Convergence and Divergence of Communication

Being so young I found myself changing in a negative way and acting different. My grades were dropping, I started hanging with

Unfortunately, part of my high school learning experience has been learning from my mistakes. During my sophomore year, I was put on a five day suspension from school because I failed a random drug test for marijuana. When this happened, it seemed as if my life stopped and ended. My parents were shocked, my teachers were shocked, and even I would have been shocked a few weeks before this happened. Going into tenth grade, my reputation at my high school was that of a quiet student with great integrity and that is how I had been perceived my whole life. As being looked upon as an introverted person I was always encouraged to interact with new people and make new friends. I did just that but then found myself associating with the wrong type of

Communication theories are important to learn and understand. Learning these theories helps us apply the theory to our own life. It helps our critical thinking skills as well as benefits one to understand the value of research that has been accomplished in this field. Understanding communication theories can help us make sense of our daily life experiences. There are three Communication theories that I have studied that have touched on my personal and professional life. These theories are Communication Privacy Management, Social Penetration Theory, and Organizational Culture Theory.

In the first few years, I was reserved. Because I only hung out with the people I knew and rarely stepped out of my comfort zone back in Florida, I acted the same way moving to Georgia. Making friends wasn’t important to me because I was used to being isolated. Going on to high school, I came to a realization that I needed to step out into the world. I knew that I couldn’t always depend on myself. I needed to make connections and branch out. I took my chances and joined clubs to help not only myself but others as well. High school was also the transition of my life where I started focusing on my grades. I started working harder and as the curriculum started to get more difficult, it only motivated me to be more diligent.

I went to a new school with new people. I felt like an outsider. But these people, they didn’t understand my situation; they just thought I was quiet and shy on the first day because that was my

Humans act toward people, things, and events on the basis of the meanings they assign to them. Once people define a situation as real, it has very real consequences. Without language there would be no thought, no sense of self, and no socializing presence of society within the individual. (Socio-cultural tradition)

I have had many situations that happened in my life that made me look at things differently and force me change. The most important crucible that I had been through is graduating middle school going into highschool. In middle school if I was acting foolish in class or talking loudly the teachers will just tell me to chill down. They would never get upset to the point they would send me or other students to the office. Often the teachers would always be chill in the classroom and would let the students fool around during class work. Since the teachers never said anything while me and my peers were acting a bit childish we just kept on being ourselves day by day. I always knew not to go to the extreme by disrespecting my teachers but sometimes I would make jokes in the middle of my teacher talking.

His ability to converge supports Howard Giles’ ‘Accommodation theory’. His ability to adjust his speech with a variety of classes in the work place makes it easier to communicate, and helps the people that he is talking to to feel more comfortable and may make it easier for them to understand what is being presented.

I attended a small charter school in Westland, Michigan. Between these walls, I broke and regained my pieces. My cultural difference set me apart from most of the kids - my accent, the way I dressed and the way I behaved. Social interaction with my peers were difficult because they didn’t know how to connect with me. When they did try to communicate, the conversation always provoked me. For instance, during the first week of school my table partner introduced herself and so did I. She asked where I was from and when I answered she was stunned. She later informed the rest of the class and for the rest of the day I was bombarded with outrageous questions like: Do you guys live in trees? How did you go to school? I felt so diminish as my peers indirectly stated their thought about people like

The schools were small and there wasn’t much diversity. Kids used to make fun of me for my name or color and it got so bad that we had to go to the principal. He had our whole class switch lunches so were with kids our age instead of the older ones bullying us. The other kids would spread rumors about me, because I was a vegetarian or because we lived in our hotel which had an attached “house” to it. They wouldn’t include any of the younger kids and if I stood up to them they would tell on me. I don’t let other students push me around now. I am who I am. I can’t change that and I won’t. When I moved here in 4 grade, I was still bullied occasionally, but I had good friends who stuck by my side and still do. I want to be the person others were to me through those rocky

Growing up and going to school at Conquering Word Christian Academy I never was the person to communicate with others in my school; teachers thought I had a problem but I believed that no one clearly understood me for who I was. I was only trying to protect myself from hurt and from people who told lies all the time but then I realized that not only was I lonely without any friends, but I actually was giving off a “leave me alone” facial expression. This made people move away from even trying to be my friend. I wanted to associate with people but thought no one would want to be bothered with me because of my attitude. Always being angry made other students in my class think of me as a careless person, but I was far from that. However, I never knew that my face expression would play a vital role in me not having friends to communicate with; but I knew I had to understand that what I thought was okay and just me, others felt otherwise and it was time for me to show a different side.

I was very different and not everyone liked that about me. Feeling like an outsider made life at school difficult for me. Feeling like an outsider made me feel alone, but it also united me with other people who felt the same way that I did. It really bothered me that I wasn’t like any of the kids at my school and having people who felt the same way as me made things a lot better for me. My friends helped me realize that it doesn’t matter what other people think of me because I had people who loved me for who I am and that’s all that really matters.

In 1980, S.F. Scudder proposed that all living beings existing on the planet communicate in some way, even plants. We need to communicate to survive. My paper discusses various communication theories that relate to things that I observed or experienced over the course of my internship.

For four long years I felt as if my high school was in a different world in of itself. I had spent that time interacting with an extensive amount of groups, or “cliques”, and getting to know what they do. Through my experiences, I had begun to realize what made this “subculture” high school of sorts run like it did. High school is an incredibly dynamic time for people, and I had changed as a person dramatically from my freshman to senior year. Like many, my freshman year was quite awkward, as remnants of my middle school self remained with me. As time went on, how, I talked to more people and grew out of my passive and shy personality. This did not just randomly happen without reason though. I began to learn and realize who I was and whom I enjoyed talking to in school, which explained why I spent so much time socializing with multiple kinds and groups of people. Everyone’s concept of “normal” was different, and high school was where I learned that lesson and will never forget.

Convergence in CAT refers to the accommodativeness, the process concerned with how we both reduce and magnify communication differences between people in interaction. Talking about convergence, people tend to enhance interpersonal similarities and reduce uncertainties. The effect of converging towards or approximately to another can increase liking and enable him or her to be seen more competent and credible. It includes switching to the other’s language or dialect, or assuming the same level of the other’s interruptions, speech rate,