What does communication style mean? How your speech style reveals low self-esteem. Getting to know each other: introducing people to each other

Uncertainty sooner or later becomes noticeable to others. It makes us feel so vulnerable that we end up actually exposing our weaknesses and becoming vulnerable. Like a red sock that accidentally ends up in a machine with snow-white laundry, indecisiveness leaves marks in our speech and texts, spoiling the image of an impeccably balanced person that we try to convey to others.

But if you know which linguistic markers to watch for, you can recognize hesitancy in your speech (and maybe correct it before anyone notices). Below are some helpful tips.

First of all, beware of overcompensation. Nothing betrays an inferiority complex like self-promotion. Researchers from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania report that people on the fringes of a group are more likely to use words that emphasize their membership in that group. But key figures do not seek to demonstrate their involvement.

One study compared the websites of top universities offering PhD programs with top universities offering only a master's degree. Both of them allow you to get higher education- unlike colleges. But the researchers suggested that universities specializing in master's programs would be less confident about their status. Volunteers were asked to track how often each site used only the names of institutions (for example, “Harvard”) and how often their status was mentioned (for example, “Harvard University”). It turned out that “master’s” universities were indeed more likely to call themselves universities than universities with graduate programs.

In a similar way, scientists studied the websites of international airports: it turned out that small airports are much more likely to emphasize their international status than airports like Heathrow. Finally, the researchers conducted an experiment with students from two Ivy League schools, asking them to describe their educational establishments. Students at the less prestigious University of Pennsylvania were more likely to emphasize their school's elitism than their peers at Harvard.

Sociologists have a term for the way people change their speech to sound more respectable: linguistic hesitancy.

You might argue that such overt designation of status can also be used simply to avoid ambiguity and ambiguity. We default to assuming that larger airports have international flights - perhaps smaller airports just benefit from reminding customers of all the options because they aren't as obvious? And if someone does not remember that the University of Pennsylvania is part of the Ivy League, there are quite pragmatic reasons to evoke the “correct” association in the interlocutor.

Still, it seems to me that the researchers’ interpretation is at least partially correct. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs for my swim team as a kid. Why? I swam disgustingly and wanted to prove that I belonged to the Dolphins.

Despite the fact that insecure people insist on their involvement in the group, they still prefer to speak only for themselves. We now know that low self-esteem is expressed in pronouns. Until recently, many experts believed that frequent use of the word “I” was characteristic of domineering and narcissistic people who crave attention. But as James Pennybaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote, the pronoun often signals humiliation and subservience. A more confident person is more likely to mark his territory (and perhaps decide what you should do rather than worry about what he needs to do). “A high-status person is focused on the world around him, while a low-status person is interested in himself,” says Pennybaker.

Uncertainty is expressed not only in what you say, but also in how you say it. Colleagues have told me that they lowered their voices to appear more authoritative in difficult moments or used stilted words. Sociologists even have a term for the way people change their speech to sound more respectable: linguistic uncertainty. It occurs when a person feels that his language signals his inferiority. He tries - consciously or not - to "borrow the prestige" of another social group, choosing an atypical manner of conversation. Linguist William Labov first explored this phenomenon in the 1960s. He found that in New York City, upper-class people pronounced the "r" sound, while lower-class citizens were more likely to drop it at the end of words or before vowels. The scientist asked workers at the prestigious Saks Fifth Avenue shopping center and the S. Klein discount store to pronounce the phrase “forth floor.” It turned out that Saks employees are much more likely to try to imitate “elite” pronunciation.

Linguistic uncertainty also has a more extreme form - overcorrection: when a real or imagined grammatical rule is used in the wrong context. In such cases, trying to speak “correctly” paradoxically leads to the wrong result.

There are also speech patterns that we mistake for signs of insecurity, although they are not. For example, a cracked voice, the manner of pronouncing an affirmative sentence with a questioning intonation is rather evidence of energy and a penchant for innovation, and the habit of often saying “uh” or “you know” is a sign of the openness and honesty of the narrator.

Everyone knows the saying “You are greeted by your clothes,” but it is better to complete it as “you are greeted by your manner of communication,” and not by your intelligence. To do this, you don’t need to read a dozen books a day; what’s important is the ability to present yourself correctly.

