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Midterm Key Terms
Intro to Communication Spring 2026
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Communication | The process by which we use signs, symbols and behaviors to exchange information and create meaning |
| The essential elements we look for in our relationships with other people | |
| Behaviors that serve a need that helps us get through daily life | |
| A formal description of the process of communication. there are three types of communication models: action, interaction, and transaction | |
| A one-way process of communicating, with clearly defined source and receiver roles | |
| Put your idea in the form of language or a gesture that others can understands | |
| Consists of verbal and/or nonverbal elements of communication to which people give meaning | |
| The type of pathway for conveying messages | |
| The person who decodes or interprets a message | |
| Anything that interferes with the receiver's ability to attend to your message. Major types of noise are: physical, psychological, and physiological | |
| A two-way process that builds on the action model by adding feedback and context | |
| Various verbal and nonverbal responses to your message | |
| The environment you are in; includes both the physical and psychological context | |
| Doesn't distinguish between the roles of source and receiver, maintains that both people in the conversation are simultaneously sources and receivers | |
| Environments that incorporate many communication channels at once | |
| Environments that use relatively fewer channels | |
| Representation of an idea | |
| The literal information the communicator is communicating | |
| Message that carry signals about the nature of the relationship in which they are shared | |
| Communication about communication | |
| Someone has clearly articulated rules for communication | |
| Rules that almost everyone in a certain social group knows and follows, even though no one has formally articulated them | |
| The communication you have with yourself | |
| Occurs between two people in the context of their ongoing relationship. It is the most common form of communication we enact | |
| When we communication with groups of about 3 to 20 people who are working interdependently to accomplish a task | |
| When we speak or write to an audience larger than a small grou | |
| Communication transmitted by media via electronic or print media | |
| Communicating in ways that are effective and appropriate in a given situation | |
| People who are aware of their own behavior and its effects on others | |
| The ability to be "other-oriented" and to under other people's thoughts and feelings | |
| The ability to consider a variety of explanations and to understand a given situation in multiple ways | |
| Principles that guide us in judging whether something is morally right or wrong | |
| Culture | Totality of learned, shared symbols, language, values, and norms that distinguish one group of people from another |
| Societies | Groups of people who share a culture with one another |
| In-groups | Groups we identify with |
| Ethnicity | Our perceptions of our ancestry or heritage |
| Nationality | Our status as a citizen of a particular country |
| Enculturation | The process of acquiring a culture |
| Co-cultures | Groups of people who share values, customs, and norms related to mutual interests or characteristics other than their national citizenship |
| Symbol | Something that represents an idea |
| Values | The standard used to judge how good, desirable, or beautiful something is |
| Norms | Rules or expectations that guide people’s behavior in culture |
| Jargon | Terminology that is only understood by others in the same co-culture |
| Collectivistic cultures | Where people are taught that their primary responsibility is to their families, their communities, and their employers |
| Low-context culture | People are expected to be direct and say what they mean |
| High-context culture | People are taught to speak in a much less direct way to maintain harmony and avoid offense are more important than expressing true feelings |
| Low-power-distance culture | Belief that all men and women are equal and that no one person or group should have excessive power |
| High-power-distance culture | Power is distributed less evenly and people are taught that certain people or groups deserve more power than others and that respecting power is more important than respecting equality |
| Masculine culture | People tend to cherish stereotypically masculine values such as ambition, achievement, and the acquisition of material goods |
| Feminine culture | People tend to value nurturing behavior, quality of life, and service to others |
| Monochromic | View time as a commodity |
| Polychromic | Conceive of time as more holistic and fluid and less structured; treat time as a finite commodity that must be managed properly to avoid wasting it |
| Uncertainty avoidance | The extent to which people try to avoid situations that are unstructured, unclear, and unpredictable |
| Mindfulness | An awareness of how other people’s behaviors and ways of thinking are likely to differ from our own |
| Ethnocentrism | The tendency to judge other cultures’ practices as inferior to one’s own |
| Communication codes | Verbal and nonverbal behaviors whose meanings are often |
| Code-switch | Shift between jargon and pain language in order to be understood by others |
| Gestures | Movements that express ideas |
| Ambiguity | A lack of certainty |
| Digital divide | The cultural gap between groups that do and do not have regular Internet access |
| Out-group | Groups we see as different from us |
| Individualistic culture | People believe their primary responsibility is to themselves |
| Perception | The process of making meaning from what we experience in the world around us |
| Selection | The process by which your mind and body help you isolate certain stimuli to pay attention to |
| Organization | The classification of information of some way |
| Image management | Mental framework for organizing information into categories we call constructs |
