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Principles for Using Verbal Messages Effectively 85

Transgendered people (people who identify themselves as members of the sex opposite
to the one they were assigned at birth and who may be gay or straight, male or female) are
addressed according to their self-identified sex. Thus, if the person identifies herself as a
woman, then the feminine name and pronouns are used—regardless of the person’s biologi-
cal sex. If the person identifies himself as a man, then the masculine name and pronouns
are used.
Transvestites (people who prefer at times to dress in the clothing of the sex other than
the one they were assigned at birth and who may be gay or straight, male or female) are
addressed on the basis of their clothing. If the person is dressed as a woman—regardless of
the birth-assigned sex—she is referred to and addressed with feminine pronouns and femi-
nine name. If the person is dressed as a man—regardless of the birth-assigned sex—he is
referred to and addressed with masculine pronouns and masculine name.

Objectives self-Check
● Can you define and distinguish between confirmation and disconfirmation?
● Can you communicate with appropriate cultural identifiers and without racist, heterosexist,
ageist, and sexist talk?

principles for using Verbal Messages effectively

The principles governing the verbal messages system suggest a variety of practices for Watch the Video “Interpersonal
using language more effectively. Here are six additional guidelines for making your verbal Communication” at
MyCommunicationLab
messages more effective and a more accurate reflection of the world in which we live:
(1) extensionalize—avoid intensional orientation, (2) see the individual—avoid allness,
(3) distinguish between facts and inferences—avoid fact-inference confusion, (4) discrimi-
nate among—avoid indiscrimination, (5) talk about the middle—avoid polarization, and
(6) update messages—avoid static evaluation.

extensiOnalize: avOiD intensiOnal OrientatiOn

Intensional orientation refers to the tendency to view people, objects, and events in terms of
how they’re talked about or labeled rather than in terms of how they actually exist. Extensional
orientation is the opposite: the tendency to look first at the actual people, objects, and events
and then at the labels—to be guided by what you see happening rather than by the way some-
thing or someone is talked about.
Intensional orientation occurs when you act as if the words and labels were more impor-
tant than the things they represent—as if the map were more important than the territory. In
its extreme form, intensional orientation is seen in the person who is afraid of dogs and who
begins to sweat when shown a picture of a dog or when hearing people talk about dogs. Here
the person is responding to a label as if it were the actual thing. In its more common form,
intensional orientation occurs when you see people through your schemata instead of on the
basis of their specific behaviors. For example, it occurs when you think of a professor as an
unworldly egghead before getting to know the specific professor.
The corrective to intensional orientation is to focus first on the specific object, person, or
event and then on the way in which the object, person, or event is talked about. Labels are
certainly helpful guides, but don’t allow them to obscure what they’re meant to symbolize.

see tHe inDiviDual: avOiD allness
The world is infinitely complex, and because of this you can never say all there is to say about
anything—at least not logically. This is particularly true when you are dealing with people.
You may think you know all there is to know about certain individuals or about why they do
what they do, but you don’t know everything.