COMM 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Tag Question
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■2. Connotative Meaning
●Two words can have same denotation but different emotional,
evaluative connections (or neutral)
○Ex) Fat vs. overweight
●Can have idiosyncratic and/or shared connotations too
●“God terms”
= widely positive connotations
○Like freedom, hope
●“Devil terms” = widely negative connotations
○Like profanities, racial slurs
●Effects of Language
○Can signal our group identities
■Age, culture, gender, social status
■Speech repertoires
●What “languages” do you speak
■“Accommodation” from Comm Accommodation Theory
●adjust/switch our language use with others → Facilitates
understanding
●Adjustment based on group identity →
○toward: to gain acceptance, belonging (us)
○Away: to distinguish from group or power (them)
○Can influence perceptions of individual qualities (traits, motivations, abilities)
■“Equivocal” language
●Intentional imprecise language → helps us manage face for self
and other
○ex) do you like your present? It’s so thoughtful!
■POWER OF LANGUAGE in Degree of fluency and directness
●Language markers such as:
○Powerless language: uses hedges (just, i guess, i think) ,
hesitations (um), intensifiers (really, totally, super), tag
questions (right? Isn’t it?), disclaimers (i’m not sure about
this)
○ Language: fluent, direct, doesn’t use powerless markers
●Studies show powerless language lowers impressions of
competence, trustworthiness, dynamism, socioeconomic status,
message effectiveness BUT can be seen as good natured, polite,
likable
Nonverbal Communication
●Relationship to Verbal Com
○Nonverbal Comm can:
■Complement verbal - hand signals
