at home and in-class discussion and can assist the senior students of MSLU majoring in communication in the process of solving such practical tasks as disclosing the reasons of communicative failures and improving unsuccessful communication. It can also be of interest to advanced students of English at other universities. The focus of the discipline “Interpretation of Communicative Behaviour” is to enable the students to adequately identify various communicative episodes and components of communicative situations presented in authentic English texts, estimate the results of the participants’ communicative behaviour and improve faulty communication. The book covers essential topics associated with modern understanding of communication and its analysis, such as models and perspectives of analyzing communication, decoding messages (perception), encoding messages (spoken language and nonverbal communication), types of communication (interpersonal, group and mass communication), communicative strategies and tactics. Each unit begins with the section Recap the Following Theoretical Issues that suggests some topics for revision. As the theoretical aspects under consideration are familiar to the fifth-year students of MSLU majoring in communication, theoretical material as such is not included in the book. The discipline focuses on practice in the first place. Nevertheless, revision of theory is an essential element of studying process as the practical analysis is carried out in accordance with a certain model/theory of communication.[1] The practical tasks are divided into Identifying Aspects of Communication, Discussion, Follow-up and Problem-solving sections. These practical assignments (except for Problem-solving) are based on the texts for analysis and the corresponding theory. They are to be prepared at home and discussed in class. Identifying Aspects of Communication encourages the students to figure out and describe the main elements of the communicative episode under consideration. Discussion poses questions about a contestable issue on which the students should express their own opinion. Follow-up provides tasks that guide the students in the process of making mini presentations relying on the discussed texts and the requisite theory. Problem-solving is associated with role-playing and modelling particular communicative situations. In these tasks the students are encouraged to share their personal experience connected with the communicative phenomenon under study. UNIT 1 Defining Communication
Task 1. Just Good Friends Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about the following: “It’s a myth that we only swish our tails when we’re angry”. Is it easy for a person to understand “animal language”? Explain your point. Ex. 3. Follow-up. Relying on the text, prove that animal communication is inherently по сути, по своему существу, в своей основе different from human communication (find at least two pieces of evidence to support your idea).
Task 2. Mr. Know All UNIT 2 Models of Communication
Task 1. Psychology Ex. 1.Identifying aspects of communication. Read the story “Psychology” by K. Mansfield and get ready to dwell on the main elements of the communicative episode described in the text. Task 2. On Time Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about the final scene of the story. Laura “was heartless, cruel, but she got some comfort out of what she had said”, while Frank “couldn’t have her see what a hard blow it was for him”. Was trying to mislead each other and hide their real feelings the best solution in that situation? Ex. 1. Identifying aspects of communication. Read the stories “Dear Sylvia” and “Dear Hugo” by J.P. Donleavy and get ready to dwell on the main elements of the communicative episode described in the text.
1. How can you comment on the relations between the family members? What accounts for the rivalry between a) the spouses; b) Sylvia’s family and Hugo? 2. Why do you think Hugo repeats several times that it is not a letter of recrimination? What is his real communicative goal then? 3. How do the two letters differ in the tone and means of communication?
Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about Hugo’s choice of the channel of communication: “I just want you to get the facts straight and understand my side of it.” Has he chosen it appropriately to achieve his goal? Task 5. The Luncheon Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about the following situation. The young man tries to send the waiter a hidden message: “I tried with all my might to make him say no.” Why does the waiter readily understand everything that the woman says but seems to completely ignore the young man’s message? Ex. 4. Problem-solving. When we are with people from different countries, we sometimes make mistakes, or have misunderstandings. Analyse the following communicative episodes and try to guess what caused misunderstanding in each case. How would you behave in each case in order to avoid communicative failures?
