Page 144 - Essentials of Human Communication

The Principles of Conversation 123

SkIll DevelOPmenT exPeRIenCe

Opening and Closing a Conversation

Effectively opening and closing conversations often can be challenging. Consider, first, a few situations in which
you might want to open a conversation. For each situation develop a possible opening message in which you
seek to accomplish one or more of the following: (a) telling others that you’re accessible and open to commu-
nication, (b) showing that you’re friendly, or (c) showing that you like the other person.
1. You’re one of the first guests to arrive at a friend’s party and are now there with several other people to
whom you’ve only just been introduced. Your friend, the host, is busy with other matters.
2. In surfing through your Facebook photos you decide that you want to get to know better someone for a
possible romantic relationship. This friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who friended you a while back and to
whom you paid no attention, now seems just the right potential partner. You’ve never communicated di-
rectly before.
Opening and closing
Here are two situations in which you might want to bring a conversation to a close. For each situation,
develop a possible closing message in which you seek to accomplish one or more of the following: (a) end the conversations are often
conversation without much more talk, (b) leave the other person with a favorable impression of you, or (c) keep difficult; your handling
the channels of communication open for future interaction. of these steps is going to
help create an
1. You and a friend have been talking on the phone for the past hour, but not much new is being said. You have
a great deal of work to do and want to wrap it up. Your friend just doesn’t seem to hear your subtle cues. impression that’s likely
2. You’re at a party and are anxious to meet a person with whom you’ve exchanged eye contact for the past ten to be long-lasting and
minutes. The problem is that a friendly and talkative older relative of yours is demanding all your attention. highly resistant to
You don’t want to insult your relative, but at the same time you want to make contact with this other person. change.

● Closing. The fifth and last step, the opposite of the first step, is the
closing, the goodbye, which often reveals how satisfied the persons
were with the conversation: “I hope you’ll call soon” or “Don’t call
us, we’ll call you.” The closing also may be used to schedule future
conversations: “Give me a call tomorrow night” or “Let’s meet for
lunch at 12.” When closings are indefinite or vague, conversation
often becomes awkward; you’re not quite sure if you should say
goodbye or if you should wait for something else to be said.

The PrinCiPle OF Turn-TAking
Throughout the speaking–listening process, both speaker and listener
exchange cues for what are called conversational turns (Burgoon,
Buller, & Woodall, 1996; Duncan, 1972; Pearson & Spitzberg, 1990).
These cues enable the speaker and listener to communicate about the
communication in which they’re currently engaged; that is, a form of
metacommunication takes place through the exchange of these often
subtle cues. The use of turn-taking cues—like almost every aspect of ViewPOinTs
human communication—will naturally vary from one culture to gender stereotypes
another. The description that follows here is valid largely for the One of the stereotypes about gender differences in com-
United States and many Western cultures (Iizuka, 1993; Lee, 1984; munication and widely reported in the popular writings on
Grossin, 1987; Ng, Loong, He, Liu, & Weatherall, 2000). As you read gender is that women talk more than men. But a recent
the following discussion, take a look at Figure 6.3 (p. 124); it provides a study of 396 college students finds that women and men
visual guide to the various turn signals. talk about the same number of words per day, about
16,000; more precisely women spoke an average of 16,215
speaker Cues Speakers regulate the conversation through two words while men spoke an average of 15,669 words, a
major types of cues: turn-maintaining cues and turn-yielding cues. difference that was statistically insignificant (Mehl, Vazire,
Using these cues effectively not only ensures communication efficiency Ramirez-Esparza, Slatcher, & Pennebaker, 2007). Do your
own experiences support these research findings?
but also increases likeability (Place & Becker, 1991; Heap, 1992).