Questions and Answers of Organizational Communication

Do you believe Mead’s argument that one cannot have a self without social interaction? Would a person raised in relative isolation, for example, have little to no sense of self? Explain your answer.
Has there been a time in your life when your sense of self changed dramatically? If so, what contributed to the change? Did it have anything to do with others in your life?
Do you agree with the emphasis that Mead places on language as a shared symbol system? Is it possible to interact with someone who speaks a completely different language? Explain your position.
One of the criticisms of SI is that it puts too much emphasis on individual action and not enough emphasis on the constraints on individuals put upon them by society and their social position. What
Explain the difference between the self-fulfilling prophecy and the Pygmalion effect. How are they similar? How are they different?
Do you agree that Mead’s theory is too broad in scope to really be considered a theory? Explain your answer.
Identify the different types of coordination will our chapter opener’s Taylor--Murphy family experience as they begin a life together? Try to identify stages that the family may experience and
How might coordination be influenced by differing cultural backgrounds of communicators, including race, age, sexual identity, and geographical location, among others?
Discuss enmeshment and its relationship to conversations in your family. Be sure to define the term before applying it.
Chess and poker are games requiring coordination. Discuss some of life’s “games” and how they require coordination. Be creative and give specific examples.
Identify and explain a strange loop that exists in popular culture or in your interpersonal relationships.
Describe an episode in your life where telling a story enhanced the meaning between you and another person. What was the story about?
Apply CPM Theory to Lisa Sanders’s case. How might the theory help Lisa to understand her situation?
Within the past 10 years there has been an increase in the number of studies using CPM, which seems to indicate it’s standing the test of time. Do you agree that CPM will stand the test of time?
What approach to theory building does Petronio take in CPM Theory (laws, rules, systems, or some combination)? Explain your answer.
What topics that interest you would you use CPM Theory to investigate? Generate some questions that you could research using CPM.
Do you agree with Petronio’s defense of CPM against the critique that it uses the concept of dialectics but really takes a dualistic approach to privacy management? Explain your reasoning.
Explain how you create privacy boundaries and disclosure rules. Do the axioms of CPM hold true in your personal experience? If they do, explain how you use core and catalyst criteria in making
Provide an example of how privacy turbulence affects CPM processes.
What advice would you give the Melton Publishing board of directors before they meet to discuss their financial situation? Frame your advice with Groupthink concepts in mind.
Janis and ‘t Hart have proposed a number of ways to prevent Groupthink. Their suggestions, however, were made years ago. Are there recommendations that you find either unreasonable or inappropriate
Have you ever been in a small group/team with too much cohesiveness? If so, did Groupthink develop? If so, how did you know? If not, what prevented it from occurring?
In his book, Groupthink, Janis asks if a little knowledge of groupthink is a dangerous thing. Why do you think Janis asks this question, and what are the consequences of knowing about
Think about how groupthink functions on social media. What specific real or hypothetical examples can you identify?
Apply principles of Groupthink to recent domestic and foreign-policy decisions made by the United States.
Discuss the delicate balance between sufficient group cohesion and exceedingly high amounts of group cohesion. Illustrate your response with examples from your own group experiences.
How can employees like Amelia Callahan ease into a new and different organizational culture? What advice would you give her as she begins her new job with Jewelry Plus?
Consider some of the organizations to which you belong. Identify the cultural performances that you have either observed or shared. How could you use these performances in your work?
Geertz has compared culture to a spider web. What other metaphors can you think of that could represent organizational cultures?
Discuss your preferences and experiences with various organizational cultures (including schools). What differences and similarities exist? Which type of culture did you prefer?
Imagine that you’re an ethnographer who has been assigned to study your school’s culture. How might you go about studying it? What sort of cultural artifacts or rituals would you find?
Based on your job experiences, explain the frequency of the various cultural performances identified by Pacanowsky and O’Donnell-Trujillo.
How would you apply principles of OCT to your family?