a) When I was at university in England, my English tutor invited a group of us to her home. I didn’t want to make any mistakes, such as staying too late. So when she brought us a drink before we began a meal, I said, “Thank you for inviting us to your home and for inviting us to dinner. Could you tell me when we can leave? ” she laughed and said, “So, you can’t wait to leave? ” Lu, China. b) I was visiting Germany for the first time and I received an invitation to visit my most important customer in her house. I decided to take her a beautiful bunch of twelve red roses and her husband a bottle of wine. I gave her the flowers, but she just looked embarrassed. Douglas, Scotland. c) A British colleague invited me to join his friends after work. We went to a pub where he bought me a drink and he suggested a meal in a restaurant. At the end of the meal, I was very surprised to see everyone take out their wallets to pay the waiter. My friend expected me to pay as well, but I feel it was very mean of him not to pay for me as he invited me. Kenji, Japan. d) I was sitting in a bus in Bristol when an elderly lady got on the bus. It was crowded and there weren’t any seats. A middle-aged man said very loudly, “Wouldn’t you offer the lady your seat, please? ” Why didn’t he give her his seat? Carlos, Spain. e) I’ve only recently arrived in the USA and don’t have many friends so I was pleased to meet a really nice American in the college cafeteria the other week. We had a long conversation, she told me the story of her life, she showed me photos of her family, and she left me her address. The following week I saw her, but although she smiled and said “Hi! ” in a friendly way, she went and sat with her other friends. I feel very hurt. Does she expect me to all on her? I feel I need an invitation. Hana, Lebanon.
Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about the following. Were such job titles as Controller of Fiction, Controller of the Internet, Director of Vision, Controller of Knowledge possible some time ago? Why have such titles become possible now? Ex. 3. Follow-up.Analyse the text from the point of view of the social constructionist model, paying attention to values, beliefs, symbolic codes etc. in the past and in the present. What concepts have changed? Task 7. Faith and the Media Faith and the Media April 10, 2008
[Again he began to teach them by the lakeside, but such a huge crowd gathered round him that he got into a boat on the water and sat there. The whole crowd were at the lakeside on land. He taught them many things in parables, and in the course of his teaching he said to them, “listen! Imagine a sower going out to sow. Now it happened that, as he sowed, some of the seed fell on the edge of the path and the birds came and ate it up. “Some seed fell on rocky ground where it found little soil and at once sprang up, because there was no depth of earth, and when the sun came up it was scorched and, not having any roots, it withered away. “Some seed fell into thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it produced no crop. And some seeds fell into rich soil, grew tall and strong, and produced a good crop; the yield was thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold.” And he said, “anyone who has ears for listening should listen! ” Mark 4, 1-9] Hundreds of years before it was used to describe radio transmissions and long, long before it became the middle “B” in the initials BBC, the word broadcast began life as a term of art in horticulture. As many people here tonight will know, it’s a kind of sowing in which the sower scatters seeds widely over a given patch of ground rather than sowing it in strips. You can guess some of the advantages and disadvantages. You get the job done quickly but you never quite know where your seed will go or what will happen to it. The English word is only a few centuries old, but broadcast sowing itself is ancient, maybe the most ancient form of sowing there is. And it’s clearly what the sower is doing in the parable we just heard about the sower and the seed. He’s broadcasting. For me, this parable is a perfect place to begin a consideration of the relationship between faith and the mass media. So many of the conversations about religion and the media begin with the words: “if only”. If only there were more programmes like this Easter’s drama The Passion. If only there were less. If only the newspapers took religion more seriously. If only the BBC would refrain from broadcasting pieces like Jerry Springer – The Opera. If only humanists and atheists were allowed onto Thought For The Day. If only. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the mass media in general, and broadcasting in particular, has a direct one-for-one power to change minds and alter opinions. How much wiser the model of communication presented in the parable. Not only do you never know who is going to see, or hear, or read what. More importantly, you can never predict what they’re going to make of it. The same words, the same programmes provoke diametrically opposing reactions in different people. They can mean, they can signify utterly different things. And in no subject, no genre, is this more true than it is about religion. < …> I have what some will regard as a rather counter-intuitive story to tell. It is how, over a generation – as it happens over roughly the time I’ve been involved in broadcasting myself – one picture of religion has been replaced by another, more complex, more challenging, in many ways deeper one. I’ll talk about some of the new, seemingly intractable dilemmas that this change has confronted us with. I’ll also try to explain why, when I look to the future of the relationship between faith and the media, what I feel, most of time at least, is hope. The way we were But I’m going to start by looking at where we’ve come from. So I’m going to spend a few minutes looking at how television and radio covered and thought about religion in 1979, the year when I joined the BBC as a trainee. This is how I remember it. If you looked at a Radio Times of the period, you’d find that then as now there was a rich and imaginative array of religious output on BBC Radio. On television, you’d find some friends who are still very much with us – Songs Of Praise, for example, early on a Sunday