| Stereotype | A generalization about a group or category of people that can have a powerful influence on how we perceive others and their communication behavior |
| Selective memory bias | Remember information that supports our stereotypes while forgetting information that does not |
| Primacy effect | First impressions are critical because they set the tone for all future interactions |
| Recency effect | That the most recent impression we have of a person’s communication is more powerful than our earlier impressions |
| Perceptual set | Predisposition to perceive only what we want or expect to perceive |
| Attribution | Explanation of an observed behavior |
| Self-serving bias | Refers to our tendency to attribute our successes to stable, internal causes while attributing our failures to unstable, external causes |
| Fundamental attribution error | We attribute other people’s behavior to internal rather than external causes |
| Image | The personal “face” we want others to see |
| Image management | The process of behavioral adjustment to project a desired image |
| Self-concept or identity | Composed of your own stable perceptions about who you are |
| Johari window | Visual representation of the self as composed of four separate parts |
| Fulfilling prophecy | A situation in which a prediction leads people to act and communicate in ways that make that prediction come true |
| Self-esteem | Your subjective evaluation of your value and worth as a person |
| Face | Describes our desired public image |
| Facework | Describes the behaviors we use to project that desired image to others |
| Face needs | Important components of our desired public image |
| Fellowship face | Refers to the need to have others like and accept us |
| Autonomy face | Refers to our need to avoid being imposed on by others |
| Competence face | Our need to be respected- to have others acknowledge our abilities and intelligence |
| Face-threatening act | Hinders the fulfillment of one or more of your face needs |
| Life story | A way of presenting ourselves to others that is based on our self-concept but is also influenced by other people |
| Language | Structured system of symbols used for communicating meaning |
| Phonological rules | Deal with the correct pronunciation of a word, and how they vary from language to language |
| Syntactic rules | Govern the order of words within phrases and clauses |
| Pragmatic rules | Deal with the implication or interpretations of statements |
| Denotive meaning | The literal meaning of the word as defined by the dictionary |
| Connotative meaning | The ideas or concepts the word suggests in addition to its literal definition |
| Loaded language | Words with strongly positive or negative connotations |
| Ambiguous language | Making a statement that we can interpret to have more than one meaning |
| Sapir-Whorf hypothesis | Proposed idea that language shapes our view of reality |
| Credibility | The extent to which others perceive us to be competent and trustworthy |
| Gossip | The informal and frequently judgmental talk about people who are not present during the conversation |
| Criticism | Words that pass judgment on someone or something |
| Treat | A declaration of the intent to harm someone if the receiver does or doesn’t do something specific |
| Persuasion | Process of convincing people that they should think or act in a certain way |
| Anchor-and-contrast approach | First draft a request so ambitious that few people agree to it and then after rejection ask for what you really want, the contrast, which will seem more reasonable to most people by comparison to the anchor and thus encourage them to comply |
| Norm of reciprocity | When someone gives you some type of gift or resource, you are expected to return the favor |
| Social validation principle | Maintains that people will comply with requests if they believe others are also complying |
| Euphemism | Vague, mild expression that symbolizes and substitutes for something that is more blunt or most harsh |
| Slang | Use of informal and unconventional words that often are understood only by others in a particular group |
| Jargon | Technical vocabulary of a certain occupation or profession |
| Defamation | Language that harms a person’s reputation or gives that person a negative image |
| Profanity | Language that is considered vulgar, rude, or obscene in the context in which it is used |
| Hate speech | Specific form of profanity meant to degrade, intimidate, or dehumanize people based on their sex, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, race, disability status, or political or moral views |
| Civil dialogue | Process of engaging in honest, authentic, and respectful conversation with others, even about points of deep-seated disagreement |
| I-statement | Claims ownership of what a communicator is feeling or thinking |
| You-statement | Shift responsibility to the other person |
| Semantic rules | Have to do with the meaning of individual words |
| Nonverbal communication | Behaviors and characteristics that convey meaning without the use of words |
| Emoji | Cartoon depiction of faces and other objects |
| Nonverbal channels | Behavioral forms of expression |
| Deception | The act of leading someone to believe something one knows to be untrue |
| Immediacy behaviors | Nonverbal signals of affection and affiliation |
| Facial displays | Facial expressions |
| Symmetry | Similarity between left and right sides of your face |
| Proportionality | Refers to the relative size of facial facial features |
| Oculesics | Study of eye behaviors |
| Kinesics | The study of movement, including walking |
| Gesticulation | The use of arm and hand movements to communicate |
| Emblems | Any gestures that have a direct verbal translation |
| Illustrators | Gestures that go along with a verbal message to clarify it |
| Affect displays | Gestures that communicate emotion |
| Regulator | Gestures that control the flow of conversation |
| Adaptors | Gestures you use to satisfy some personal need, such as scratching an itch or picking lint off your shirt |