In the chapter-opening scene, Camille Ramirez relied on Aristotle’s view of public speaking. Do you believe that she could have been more effective? In what way? Use examples in your response.
Aristotle’s critics have focused on the fact that his theory is simply a collection of lecture notes that are contradictory, vague, and often narrow. Does this make a difference to you? Why or why
Employ syllogistic reasoning for and against each of the following topics: physician-assisted suicide, marriage equality, and medicinal marijuana use.
Discuss what canon of rhetoric is most important when politicians speak to their constituents. Use examples to defend your view.
If Aristotle were alive today and you were his student, what additional suggestions would you offer him for a new edition of the Rhetoric? Why do you believe your suggestions are important to address
Aristotle spent a great deal of time discussing the role of the audience. If you were giving a speech on safety to a group of convenience store employees, what sort of audience analysis would you
Explain how principles from the Rhetoric relate to job interviews.
How could Karl talk about Eric Spellman’s situation in a less polarized fashion? What are the linguistic barriers to such a discussion? Does a feminist critique of Burke’s theory enable you to
Use the pentad to analyze a public figure and the discourse surrounding some current controversy involving this figure.
How do you understand the use of the pentad as a method relative to Dramatism as a theory? Do all theories have specific methods that are used only with them? Why or why not?
Do you agree with Burke that guilt is the primary human motive? If not, what do you think is the primary human motive?
Burke believes that symbols, and language in particular, are critical in life. When he says that language acts as a terministic screen, what do you think he means? Provide some examples of how
Do you agree with Condit that Burke’s theory is culture specific rather than universal? Explain your answer.
Apply any element of Dramatism to your life. For instance, have you experienced identification with a public figure? If so, what strategies did they employ that allowed you to feel this way?
Can you think of any other explanations besides those offered by the Narrative Paradigm for Miles’s preference for Jorge’s candidacy after he read the campaign flyers?
Do you agree with Fisher that humans are storytellers? What does that mean to you in a practical sense?
When you listen to others’ stories, do you evaluate them based on coherence and fidelity? Can you think of any other criteria that you use to evaluate the stories that you hear?
What support does Fisher have for his contention that all communication is narration? Can you think of some communication that is not narrative in nature? If all communication is narration, do you
The Narrative Paradigm suggests that when an expert argument is compared to a good story, the expert argument will fail because it will lack the coherence and the fidelity that a narrative possesses.
Choose a story that has been in the news recently and analyze it for narrative rationality.
How is narrative rationality different from the Rational World Paradigm? Do you think Fisher succeeds in synthesizing the two strands that traditionally characterize rhetoric: the persuasive,
Discuss whether you believe that Professor Randall should rely less on technology in preparing her speech and more on her life experiences. Is there too much reliance, for instance, with her
Describe how Media Ecology theorists might react to the current news today? What would be his major criticisms and his major objections? What would he be particularly interested in?
Do you agree or disagree with McLuhan regarding television being a cool medium? Use examples to defend your view.
Interpret and comment on the following statement: “Technology is the end of our beginning.” Use examples to defend your view.
Discuss your response to theorists who choose to be part of the popular culture, including participating on talk shows and appearing in films.
Apply any principle of MET to(a) YouTube,(b) Snapchat,(c) Facebook,(d) LinkedIn.
Why do you think little quantitative research has been undertaken with MET?
Rewrite the opening example of Luke Merrill and Roberto Hernandez. This time, place the two individuals in the context of teacher and student.
Explain how convergence might function in the following relationships: police officer–driver, therapist–client, and supervisor–subordinate. In your response, choose a conversational topic that
We have noted that overaccommodation typically results in miscommunication. Some research in Communication Accommodation Theory has also examined underaccommodation in your college and/or family, or
Giles contends that self-perception can influence the accommodation process. How does a person’s self-perception affect how one chooses whether or not to accommodate? Provide examples to illustrate
CAT has been framed in the intercultural communication context. Based on your understanding of the theory, under what additional context(s) can the theory be understood?