evening – and a few, like ITV’s Stars On Sunday, who are not. Overall, you’d find rather more fixed slots for religion, but rather fewer specials and occasional series. But I want to delve a little deeper. After a few weeks in the BBC’s equivalent of boot camp I was sent in the autumn of 1979 to the religious documentary programme Everyman as the most junior of junior researchers. It was a fantastic first posting for any young programme-maker – a place of incredible creative and intellectual energy, a rather amazing gathering of talents – and I enjoyed every moment of it. At the same time I couldn’t help noticing that one thing that Everyman didn’t seem to do very often was actually to make programmes about religion. Each year there would be a handful of programmes on conventional religious subjects – I worked on one, a profile of Robert Runcie just as he was about to become Archbishop of Canterbury. But most editions of Everyman were only “religious” in the broadest possible sense. They’d deal with topics in the hinterland between science and spirituality – cryogenic suspension, for instance, as a hoped-for route to immortality. Or they’d explore the many New Age cults which then, as now, promised some new form of personal revelation. Or they’d use religion as a way into large-scale social or political issues – liberation theology in South America would be an example of that. < …> Even among religious programme-makers then, there was a real anxiety about whether religion as a thing in itself was a topic of any real interest. And outside the specialist departments, religion was marginal at best. It was almost entirely absent in mainstream drama, documentary and comedy. Compared to our bulletins and website today, it was also remarkably peripheral in our coverage of news. < …> A problem solved? So what was going on? I want to spend a few minutes exploring the worldview which I believe underpinned all these editorial choices. Think of it not as an explicit argument but as a set of prevailing background assumptions, not held by everyone, indeed not held by me as it happens, but so widespread – both within and beyond the media – as to be normative. It comprised two underlying ideas. The first is that familiar post-Enlightenment claim that the rationalist arguments against belief in God are so persuasive that they spell the inevitable long-term decline of organised religion. Progress brings education and knowledge, and education and knowledge inexorably undermine belief. < …> The second idea is a rather different and in some ways contradictory one, though it too draws its roots from the Enlightenment, if not from the Reformation. It is that there is another ineluctable movement in the history of religion and belief, from the primacy of collective and communal worship to that of individual and individually chosen belief. Alongside the decline of organised religion, in other words, we should expect to see all kinds of new spirituality and of people mixing-and-matching, picking-and-choosing between the old and the new. Submission and adherence to a common set of doctrines and practices would be progressively replaced by new, essentially personal goals – the goals of spiritual self-realisation and self-discovery. Expressivism is the term Charles Taylor uses in his brilliant new book, A Secular Age. Connected with this idea was a growing – and in many ways admirable – appreciation of the sheer diversity of human religious and spiritual responses and a strengthened awareness of the need for tolerance, especially of minority belief systems. Now these two big ideas don’t quite fit together. Hardline rationalist atheists, for example, are characteristically every bit as dismissive of New Age spiritualism as they are of conventional religion. But it’s worth adding that in a sense this was not just a post-Christian worldview, but a post-atheist one. A generation or so earlier, atheism had been frequently debated on the airwaves. < …> And yet by the late Seventies and early Eighties, and despite the presence of some very powerful individual voices like that of Richard Dawkins, I think it’s fair to say that media interest in atheism had also waned. Perhaps atheism was thought to have done its job, or to have been superseded by the new spiritual eclecticism. I’ve put it briefly and no doubt far too crudely, but this I believe was the prevailing intellectual landscape against which editors and journalists and others in the media thought about the coverage of religion in the Eighties. < …> Except for those with a particular interest, religion was regarded as rather dull and safe. It was, it was thought, broadly sorted. It was a problem solved. Or is it? Well, how different the world looks today. One of the most striking things I’ve witnessed over the past 20 years in the media is the way this comfortable background consensus about religion has broken down. Many of the individual themes I’ve talked about – the decline in church attendance in the UK and across Europe, the rise of New Age spirituality, the growing importance of minority faiths in multi-ethnic societies – are very much with us. < …> But the easy consensus, the sense of manifest destiny, the near certainty that this story could only ever end one way – that confidence has largely evaporated. < …> The first and most obvious factor has been the series of shocks and outrages directly or indirectly connected with extremist or hardline strains of Islam. 