Blog Post #8

 1. For someone going into a job interview, I would recommend they practice using ‘Convergence’, which is a strategy by which you adapt your communication behavior to become more similar to someone else (Griffin, pg. 424). It is obviously important to make connections between yourself and either the person who’s interviewing you, or the place you’re being interviewed for. Trying to accentuate those similarities may make you seem like someone they would want to hire, as we are in general more attracted to people whom we share similarities with. However, it would be important advice to not go overboard on this, which is why I would also recommend this person uses Divergence, a communication strategy of accentuating the differences between you and another person(Griffin, pg. 425). It will be important for someone in a job interview to make themselves stand out and seem unique, so that they could bring something new to the table. Along with this, no one wants to seem like they’re just trying to ‘connect’ or ‘fit in’ too hard to the point where they don’t seem genuine, so showing some differences will be important. .

2. In terms of something like Uncertainty Reduction Theory, CAT principles could possibly lead to someone practicing Convergence in order to try to make someone like them, so that they can seem similar to one another as they get to know one another. For example, when I first went to college and started dorming, I really wanted people to like me in the dorms: so I would talk to people about things such as sports in order to really highlight that I like the same sports as them. However, being the young naive 18 year old I was back then, I wanted to ‘reduce uncertainty’ so much that I ran into the problem of Overaccommodation, which is demeaning or patronizing talk; excessive concern paid to vocal clarity or amplification, message simplification, or repetition; similar to divergence (Griffin, pg. 427). It got to the point where I wasn’t being genuine and I think I rubbed some people the wrong way, so I had to readjust my attitude and engage more in Maintenance, persisting in my original and natural communication style regardless of the communication behavior of the other; similar to divergence(Griffin, pg. 426).

3. Someones ‘face’ is defined as the projected image of one’s self in a relational situation (Griffin, pg. 436) A time where I’ve felt someone elses ‘face’ was threatened was when I was playing basketball at my friends house with one of my friends who’s supposed to be very good. Playing him in a one on one, I was winning, and people were watching: and knowing this friend and how much he values his basketball skill, I felt bad beating him in front of everyone. As a result I allowed the game to get closer and lost, in an act called Facework- specific verbal and nonverbal messages that help to maintain and restore face loss, and to uphold and honor face gain (Griffin, pg. 436). Everyone had expected me to lose anyway so it wasn’t a problem at all, but I’ve previously seen this friend suffer a loss of face before, and in those times he’s had to engage in face-restoration, the self-concerned facework strategy used to preserve autonomy and defend against loss of personal freedom (Griffin, pg. 438). Everyone had expected me to lose anyway so it wasn’t a problem at all, but I’ve previously seen this friend suffer a loss of face before, and in those times he’s had to engage in face-restoration, the self-concerned facework strategy used to preserve autonomy and defend against loss of personal freedom (Griffin, pg. 438)

4. By letting him win that game, I used face-giving, which is the other-concerned facework strategy used to defend and support another person’s need for inclusion (Griffin, pg. 438). In terms of CAT, I used Convergence in order to influence me doing this, because I wanted him to still feel like he had that same face-power or social-power of being the best basketball player out of all of us that he’s always felt he has had. This can also be an example of establishing norms, which are expectations about behavior that members of a community feel should (or should not) occur in particular situations (Griffin, pg. 429). While me and my friends are not a ‘community’ in the traditional sense, we are a group of people who have our strengths and weaknesses personally, and I knew my friend took pride in his basketball abilities so I wanted to help maintain the norms of our group that had him as the ‘basketball guy’.