Interpersonal: The Power of Communication, Essay Example

Introduction

Throughout my life, I devoted much of my time to my family and my relations with family members. I always believed that what we say changes the direction of our relations with each other: a routine discussion of daily news is nothing but a neutral talk, while a conflict[1] and a quarrel often result in misunderstanding and even silence, which can last for days and even weeks. In conflicts, we learn to better understand our relatives and friends. Our conflicts with parents often become a good test to our communication and skills and abilities. I often witnessed how other family members could resolve their conflicts easily and without any serious consequences. My first conflict with mother turned into a communication disaster I would never wish to experience again and, simultaneously, taught me a good lesson about what it takes to use communication as a conflict resolution technique.

When I was 15, my mother suddenly decided that she had an exclusive right to choose my friends for me. That was the first time we ever had a serious conflict. I could not understand the reasons behind my mother’s decision. I was totally confused by her blindness and deafness toward my arguments. First, our communication turned into a row of offenses. Abusive language became a daily routine. With time, our interpersonal communication transformed into silence and complete negligence toward each other and each other’s needs. Every time we decided to discuss the conflict peacefully, we ended with even greater sense of confusion. I had a feeling that my mother intentionally ignored my arguments and my right to take decisions. My friends stopped coming to my house. I spent most of my free time outside, missing family suppers and forgetting about the most important family dates. With time, my mother realized and recognized her mistake and gradually, everything got back to the norm.

To make the analysis of the discussed situation objective and full, the following terms will be used:

• Attribution theory: In my conflict with mother, I was trying to understand her motives and the reasons behind her actions and words. I wanted to know, why she decided she could choose my friends, in order to develop a good communication strategy. “Attributions are explanations of why things happen and why people act as they do” (Wood).
• Standpoint theory had to help me to analyze the situation from the two different standpoints: mine and my mother’s. I had to realize that my mother and I occupy different positions in the family hierarchy. Thus, our views on one and the same situation will differ, too. “Standpoint theory claims that a culture includes a number of social communities that have different degrees of social status and privilege” (Wood).
• Rule-guided communication: In our family, communication was guided by a number of rules, which my mother set and which other family members had to follow. For example, we were not allowed to speak about problems at the dinner table. “Communication rules are shared understandings of what communication means and what kinds of communication are and are not appropriate in various situations” (Wood).
• Punctuation was very important in my communication with mother. I knew that when she did not want to talk to me, she would rather choose to leave the room. Punctuation is a form of communication like intonation or even movement, which individuals use to mark the beginning and the end of each communication act (Wood);
• Kinesics was one of the communication approaches I used when I no longer had words to explain my arguments: I would move my hands and walk around the room, showing my nervousness and disappointment with my mother’s position. Kinesics is the most powerful form of non-verbal communication in humans and includes body position and body motions, including those of face (Wood);
• Ethical communication had to become the solution to our conflict, in which my mother and I would account for each other’s opinions and finally come to an agreement. Ethical communication is a form of communication that pursues fairness, truthfulness, and personal integrity and turns mutual respect into the definitive feature of effective communication (Wood).
• Paralanguage: trying to prove our positions, we applied to different forms of paralanguage, like the tone of voice and intonation. These elements had to make arguments more persuasive and, simultaneously, show my disappointment with my mother’s actions. Paralanguage “is vocal communication that does not involve words” (Wood).
• Silence became the ultimate tool of communication regulation between me and my mother: when we no longer had arguments, we fell to silence and no longer tried to explain our positions to each other. Sometimes, “silence is used to stifle others’ conversation” (Wood).

I must say that our relationship communication always reflected the relationship values we shared. My mother and I tried to establish the atmosphere of equity and fairness, where every member of the communication web could express his (her) view and finally come to a general agreement (in other words, we operated at the relationship level of meanings – Wood). I considered my mother’s decision as another expression of her bad character and, simultaneously, suspected that the noise we caused in the house and the hours I spent on the phone with my friends could have irritated my mother. I also felt that her erroneous beliefs about my own immaturity and inability to take independent decisions became the basic attribute in our conflict. In any case, attributions[2] became the central object of my analysis. I wanted to understand why my mother took her decision. I needed that knowledge of motivation to build a better communication strategy. The knowledge of attributions would help me to choose the arguments for my position – the arguments my mother would accept and understand. Attributions had to help me to build a consensus with my mother.