9/11 and 7/7 are the dates that many people in the media would cite as the days on which their view of the world changed. < …> The controversy posed another troubling question: what was the right response in an open, tolerant society when the beliefs of minorities clashed, potentially violently, with other fundamental rights and freedoms – for example, the freedom of speech and artistic expression? The cognitive dissonance associated with this last point is still unresolved and is still playing out 20 years later. < …> The churches also found themselves in new controversies of their own. Women and gay priests. Child abuse. The battle within many faiths between conservatives and modernisers. For good or ill, religion began to make the news regularly again. In many ways though, the biggest single factor was a subtler, more diffuse one. It was, and is, the progressive recognition that the long-predicted global recession of religion has not actually materialised. Indeed, whether you look at the Islamic world, or the success of both traditional and relatively newer forms of Christianity in Latin America, in parts of Asia, in parts of Africa, you can make the case that what we have been witnessing in recent decades is a global religious revival. Over the next 20 years, the demographers expect the number of Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs all to grow as a proportion of the world population and the number of those who profess no religion or who define themselves as atheists to decline. This is something which can fill you with optimism – or with gloom – or provoke any number of reactions between the two. The point I want to make is that the world just looks a more complex and diverse place in the matter of religion than it did a generation ago. < …> And of course, for reasons I’ve already made clear, beyond our religious output, faith and religion have come inescapable in the news, in current affairs, in discussion programmes and so on. And old debates have revived. < …> New dilemmas In some ways, then, we have been creatively liberated. But we also have to accept that we are also being confronted by some difficult new dilemmas. When I became Director-General of the BBC in 2004, the conventional wisdom < …> was that the most difficult editorial decisions were bound to be about political stories and about the BBC’s political independence. Perhaps that will eventually turn out to be the case. To date, though, no decision about political coverage has been remotely as contentious or as widely debated as the decision we made about the programme Jerry Springer – The Opera. In news, one of the trickiest judgements we’ve been called upon to make in my time as editor-in-chief was exactly how much to show on the air of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. Although people invariably try to parse decisions like these for general trends, we try to approach each editorial choice on its own merits. In the case of Jerry Springer, I believed that the arguments in favour of broadcast – albeit broadcast with very careful warnings so that anyone who might be offended by the programme would know to switch it off – I believed that these arguments, and above all the right of the public to make up their own minds whether to watch or not, outweighed the arguments against. In the case of the cartoons, we elected to show a little more of them than the newspapers did and were criticised by some as a result. We didn’t do it because we wished to cause offence, but because we thought that, without some level of depiction, it would be impossible for many viewers to understand the story at all. But the decisions do not always go one way. In the case of the animated comedy, Popetown, we decided that the balance of argument fell the other way and we dropped the programme. I have two observations on the new dilemmas that are being thrown up. The first is that we are forced much more often, not just to weigh editorial decisions carefully – we’ve always had to do that – but to stand up publicly for our fundamental editorial values, and to do so in an atmosphere that can sometimes feel rather menacing. In the case of Jerry Springer, one of the things I and some of my colleagues learned is that the depiction of religious figures is not always an abstract or academic matter. Occasionally it can mean the need for a security guard outside your home. But there is no point having a BBC which isn’t prepared to stand up and be counted; which will do everything it can to mitigate potential religious offence; but which will always be forthright in the defence of freedom of speech and of impartiality. We are being tested in new ways. But we can and will meet these new challenges. < …> We have a duty to ensure that no group – whether they are Christians or Muslims or agnostics or anything else – feels excluded or that their beliefs or customs will be treated with less courtesy and respect than others. And we have a special responsibility to ensure that, whatever the difficulties and the sensitivities, the debate about faith and society and about the way people with very different beliefs encounter each other – that this debate should not be foreclosed or censored. Conclusion I began tonight by emphasising the serendipity and uncertainty of the effect of broadcasting. I’ve said we don’t know how the history of religion itself will work out. Nor do we know what the future history of faith and media holds in store. We don’t know what the seeds will be or where they will fall. We don’t know how public attitudes and appetite will develop. They have ears, but will they listen? And what will they listen to? We don’t know what will happen to media, though we do know that it is going through a profound and utterly unprecedented revolution. Many of the largest and best established media organisations – our equivalent, if you like, of the great cathedrals and mosques and synagogues – are going through a process of fragmentation of readership and audience very analogous to the challenge facing some churches and faith-groups. In this climate, it would be very easy to become downbeat about the ability and willingness of the media to deal with the issue of religion and faith with the seriousness and commitment it deserves. In the end, I can only speak for the BBC. But I believe that we can – indeed that we can and are finding new ways of doing it. The promise of public service broadcasting was never to reach all of the people all of the time with everything we do. We need a proper humility about the place broadcasting occupies in people’s lives and about the speed and the extent to which any programme, no matter how good, how worthwhile, can impart knowledge or inspire change. But I believe, as committed public service broadcasters have always believed, that what we do can sometimes have a transformational power. That it can be a force for enlightenment in the broadest sense. A force for good. And, on those occasions when it does connect, when it really hits home, that it can bear disproportionate fruit. Sometimes not much. Sometimes nothing. But sometimes – who knows? – 30, 60 or even a 100-fold.