Way of communicating with people

Can be divided into good and bad. The latter do not interest us, so let’s move on to a detailed consideration of the former. So, good manners show others your attitude towards the world, towards others and manifest themselves in the form of restraint and nobility.

The most important thing in communicating with people is body language. Undoubtedly, your manner of speaking also has some influence on the interlocutor, but it can convey much more information to your companion than anything else. Therefore, in order to produce good impression hone your body control skills. Learn the basics of body language. For example, this is clearly disclosed in the books of Alan Pease.

An important factor in good manners and, as a result, conflict-free communication with people is the ability to choose the right clothes. After all, your image is partly a reflection of your inner world. Thus, manners of business communication imply wearing appropriate clothing for the environment. Agree, work clothes or for receptions have stricter rules than wearing casual clothes.

Manners and communication style

If the style of communication is determined by the tone of your communication, behavior and the distance between you and the interlocutor, then the style has a great influence on the emotional coloring of the communicative atmosphere. It is established depending on the ethical attitudes of each person.

Manner and style are important characteristics of communication.

The manner of communication is characterized, first of all, by the manner of speaking, that is, using the voice and body to convey an oral message. Speaking style can be thought of as a “window” through which people “see” speech.

The manner of communication is determined by:

1. tone communication (calm, authoritative, insinuating, excited, irritated, etc.);
2. behavior in communication (restrained, confident, restless, uncertain, constrained, untied);
3. distance in communication (intimate, personal, social, public).

Communication manners can be respectful, dismissive, humorous, serious, angry, friendly; they are related to the style of communication.

Communication style is characterized individual typological features of interaction between people. The foundation of a person’s communication style is his moral and ethical attitudes and assessments of the social and ethical attitudes of society.

The most common communication styles include:

• creative and productive,
• friendly,
• remote (detached),
• suppressive (aggressive),
• pliable,
• populist,
• flirting,
• demanding,
• business,
• positional.

Communication style directly affects the emotional atmosphere of interaction and the choice of means of communication, which are divided into five main groups:

1. linguistic (speech);
2. optical-kinetic (gestures, facial expressions, pantomime);
3. paralinguistic (voice quality, range, tonality);
4. extralinguistic (pauses, laughter, crying, rate of speech);
5. spatiotemporal (distance, time, place, communication situation).

Speech means form logical and semantic lines of communication that determine the nature of its content. In modern management communication, the leading stylistic features are colloquialism, simplicity, liveliness of phrase construction, and the use of colloquial vocabulary and phraseology. The originality of the conversational style is achieved by using some psychotechnical techniques:

1. imaginary dialogue (“I tell him..., and he answers me....”);
2. question-and-answer approach (the subject of communication asks himself a question and answers it himself);
3. a rhetorical question (contains an affirmation or negation, arouses the thoughts of communication partners, their emotions, for example, “What could be more effective than resource-saving technologies in our industry?”);
4. emotional exclamations (increases attention to the topic of communication, stimulates conversational communication);
5. inversion (deliberate violation of word order).

The effectiveness of verbal action depends on how well the subject masters the psychotechnics of speech. Psychotechnics of speech is understood as a system of individual psychological control of voice, diction, intonation, tonality, and logic in accordance with the conditions of communication between partners. The content of a verbal action is formed by linguistic means, and its expressiveness is formed by paralinguistic and extralinguistic ones. Intonation and tone give emotional coloring to words and phrases. The speed of a verbal action is its tempo. Too fast a pace makes it difficult to focus on the logic and content of a verbal action. A slow pace tires and distracts attention. The best option The tempo of speech is selected based on an analysis of the nature of the communication situation, its goals and objectives.

Understanding the content of a verbal action helps diction- clarity and clarity of pronunciation of sounds. The process of influence of one subject of communication on another is also facilitated by optical-kinetic means, i.e. gestures, facial expressions, pantomime. These means, successfully, beautifully and effectively executed and used, play a very important role in communication and the formation of a person’s image.

