SUMMARY

This unit focused on verbal messages, and specifically on the nature of language and the ways language works; the concept of disconfirmation and how it relates to sexism, heterosexism, and racist language; and the ways in which language can be used more effectively.

1. Meanings are in people, not in things.

2. Meanings are context based; the same message in a different

context will likely mean something different.

3. Meanings are culturally influenced; each culture has its own rules

identifying the ways in which language should be used.

4. Language is both denotative (objective and generally easily agreed

upon) and connotative (subjective and generally highly individual

in meaning).

5. Language varies in directness; through language you can state

exactly what you mean or you can hedge and state your meaning

very indirectly.

6. Disconfirmation is the process of ignoring the presence and the

communications of others. Confirmation is accepting, supporting,

and acknowledging the importance of the other person.

7. Sexist, heterosexist, racist, and ageist language puts down and

negatively evaluates various cultural groups.

8. Using language effectively involves eliminating conceptual

distortions and substituting more accurate assumptions about

language, the most important of which are:

• Language symbolizes reality; it's not the reality itself.

• Language can express both facts and inferences, and distinctions need to

be made between them.

• Language is relatively static; because reality changes so rapidly, you

need to constantly revise the way you talk about people and things.

• Language can obscure distinctions in its use of general terms and in its

emphasis on extreme rather than middle terms.

KEY TERMS

language bypassing netiquette connotation denotation confirmation

disconfirmation sexist language heterosexist language racist language intensional orientation extensional orientation

allness fact-inference confusion static evaluation indiscrimination polarization lying

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