http: //www.bbc.co.uk Task 8. Assumed Identities Ex. 1. Identifying aspects of communication. Read the story “Assumed Identities” by T. David and get ready to dwell on the main elements of the communicative episode described in the text. Assumed Identities By T. David
I came home from school yesterday afternoon feeling sad and sorry for myself. My boyfriend of nearly two years had dumped me for an airheaded cheerleader. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Our senior year is supposed to be special. Actually, he didn’t have the guts. Three of his jockey friends were more than happy to relate the news to me. I hate all of them. My heart was broken to say the least. There was nothing I hated more than being lonely. I walked home slowly from school on an old dirt road that paralleled a shallow canal. It reaked of dying fish and dried up algae. The sun had been unrelenting for weeks. I stopped in front of the doorstep of my family’s house, wiping my feet carefully on the welcome mat and brushing the dust off of my clothes. “Why are you home from school so late young lady? ” came the first thing out of my father’s mouth when I opened the door. It wasn’t a question. It was more like an accusation. I walked by him without saying a word. I wasn’t ready to deal with this. “Don’t you walk away from me! You are nothing but trouble, you know that? Go to your room right now.” I gave him a “wish you were dead” look and stampeded straight to my room. Good, that’s where I wanted to be anyway. My father had been so mean and discriminating for many months now. I really couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore. I hated him at that moment too. I hated all men. My bedroom door slammed shut and was locked right away. No way I was letting anyone in. I turned my computer on and took off my shoes as it connected to the Internet. I needed to talk to someone, anyone who would listen. Making myself comfortable in a small swivel chair, I searched for a chat room for people locally. I found one easily and clicked on the romance section. I needed to feel loved at that moment, even if it was all phony. When asked to enter a log-on name I typed in Lonely Heart, for that’s what I was. There’s no way I would ever give out my real name on the internet. Too many crazy people out there. “Hello Lonely, what brings you here this afternoon? ” came a message on my screen. I looked closer for the name of this guy. Loneliness. “Well I see we have something in common. I just came to find someone to talk to”, I typed back in my slow hunt-and-peck method. “Same here”, came his quick reply. “What do you want to talk about? ” Then on the spur of the moment I just told him everything bad about my day and my life. The words came out freely and I really didn’t expect him to understand my feelings. Men never understand. “Just a minute, ” he answered. “I need to do something really quick but I’ll be right back”. He wasn’t coming back. I didn’t blame him. Should have known better than to think a man would listen to me. There was a pounding on my bedroom door at that moment. I jumped up in my chair half-startled. “Tatiana? ” came my father’s all too well known accusing voice. “There’s leftovers in the refrigerator for supper when you get hungry. I’ll be in my study room if you need me.” And then he was gone. Good riddance. “I know how you feel, ” magically appeared on my screen a few seconds later. I couldn’t believe it. He really did come back. “I feel much the same way as you do. My family hates me. I have no friends. They will never understand how much I really love them, ” he typed quickly. “Why don’t you just tell them? ” I asked. “I can’t.” I decided not to push him any further about it. We made small talk about our feelings and what we wanted from life. This man did understand me. This conversation was a blessing to me. “Lonely, I’m dying.” I didn’t quite understand. “What do you mean? ” I asked eagerly. “What I said. I’m dying and I’m scared.” There were no words exchanged for a minute or two. I knew what he was saying. I just didn’t want to believe it. “How so? ” I responded after an eternity. “I went to doctor a few months ago. I have cancer. He said I might live for thirty days or thirty years. There’s just no way to tell.” My heart suddenly dropped. Somehow I felt a special bond with this man. He was like an old friend. He couldn’t be dying. It just wasn’t fair. “I don’t know what to say, ” I answered back honestly. “Don’t say anything. I haven’t told anyone yet. I am so scared and worried of what will become of my family. I love them so much.” Another silence. “And they don’t even know it.” There was an intolerable silence now. I glanced quickly at my watch. Somehow time had slipped by for morning had already arrived. Suddenly I knew what I needed to do. I needed to meet this man in person to let him know that someone does care. His family was selfish to leave him feeling such despair. “Loneliness? ” I typed. “Yes? ” “I have enjoyed this so much but I have to leave soon. I feel silly for asking this. Is there any way we can meet in person later today or this week? ” There was no hesitation this time. “I would like that very much. You do live in Sanderson right? Maybe we can meet at the coffee shop downtown? ” he asked. “Sure. Four o’clock this afternoon if you can make it.” I looked at my watch again. Nearly eight in the morning. “Okay, it’s a date then, ” came the