COMMUNICATION HOMEWORK
Reflection
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the “Face-Negotiation theory” by Stella Ting-Toomey talks about the management of conflicts by taking cultural differences among people into consideration. According to Toomey, people fall into either a collectivist or an individualistic culture depending on their background. A collectivistic culture is concerned about the group issues while an individualistic culture is all about the needs of an individual. Therefore, when solving conflicts, people must maintain a face depending on their culture. The face is the image that a person wants to retain in his or her community. The face negotiation theory includes avoiding, compromising, obliging, domination, and integrating as methods of resolving conflicts.
“Speech Codes Theory” by Gerry Philipsen explains how individuals in a society relate depending on the rules, the meanings, and the symbols that they have adopted in communication. One of the propositions mentioned by Gerry Philipsen, in this theory, is that every culture has a unique speech code. Different communities also use different speech codes and every speech code has sociology, rhetoric, and psychology depending on the culture. Furthermore, speakers and listeners communicate by identifying the speech codes.
Both the theories are strongly applicable in day to day real life situations. With respect to the Face Negotiation Theory, picture a scenario of two Chinese employees who are continuously arguing due to invading each other’s working space. The supervisor will use avoiding or obliging techniques to address the conflict taking place. As Chinese come from collectivist cultures, they try to keep face by avoiding open discussions or being concerned about the interests of other people. In this case, the supervisor will determine the employes’ culture (collectivist), the form of self-construal (interdependent), and the kind of face to maintain (other-face) to select the two methods. The theory is also evident in the Outsourced television series. The program is about Todd, an American boy who is sent to India to head a call center department. In the first episode, Dave (Manager) tells Todd to work in the Indian department and the failure in doing so would cause Todd to lose his job. A conflict emerges between them, nevertheless, since Todd wants to save self-face, he agrees to fly to India. In another episode, Dave throws pressure onto Todd to make sure that the Indian call center performs well. However, the Indian employees have low sales; Therefore, to resolve the conflict, the type of face maintenance is mutual-face because both Todd and the employees need to keep their jobs. Todd convinces the employees to learn to speak with customers to raise their sales. The employees perform well, and Todd and the employees maintain their jobs.
Similarly, the Speech Codes Theory can be applicable in a country with varying diverse cultures. Although people in the same country might use a similar language to communicate, speech codes differ because of different cultures. For example, my friend Izusa is a Native American born in Hawaii; due to speech codes, her English differs as she communicates with people in Hawaii to when she visits her mainland friends in New York. In the movie, Mean Girls, the new girl in the school, Cady, has to learn the rules of the cafeteria. Some of her friends teach her the importance of different ways of communicating to people when she is in the cafeteria. They tell her that the cafeteria has diverse groups of students such as the Asian nerds, the cool Asians, freshmen, and preps among others. The movie shows that speech codes depend on the culture.
The communication theories presented in the chapter are important in daily communication and managing conflicts. Nonetheless, after reading the chapter, some questions that came up regarding the face negotiation theory were if all the five conflict management methods always work? What happens when one has to solve conflicts between one individual from an individualistic culture and another one from a collectivist culture? In addition, regarding the speech codes theory, How does the theory show power in discourse? Is culture always deterministic in speech codes?
