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"Its really cool how, this class being done, we can look at our Wiki, and have a sense of accomplishment. At least I do. I look at that thing, and I'm proud of all the work I've done. This class was awesome."

~ Nfoy, Final Essay

Final Team Presentations

These presentations are responsive to the teacher's "final presentation" (below) summarizing the semester's "Explorations in Language and Social Interaction."

Co-constructing Ethical Action

The SPEAKING model (Dell Hymes, 1972) presented in the Team's Final Presentation (a Prezi) does not accurately represent all of its theoretical categories, but it does provide a sense of how students used a model from the Ethnography of Communication to compare two entirely different speech events, that of

1. a popular book/movie series about young people learning how to handle magic, and that of
2. an undergraduate college classroom where young people begin to reflect on what it means to handle (or be handled by) language.

Bibliography

Works Cited in the Prezi

Teacher's Note

This article, Graduating from Hogwarts, Almost was published in the UMass Graduate Student Newsletter, VOICE, on December 10. (Coincidentally, the same day the students presented in class.) The article is a review of Deathly Hallows: Part I by Aaron Holmes, who focuses on the dynamic interactions among the three lead characters: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley from the point of view of how the original casting selections have carried forth across the entire series. Holmes' focus on interactions, co-construction, and the role of time bears significant similarity to the exploration of the creation of ethical action through the use of language and social interaction at the level of interpersonal communication as illustrated by a team of a dozen UMass undergraduate Communication majors.

Ethics of Learning & Knowledge

The question of "what to do" about knowledge (especially while learning) is also raised by the following Team Presentation on the Intercultural and Multimodal Communication in Avatar, and further investigated by the Team on Visual Voice: You Have to See It to Hear It.

Intercultural and Multimodal IPC

"I first saw this movie this summer with all my friends. I thought it was a pretty good movie that was really cool to watch with all of its special effects. However, if I never would have an open enough mind to acknowledge the fact that the movie was quite controversial. I would have never recognized the underlying prejudice that is present. I would have never realized how all of the characters are dressed up like Native Americans. I would have never recognized how the movie only portrays the heterosexual point of view. Before this class, I was a selfish thinker. I saw the movie Avatar, and I did not find it offensive, so I thought the movie was not offensive. However, I never thought about what another person might think of that movie, and how they might be offended. I have now opened my mind to the point where I can see multiple perspectives."

~ Nfoy, Final Essay

As with the previous presentation on the ethical aspects of interpersonal communication (IPC) in Harry Potter, the SPEAKING Model from the Ethnography of Communication (Dell Hymes, 1972) needs a bit more technical development. For instance, are Eywa and the woodsprite also Participants in the communication (speech) event or are they an Instrument (medium) of communication? This team made a significant stretch to draw parallels between the interface of Eywa (structured as an organically-interconnected consciousness in the form of a tree (trees?) with woodsprite extensions) and the interface of this course wiki (structured as a primary means of pedagogy).

Bibliography

Works cited in the Powerpoint

Teacher's Note

The critical topics laid out in this Team's Presentation (Powerpoint, loaded to Slideshare) demonstrate the recognition of language as an unfinished creative process which has real effects in the world, such as

• generating identities ~ e.g.

~ what it means to be "a man" or "a woman,

~ what it means to be culturally-oriented to whiteness or another sociocultural basis for grounding,

~ what it means to be of the "developed" or "undeveloped" world - in terms of physical experience and also of mindset/consciousness

• maintaining stereotypes ~ e.g.

~ norms of heterosexuality

~ norms of male dominance in heterosexual relationships

~ norms of violence as an acceptable way to resolve conflict

~ norms of US/American superiority (esp as a desired/desirable lifestyle)

~ norms of whiteness as the standard against which all other cultures are measured (crudely called racism but in most instances is much more subtle than overt prejudice and blatant discrimination)

• enabling identity shift & fluidity in co-creating relationships and meanings through interpersonal communication via multiple modalities

~ Avatars as extensions of self (e.g., Second Life)

~ Social networking as extensions of self without the imaginary of an avatar (e.g., Facebook)

~ Expanded zones for developing intimacy and/or business or hobby-based connections (or failing to)

• language language language!