seemingly cheerful reply. “I can’t wait! ” I typed in and said out loud at the same time. “Gotta run now though. Meet me at the little table by the front window. See ya then! ” and I shut the computer down quickly. I stood up from the swivel chair and stretched for the first time in over twelve hours. I hadn’t gotten up for anything all night. By then I was starving so I unlocked the bedroom door and headed for the kitchen in a daze. My little brother was there eating some kind of bran cereal. I just grabbed a couple of bananas from the marble counter top and headed back to my room to get ready for the day. I passed by Dad’s study room and saw the light creeping from under his door. I don’t think he ever went to sleep last night. Several times I could have sworn I heard him laughing and mumbling to himself throughout the night. I doubt it though. I just wanted to get out of the house before he started yelling and bickering again. The day at school today seemed to go by pretty fast. I saw Jonathan, my ex-boyfriend, in the halls between some of my classes. He seemed happier than usual but he didn't have the nerve to look at me. I didn’t see his new girlfriend with him either. That didn’t matter to me though. I was going to meet the nicest, kindest man I had ever known in just a few hours. I wrote him a letter during my study break. It was basically just to let him know that someone did care and that he was loved. Even if it was only by me, a complete stranger. The final bell at school finally rang. I saw Jonathan race down the halls like he was in a hurry to get somewhere. It was three forty-five now. I had fifteen minutes to walk to the coffee shop downtown. It was less than a mile away. I was so scared all of the sudden. What if this man didn't like me? What if he was just some sick person who wanted to hurt me? What if he was twelve years old or eighty years old? It didn’t really matter I supposed. We were meeting in a public place and I said I’d be there. Besides, I just knew deep down inside he was telling the truth. He was dying. He needed me. I walked slowly down the gravel sidewalk to the coffee shop with my heart pounding furiously every step of the way. It was a mile long but it seemed much shorter now. I was getting there too fast. I pulled my arm close to my face and looked at my watch. Three fifty-five. The coffee shop was almost empty when I finally stepped inside its swinging doors. No one was in the seat by the front window. I told the man behind the counter that I was just waiting for a friend. He smiled and nodded slightly. I slid into one of the seats by the front window with my back to the door. Two minutes after four. My new friend wasn’t coming. I was disappointed but a little relieved too. Then I heard the little bell above the front door ring wildly. Someone had stepped in. I didn’t dare turn around to see who it was. Maybe this was the moment of truth. There was a strong hand on my shoulder then. It was him. I couldn’t breathe. He spoke the name he knew me by softly, almost like he was crying. “Lonely_Heart.” I finally had the courage to look up at him directly in the eyes. He was crying. His right hand was covering his forehead like he was lost from the world. Then I cried with him. We hugged and sat there for hours just enjoying each other’s company. There wasn’t a single moment when tears weren’t shed. This man was perfect. This man was my father.
http: //www.inspirationalstories.com/5/501.html 1. How many communicative episodes are described in the story? Name the participants in each episode. 2. Do you think the father guessed about the real identity of his “chatroom friend” straight away? Prove it. 3. According to the pragmatic model, we cannot but communicate. Even saying or doing nothing is considered a meaningful communicative move. Find evidence in the text to illustrate this.
Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about the following. At the beginning of the story father and daughter’s communication fails. It turns out to be successful at the end of the story, though. What led to the eventual success? Ex. 4. Problem-solving. Think of any conflict situation you have experienced in your life (with a friend, a relative, a colleague etc.). Act the episode out. Analyse the situation trying to spot the unproductive moves that caused the problem. Do you think the problem might have been solved or even avoided if you had substituted these unproductive moves by more effective ones? Tell the group about your findings. Task 9. Hazards Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about the following. Dawn has overheard a conversation which she was not supposed to have listened to. Shouldn’t she have concealed this fact from the story-teller? Comment on the ethical aspect of her behavior. Ex. 4. Problem-solving. Work in groups of three. One of you is a communication counselor the other two are a married couple who are experiencing serious problems in their relationship. The husband and wife must explain to the therapist what their problem is. The task of the counselor is to ask questions (if necessary) to find out all the details and then try to help the spouses uncover the unproductive communication patterns. Together try to work out an effective set of moves that will help the married couple save their family. Act out the conversation for the whole group. Decide if the therapist has managed to help the family.