The manner of communication has great importance for its effectiveness. The tone of address (calm, authoritative, insinuating, excited, etc.), behavior (restraint, anxiety, uncertainty, constraint of facial expressions and movements, etc.), even the distance between the people communicating can say a lot about the nature of communication. For example, it has been revealed that there can be four distances between people communicating: intimate, personal, social and public. The first two indicate that the people communicating are close acquaintances and friends; social distance is observed by people entering into official contacts; public distance takes place between strangers. By changing the distance, you can achieve additional influence on the communication partner, since this changes the attitude towards the manner of communication, the nature of the relationship between partners.

It is not recommended to look at people during a conversation. foreign objects- it distracts and irritates the interlocutor. You need to look your interlocutor in the eyes more often, especially if he is a woman (they need more feedback than men). You should not interrupt your partner in a conversation or argument; you should give him the opportunity to speak out to the end.

V. A. KanKalik (1987) described the following communication styles:

“Joint creativity”: common goals for communicating are set, solutions are found through joint efforts.

“Friendly disposition”: based on a sincere interest in the personality of the communication partner, a respectful attitude towards him, and openness to contacts.

“Flirting”: based on the desire to gain false, cheap authority from a communication partner and to please the audience.

“Intimidation”: a consequence of the insecurity of a person with a higher status than the communication partner, or the result of the inability to organize communication on the basis of productive joint activities. Such communication is strictly regulated, driven into a formal and official framework.

“Distance”: this style has various variations, but its essence is to emphasize the differences between communication partners, and this difference is associated with official, social status, age, etc.

“Mentoring”: a variation of the previous style, when one of the partners (“experienced”) takes on the role of a mentor and talks with the other in an edifying, patronizing tone.

The manner of communication largely depends on who you are communicating with, what their age, gender, and social status are. This was well noted by N.V. Gogol:

“It must be said that in Rus', if we have not yet kept up with foreigners in some other respects, we have far surpassed them in the ability to communicate. It is impossible to count all the shades and subtleties of our address... A Frenchman or a German will not be able to comprehend and understand all its features or differences. He will speak with almost the same voice and the same language both to a millionaire and to a small tobacco dealer, although, of course, in his soul he is moderately mean to the former. This is not the case with us. We have such wise men who will speak completely differently to a landowner who has two hundred souls than to one who has three hundred...” ( Gogol N.V. Favorites: In 2 volumes - M.: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1973. T. 2. P. 34).

• 1.6. Types of communication
  There are direct and indirect communication. Direct communication involves personal contacts and direct perception of each other by communicating people. Indirect communication occurs through intermediaries, for example, during negotiations between warring parties
• 14.3. Affection and Friendship
  Attachment is a feeling of closeness based on sympathy for someone, mutual attraction to each other. As a result, such people prefer communication with each other to contacts with other people.
• 10.8. Male and female communication styles
  The manner of communication between men and women was given great importance back in Ancient Greece. For example, a man was supposed to hold his head high, in otherwise he could have been mistaken for a homosexual. For women, on the contrary
• 7.3. Recipient conformity
  Conformity is a person’s tendency to voluntarily consciously (arbitrarily) change his expected reactions in order to get closer to the reactions of others due to the recognition that they are more right. Or, more simply put, this property
• 6.4. Deception, lies, lies
  In the book “Psychology. Dictionary" (1990) lies are defined as a communication phenomenon consisting of a deliberate distortion of the actual state of affairs. A more specific definition of lying is given by F. L. Carson et al.
• 19.10. Marriage satisfaction of spouses
  According to T.V. Andreeva and Yu. A. Bakulina (1996), the satisfaction of men and women with marriage is on average the same, and for men it is not related to the degree of traditionalism of their ideas

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Each person has his own style of communication and a lot in life depends on it, for example, whether there will be true friends nearby, how colleagues will treat you at work, etc. By choosing the right manner, you can earn the respect and trust of those around you.

What are the different communication styles?

No matter how trivial it may sound, there are good and bad manners. The first category includes a form of behavior that evokes negative emotions in others. Examples include rudeness, foul language, etc. The main emphasis should be on good manners, since it is thanks to them that a person can create comfortable conditions for himself and develop in life.

How to develop a manner of communication and interaction with people:

It is important to understand that at any time, if desired, you can adjust your own communication style in order to correct some life inconsistencies with what you have now and with what you would really like.