The most underdeveloped and yet significant undercurrent of the semester involves how to handle communication among people who use different languages. This could be literally different languages (Na'vi, English, Swahili, Spanish, American Sign Language) or any combination of jargons, disciplinary perspectives, varying patterns of use or interpretation, dialects, etc. These topics are broached in the following presentation on Selective Attention and Visual Voice: You Have to See It to Hear It.

Visual Voice: You Have to See It to Hear It

This project was sparked by group dynamics after the class read - and generally misunderstood key elements of - a fictional short story about a young, cross-cultural couple debating the seriousness of their relationship.

Teacher's Note

The Buzz Buzz Boom, a short fictional story by Seth Gore, created a kind of counterpoint to a "thunderstorm" between students and teacher over generating collective attention to the role of language in learning about interpersonal communication. In the Team Presentation linked above (a Prezi), the students recount key moments in their journey, bouncing between shocks of weather (an explosive thunderstorm to kick off their first year at college) and shocks of realizing some of the stark effects of selective attention.

Tensions in the class fluctuated between understanding language and learning from a "building-block" stance in which units are separate, discrete, autonomous and thus easily measured, and an "unfinished creative process" approach that takes all social interaction and the language we use to talk (as in talking about language, learning and any/all topics, for any/all purposes) as essentially always in motion, influencing meanings, identities, and relationships in a constant back-and-forth dance. These two perspectives are explored in the Selective Attention and Visual Voice presentation (linked above), which

• reviews Speech Act Theory,
• touches on the role of language & language use in identity construction, as well as
• how interpersonal relationships reflect and influence the organization of society at large (and vice-versa). This team also touches on
• the dynamics of decision-making,

• an element of interpersonal communication focused upon by another team's presentation on the Co-construction of Ethical Action and
• illustrated with material from our own classroom dynamics being "... symbolic process where the conversation is ultimately never ended ... can be continued or restarted at any moment" (quoted in another team's presentation on Interpersonal Communication in Avatar).

Cultural Production

If we can swing the funding on a very tight timeline, Seth Gore (author of The Buzz Buzz Boom), some prominent members of the local Deaf community, and a few nationally-renowned videographers and actors within American Deaf Culture, will visit UMass' Campus on March 9-11, 2011 to give a public talk and work with students in an undergraduate course on Media & Society to generate a film about the dynamics of intercultural communication among people using American Sign Language and spoken English.

Final Summaries

Asbolduc sets the stage

"When individuals attend to any current situation, they face the question: "What is it that's going on here?....'

Taylorgarron breaks it down

"It’s impossible not to ask this question as Comm118 comes to an end. Looking at our finished wiki pages and final projects, it’s hard to believe that we started with thunder; ambiguous thoughts on an ambiguous topic. Our class was basically a giant unfinished creative process, and no one knew what would happen next.

The Buzz Buzz Boom. It divided us as a class in a way that seemed to some (i.e.; me) insurmountable. The two sides’ opposite perceptions of the story, though, would eventually lead to thoughtful discussion, observable group communication dynamics, and the “gorilla” in the room (or what Steph was trying to get us to see from the beginning): maybe communication wasn’t all superficial. Maybe communication didn’t exist in one understood pattern, but arbitrarily in all directions.

"In the end, we have learned this: communicating, in all its forms, is a complex, creative, and never-ending means of connection with each other and that communication should never be immediately perceived at face value."