| Haptics | The study of how we use touch to communicate |
| Vocalics | Characteristics of the voice |
| Paralanguage | Another word for vocalics, to indicate that they go along with the words we speak to convey meaning |
| Olfactics | Sense of smell |
| Proxemics | The scientific study of spatial use |
| Intimate distance | Zone we willingly occupy with only our closest and most intimate friends, family members, and romantic partners |
| Social distances | Used with those we don’t very well to convey more formal, impersonal interactions |
| Personal distance | Distance we typically maintain with other friends and relatives |
| Public distance | Distance when speaking to a large group to ensure that the presenter is far enough that they are visible to everyone |
| Halo effect | Strong predisposition to attribute positive qualities to physically attractive people |
| Chronemics | The way we use time |
| Artifacts | The objects and visual features within an environment |
| Listening | The active process of making meaning from another person’s spoken message |
| Hearing | The sensory process of receiving and perceiving sounds |
| Attending | Paying attention well enough to understand what that person is trying to communicate |
| HURIER model | Describes the six stages of actively listening |
| Mnemonics | Tricks that can aid our short- and long-term memory |
| Interpretation | The process of assigning meaning to information that has been selected for attention and organized |
| Evaluation | Assessing the value of the information we’ve received |
| Stonewalling | Responding with silence and a lack of expression on your face |
| Backchanneling | Using facial expressions, nods, vocalizations, and verbal statements to let the speaker know you’re paying attention |
| Paraphrasing | Restating in your own words what the speaker has said to show you understand |
| Empathizing | Conveying to the speaker that you understand and share his or her feelings on the topic being discussed |
| Supporting | Expressing your agreement with the speaker’s opinion or point of view |
| Analyzing | Providing your own perspective on what the speaker has said |
| Advising | Communicating advice to the speaker about what he or she should think, feel, or do |
| Informational listening | Listening to learn |
| Critical listening | Evaluating or analyzing what we’re hearing |
| Empathetic listening | Occurs when you are trying to identify |
| Noise | Anything that interferes with encoding or decoding a message |
| Pseeudolistening | Using feedback behaviors that make is seem as though you’re paying attention even though your mind is elsewhere |
| Selective attention | Variation of pseudolistening that means listening only to what you want to hear and ignoring the reaction |
| Information overload | State of being overwhelmed by the huge amount of information that each of us takes in everyday |
| Glazing over | Daydreaming |
| Rebuttal tendency | the propensity to debate a speaker’s point and formulate a reply while that person is still speaking |
| Closed-mindedness | The tendency not to listen to anything which we disagree |
| Competitive interrupting | The practice of using interruptions to take control of the conversation |
| Confirmation bias | The tendency to pay attention only to information that supports our values and beliefs, while discounting or ignoring the information that doesn’t |
| Vividness effect | The tendency of dramatic, shocking events to distort our perceptions of reality |
| Skepticism | A method of questioning that involves evaluating evidence for a stated claim |
| Need to belong theory | Says that each of us is born with a drive to seek, form, maintain, and protect strong social relationships |
| Attraction theory | A theory that explains why individuals are drawn to others |
| Interpersonal attraction | The force that draws people together |
| Physical attraction | Attraction to someone’s appearance |
| Social attraction | Attraction to someone’s personality |
| Task attraction | Attraction to someone’s abilities or dependability |
| Proximity | Closeness, as in how closely together people live or work |
| Complexity | The beneficial provision by another person of a quality that one lacks |
| Uncertainty reduction theory | Theory suggesting that people find uncertainty to be unpleasant, so they are motivated to reduce their uncertainty by getting to know others |
| Social exchange theory | Theory suggesting that people seek to maintain relationships in which their benefits outweigh their costs |
| Comparison level | A realistic expectation of what one wants and thinks one deserves from a relationship |
| Comparison level for alternatives | An assessment of how much better or worse one’s current relationship is than one’s other options |
| Equity theory | Theory that a good relationship is one in which a person’s ratio of costs and benefits is equal to his or her partner’s |
| Over-benefited | A state in which one’s relational benefits outweigh one’s costs |
| Under-benefited | A state in which one’s relational costs outweigh one’s benefits |
| Relational maintenance behavior theory | Theory specifying the primary behaviors people use to maintain their relationships |
| Self-disclosure | Act of intentionally giving others information about oneself that one believes is true but thinks others don’t already have |
| Social penetration theory | Theory suggesting that the depth and breadth of self-disclosure help us learn about a person we’re getting to know |
| Breadth | The range of topics we self-disclose to various people |
| Depth | The degree of intimacy of our self-disclosures |
| Norm of reciprocity | The social expectation that favors should be reciprocated |
| Parasocial relationships | A one-sided friendship with someone who isn't aware of your existence |
| Platonic relationships | A relationship that is nonromantic and nonsexual |
| Friends-with-benefits (FWB) friendships | Friendships in which friends engage in sexual interaction with each other, even though they do not consider their relationship to be romantic |
| Peer | A person similar to us in status or power |
Created by:
KristenR2025