Task 10. Chancery Lane Task 11. The Quest Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about the following. First, Rose-Marie Gilpet was triumphant on having found the child. Later, she fell into discredit. Why did she fall into discredit? Did she get what she deserved?
Task 12. Warren Street Task 13. Notting Hill Gate Ex. 2. Discussion. Express your opinion about the following. Rita answered all the questions. Still, the story-teller didn’t understand a single thing. What accounts for this fact and whose communicative failure was it? Task 14. After the Movie Task 15. A Doll’s House Ex. 1. Identifying aspects of communication. Read the drama “A Doll’s House” by H. Ibsen and get ready to dwell on the main elements of the communicative episodes described in the text.
1. What is peculiar of Nora’s manner of communication? 2. Nora was trying to conceal some facts form her husband. Did she succeed in deceiving her husband? Give your reasons. 3. How did Mrs. Linde’s and Krogstad’s behavior affect Nora? What was her reaction to their communicative moves? 4. Why did Nora fail to persuade her husband as regards Krogstad’s case? What tactics would you have chosen in her place?
Unit 3 Decoding Messages: Perception AND Information Processing
Task 1. Four Short Crushes Ex. 1. Identifying aspects of communication. Read the story “Four Short Crushes” by P. Simms and get ready to dwell on the main elements of the communicative episode described in the text.
Four Short Crushes By P. Simms
Well, well, well. Just look at you, walking into this dreary bar and lighting the place up like the noonday sun at midnight, twirling a lock of your long auburn hair pensively as you search the room – for what? For a soul mate, perhaps? (I know, I know – I hate that phrase, too. Maybe that will end up being one of those things we both hate.) Maybe a few weeks from now, lying in your bed on a Sunday morning, I’ll ask you, “What’s your least favourite word or phrase?, ” and you’ll say, “Soul mate, ” and I’ll laugh till you say, “What? Tell me!, ” and I’ll tell you how I knew that from the moment I first laid eyes on you, and then we’ll have sex again. But I’m getting ahead of myself. You haven’t even noticed me yet. That’s O.K. I can wait. Maybe when your gaze settles on me, and we lock eyes in that mutual Hitchcockian tunnel-vision effect where the camera is, like, pushing in at the same time it zooms out, or however they do that, you’ll come sit down next to me and we’ll – Now you’ve spotted the friends you came to meet. They look like good friends. Maybe they’ll be my friends, too. Our friends. Your eyes just came to life like emeralds lit by subterranean torches, and as you move across the room toward your friends you shriek at them “What’s up, yo,? ” in a voice so piercing that the entire bar goes silent for a moment, and I have to check my glasses to make sure the lenses didn’t crack. You continue to bellow your every utterance (including the lines “Jä germeister is the bomb, dawg! ” and “Just ‘cause I’m a white girl don’t mean I don’t got some serious junk in the trunk! ” and “Random! Random! ”), and the bartender leans in and whispers something to his bar back, and they look at you and laugh. You must be a regular here. (Duration of crush: seventeen seconds.)
Oh my. What have we here? A rainy night in the city has cleared the sidewalks of all but the most intrepid pedestrians, and those who didn’t brave the elements have no idea what they’re missing. Because there you are, gliding along on your bicycle, just a few feet ahead of me. You’re obviously not one of those tedious hard-core cycling enthusiasts – no skin – tight black spandex for you. No, just a simple white T-shirt (soaked through to the skin, clinging to the small of your back) and a long blond ponytail, whipping back and forth like the tail of a cartoon pony, as those long legs of yours pump the pedals and you raise your face to the sky, letting the raindrops freckle your cheeks with sweet diamonds of moisture. Dare I try to catch up to you? I’m on foot, carrying a bunch of shopping bags, but you’re paused at a red light, and – what the heck? I don’t know what I’ll say to you, but even the clumsiest of introductions on these glistening nighttime streets will give us a romantic how-we-met anecdote that we’ll love telling for yours to come. Caught you! Here I am! And there you are. I see now that you’re a dude. My mistake. It was the ponytail that threw me off. (Duration of crush: thirty-three seconds.)