~ Taylorgarron, Final Essay

NatashaKapadia spells it out

"I did not know the meaning of interpersonal communication when I first entered the class. Throughout the whole term, my mindset on communication has changed as I have now learned what it means to communicate, about the different types of interpersonal communication and how to communicate effectively. From the first interpersonal assignment, we had to go tot the library and look up the labels that described our section of the library. My group had read the words: text, discourse, linguistics, grammar, and writing. Some book titles we found were Analyzing Everyday Texts, Textual Intervention, How Language Works, and Re-imaging Textuality. It was all about how language affects everything and how to manipulate language to make it as effective as possible."

~ NatashaKapadia, Final Essay

• SPEAKING of Group Dynamics
• Understanding the Lifelike Pedagogy
• The Significance of Discipline(s)
• Language Use as a Creative Unfinished Process
• Interpersonal Communication using Information and Communications Technology
• Utility of the Theory of Conversational Triplets
• Interpersonal & Multimodal Communication
• Role of Race and Gender in Interpersonal Communication

Nfoy sums it up

"I honestly cannot express how much this class has impacted me. I view this is one of the best learning experiences of my entire life. The best part about this class, is that I feel as if we learned skills that we can use in real life, rather than pointless facts from a textbook that we will never use again... Steph's teaching style... gave us students some power regarding what we wanted to learn. Not only did this class teach me about communication, but it also taught me how to view the world in a much different way."

"For me, the most integral alternate form of communication that I became aware of, was via a computer. Before this class, I viewed myself as a very technologically challenged person. I barely knew how to use email, didn't know how to use twitter, and I for sure didn't know how to create a Wiki. However, through this class, I have enhanced my technological intelligence incredible amounts. I am now a Wiki and Twitter King."

"I loved how we didn't use a text book, and didn't have formal written test. This was so important because it allowed me to actually learn, rather than try to get a good grade. When so much of your grade is dependent on one test, I simply memorize all of the information. The problem with this is that I forget it the next week...Nothing upsets me more than learning stuff that I know I will never use again in my life. However, I can honestly say that I will use everything I learned in this class at some point in my life. In fact, most things I learned in this class I will use every single day of my life. A textbook can't teach you anything like that. This class was a really cool experience because we all learned without really even knowing we were learning."

"This class taught me to view the world in a much different way. As I entered this class, without knowing it, I was a close minded person. This can be shown by me refusing to believe that Dean was deaf in The Buzz Buzz Boom. This can also be shown by how hard it was for me to adjust to a new learning style. However, this class made me have a more open minded approach to life, and I feel as though I see things that I did not see before. This can be shown through the Avatar movie...."

COMMUNICATION CONCEPTS & THEORIES

Don't see a concept in the list below? Click through to the Midterm Answers!

• agency
• "building block" view of communication
• Burke
• confusion (complexities, paradoxes) and tension
• control
• Conversational Triplets, applied, including examples drawn from Tweet Streams
• democracy
• determinism
• Dewey
• difference
• discipline
• Hymes' SPEAKING rubric
• irony
• metacommunication
• models
• pedagogy
• reality
• representation
• selective attention
• phatic communication
• space and time
• symbolic process
• Theory: Transmission and Ritual aspects of Language and Social Interaction
• thought

Course Prompt: Consciousness of language can be used to create social reality.

Syllabus & Readings (Framing the Course)

You have known this all along!

Course Syllabus and Assigned Readings

Select well!

Summary of Course Learnings from the Teacher's Point of View

Students' final presentations (above) both

1. stand-on-their-own as summaries of knowledge learned during the course, and also
2. compose a response to the teacher's own summary presentation, "Explorations in Language and Social Interaction."

In the second sense, the conversation among students and teacher continues...

Collaborating Students

Archives

Course Homepage as of 20 September 2010
Course Homepage as of 28 September 2010
Course Homepage as of 3 October 2010
Course Homepage as of 4 October 2010
Course Homepage as of 9 October 2010
Course Homepage as of 16 October 2010
Course Homepage as of 19 October 2010
Course Homepage as of 25 October 2010
Course Homepage as of 26 October 2010
Course Homepage as of 5 November 2010, this page also includes links to eight more archived homepages.