I had a constant feeling that my mother judged me from her own standpoint[3] and was not willing to take my side. She did not want to reconsider my situation from my perspective and used her own criteria of judging people. She believed that my friends were not really friends. She did not consider my relations with friends as serious and she believed that my friends influenced negatively my school achievements. As a result, I felt that my mother had a somewhat narrow view of the situation. Her judgment reflected her own standpoint and she was not willing to create a whole picture. She interpreted the events from her own perspective and, unfortunately, did not want to hear the way I interpreted the same events. Different standpoints resulted in an ongoing conflict, which we, two members of one family, could never resolve: as a person in position of power, my mother did not want to notice the existing inequities and to see that her beliefs disadvantaged others (Wood). My mother operated highly subjective ideas and connotations. Meanwhile, I tried to understand my situation and to explain it to my mother, and to understand her situation, too, to be able to find a communication key to our conflict. I even applied to nonverbal modes of communication and tried to use kinesics[4] to persuade that my mother was wrong.  I used gestures which, as Hargie and Dickson put it, were an effective illustrator of my emotions and accompanied my speech (59). At times of the most heated arguments I felt the lack of verbal proofs, but my mother did not seem open to this form of interpersonal communication and wanted me to express my thoughts and feelings clearly.

I must say that interpersonal communication in my family was always rule-guided[5]. We shared numerous meanings and patterns of communication, many of which were unique to our family. Interpersonal communication between family members operated in the context of several important regulative and constitutive rules. We were not allowed to discuss problems at the dinner table. Also, our parents never encouraged us to participate in the discussion of various family issues, thus promoting the role of authority and even dictatorship in interpersonal communication. My mother never welcomed extreme emotions in my relationships with her and did not always allow me to raise my voice. That is why, my conflict with mother became something extraordinary because we no longer followed the rules; more often, I would come down to raise my voice trying to prove my personal right for choosing friends for myself.

Punctuation[6] was another problem: I always knew that the moment my mother entered my room, I had to prepare myself to a lengthy conversation. For example, her presence in my room usually marked the beginning of the new act of interpersonal communication between us. However, as the two parties of the conflict, we could not find any agreement regarding punctuation. The moment I entered her room, my mother would choose to leave or refuse to talk to me. In a similar vein, her presence in my room no longer marked the beginning of the new conversation. We were playing a “demand-withdraw” game which did not give us any satisfaction. Eventually, we fell down to silence, I stopped spending my free time at home, and we gradually reduced our interpersonal communication activity to a minimum. Silence[7] in our conflict became the critical component of the paralanguage[8] we used to express our identities and to send a powerful message about our unwillingness to resolve the conflict in a peaceful way.

As I look back and try to understand the situation, I realize that ethical communication[9] could become a viable solution to our problem. I must say that in my relationships with mother, I tried to be as respectful as possible, but when I understood that she was not willing to reconsider her arguments from my perspective, I lost any hope that ethics and respect would help me. My mother had to be more attentive to what I was trying to say: authority and domination are not the best friends of effective interpersonal communication. Equity, fairness, mutual respect, and attention are what matters for the success of any interpersonal contact between family members.

Conclusion

That communication is the basic predictor of our ability to resolve the conflicts is difficult to deny. My conflict with mother became an excellent test to our communication abilities and skills. We could not find any agreement and spent months trying to prove the righteousness of each other’s position. Only with time and with the current knowledge of interpersonal communication, I was able to understand that communication is the foundation of interpersonal relationships. Silence and paralanguage, kinesics and the rules of speech altogether create conditions necessary to resolve conflicts successfully. The knowledge of these elements and concepts will predetermine the direction of my communication strategies for years ahead.

Works Cited

Hargie, O. & Dickson, D. Skilled Interpersonal Communication. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Wood, J.T. Communication In Our Lives. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2008.

[1] Conflict exists when people who depend on each other disagree in their views, goals, or interests and feel that such differences make them incompatible (Wood).

[2] “Attributions are explanations of why things happen and why people act as they do” (Wood).

[3] “Standpoint theory claims that a culture includes a number of social communities that have different degrees of social status and privilege” (Wood).

[4] Kinesics is the most powerful form of non-verbal communication in humans and includes body position and body motions, including those of face (Wood).

[5] “Communication rules are shared understandings of what communication means and what kinds of communication are and are not appropriate in various situations” (Wood).

[6] Punctuation is a form of communication like intonation or even movement, which individuals use to mark the beginning and the end of each communication act (Wood).

[7] “Silence is used to stifle others’ conversation” (Wood).

[8] Paralanguage “is vocal communication that does not involve words” (Wood).

[9] Ethical communication is a form of communication that pursues fairness, truthfulness, and personal integrity (Wood).