How might divergence be explained using social identity? Explain using examples from your life.
Discuss a situation in which accommodation might backfire on an individual.
Can you think of other dialectic tensions that might pervade the relational life of Eleanor and Jeff besides those discussed in the chapter?
Do you think relationships are better explained through stage theories or dialectics? Why? Provide support for your position.
How do you think communication is used to deal with conflicting desires within a relationship? How does RDT help us understand communication behaviors?
Only a few of the articles cited in the chapter have to do with RDT applied in ethnicities other than European American. How do you think culture and ethnicity impact the theory? Is it universal
Explain the differences between the original applications of RDT and RDT 2.0. How do you see the transformation of the theory? Do you think it’s more productive to generate lists of the tensions
Provide an example of the multiple discourses that animate a specific relationship you are in now or have been in the past. (How) has power played a role in these discourses?
Provide an example of how you could use reframing to resolve a dialectical tension.
Are you like Joyce Jensen in that you do not feel safe walking in your neighborhood at night? How much television do you watch? Do you fit the profile offered by Cultivation Theory? Why or why not?
Cultivation Theory is a critical theory and demands action from its adherents. Do you believe researchers and theorists should become politically active in the fields they study? Why or why not?
Do you agree with the hypothesis presented by the Mean World Index? Why or why not?
How do you define violence on television? Do you think it’s possible to calculate violent acts as Gerbner and his colleagues have done? Explain your answer.
People post a lot of pictures on Facebook of themselves and their friends drinking. Do you think that people who spend a lot of time visiting these Facebook pages would cultivate a view of reality
How do you respond to the criticism that more television channels and more divisions among viewers mean that the assumptions of Cultivation Theory are no longer valid?
What other variables might affect people’s perception of the world in addition to their amount of television viewing?
Do you think that the Petrillo family is responsible for not trying to leave their current situation? If they are not able to achieve the “American Dream” of owning a home, should the media be
Discuss how hegemony functions in world events, such as the refugee crisis and political oppression. Now apply the concept to your campus. Identify any similarities and differences between the two
What other cultural artifacts exist in our society that could be studied within a Cultural Studies framework?
British Cultural Studies is strongly focused on class differences. What do you think about applying the thinking of British Cultural Studies to Cultural Studies in North America? Do you believe that
Do you agree or disagree with the belief that oppressed populations have little voice in the United States? How does this view relate to how you feel about the theory?
How might Cultural Studies theorists view current poverty rates in the United States?
Apply counter-hegemony to a contemporary television show.
Do you think MGT provides a good explanation for the difficulties faced by Patricia Fitzpatrick from our chapter-opening story? Why or why not? What other explanations might you offer to understand
Have you had the experience of fumbling for words to describe something that you were feeling or something that happened to you? Do you think MGT explains that experience for you? Why or why not?
Can you coin terms for experiences that women have and men do not? What about the reverse? Do you agree with MGT that the English language fits the male experience of the world better than the female
We mentioned that one criticism of MGT is that some women do manage to speak out on the public stage and so the theory overstates the problem that women have with language. Do you agree or disagree
Have any of the reforms that are suggested by MGT taken hold in our language? Give examples of changes in the language that have made it more responsive to women’s experiences.
Would it make MGT a stronger theory if it dropped the feminist perspective and just focused on any non-dominant groups that are muted in the English language? Does MGT provide a good explanation for
If MGT is a critical theory, what actions has it stimulated? How has it advocated for change?
Do you accept the argument of Feminist Standpoint Theory that all standpoints are partial? Explain your answer. How does the case of Angela and Latria, from the beginning of the chapter, illustrate
Give an example of situated knowledges in a specific context.
Do you agree that women form a subordinate group in the United States or in any culture worldwide given the chapter’s definition of a subordinate group? Explain your answer.
If all truths are understood as coming from some subjective standpoint, how is it possible for people to communicate? If there is no objective truth, how do we reach agreement among people with

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