Another restaurant dinner with my boring girlfriend, another lecture about how I never really listen to whatever she’s yammering on about. But how can I listen – how could anyone? – when across the room, alone at a table, reading the newspaper and nursing a glass of white wine, is a silent confection like you? You, with your jet-black hair (like a latter-day Veronica from “Archie”) and your skin so pale that the bubble-gummy pinkness of your pouty lips seems almost obscene, especially when you scrunch them up the way you do every time you lick your forefinger and turn the page. And I know you see me, too. Your first glance betrayed a glimmer of recognition – as if you knew me but couldn’t remember from where – followed by puzzlement, your eyes entreating me to silently remind you, which I couldn’t do at the time because my current girlfriend was staring across the table at me, apparently waiting for my answer to some kind of relationship question that I thought was rhetorical. And so it goes. For an eternity, it seems – through the entire meal, until I watch you ask for the check, and pay it, and get up to walk out of the restaurant, and my life, forever. But what’s this? You’re crossing the room toward me? So brazen – just as I knew you’d be. Are you going to surreptitiously slip me your number, written on a sugar packet, perhaps dropping it in my pocket as you fake-jostle me, like a spy handing off microfilm? My heart beats like underwater thunder in my ears, until you tap my girlfriend on the shoulder, and she sees you and says, “Hey!, ” and you say, “I thought that was you!, ” and I realize that you are one of my girlfriend’s college roommates. After you leave, my girlfriend tells me a hilarious story about how one time in college some guy broke up with you, so you found some photos of him nude with the word “Patriarchy” written on his chest in Magic Marker which you took for an art class, and you sent them to his parents and then posted them on your blog, where you apparently like to write incredibly detailed confessionals about the guys you always end up dating, and everyone knows that the guy is actually a guy I used to work with. (Duration of crush: forty-five minutes.)
So silly does my impatience now seem, stuck as I am in the Starbucks line during the morning rush. But that was before I noticed you in line ahead of me. And now that I’ve seen you – with your gossamer hair still damp from the shower, with your well-moisturized ankles strapped and buckled into high heels that make you wobble and sway like a young colt just finding her stride, with your scent of lilacs and Dial, and, most of all, with your infectious sense of calmness and serenity, which makes me wish that the world itself would stop spinning, so that gravity would cease and we two could float into the sky and kiss in the clouds, giddy with love and vertigo – Now you’re at the register, and the dreaded moment when we part without meeting rushes toward me like a slow-motion car crash in a dream. You’ve been at the register without saying anything for, like, fifteen seconds now, still scanning the menu board with those almond-shaped eyes that would make Nefertiti herself weep with envy. Seriously, you’ve been to a Starbucks before, right? I mean, it seems like there are a lot of choices, but most people find a drink they like and stick with it. And order it quickly. But maybe I’ve caught you on a day when you’ve decided to make a fresh start. To make a fresh start, to try a new drink, to walk a different way to work, to finally dump that boyfriend who doesn’t appreciate you. O.K., even if that were the case you could have picked out your new drink while you were in line, right? I mean, come on. Well, you’ve won me back, my future Mrs. Me – by turning to me and mouthing, “Sorry, ” after you finally noticed me tapping my foot, looking at my watch, and exhaling loudly. Sensitivity like that can be neither learned nor taught, and it’s a rare thing indeed. The rarest of all possible – Jesus Christ, you’ve ordered your drink and paid; do I really have to stand here for another forty-five seconds while you repack your purse, the contents of which you’ve spilled out on the counter like you’re setting up a yard sale or something? That’s right, the bills go in the bill-fold, the coins go in the little coin purse, the billfold and the coin purse go back in the pocketbook – no, in a side pocket of the pocketbook, which seems to have a clasp whose design incorporates some proprietary technology that you haven’t yet mastered. I think I hate you now. (Duration of crush: five minutes.)
The New Yorker. 2007, April 30
1. What person prototype is presented in each story? Do we deal with one and the same person prototype in all the cases or are they four different prototypes? 2. Is the story-teller’s perception characterized by cognitive complexity? 3. What is the story-teller’s idea of an “ideal date” (refer to the term “script”)? 4. What accounts for the story-teller’s communicative failures?
Task 2. The Way We Are Ex. 1. Identifying aspects of communication. Read the story “The Way we are” by D. Sedaris and get ready to dwell on the main elements of the communicat Популярное:
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