3rd blog post

            My second year here at San Jose State, which was last year, I participated in the Forensics Intramural tournament as part of my comm major units. This annual tournament is composed of different possible ways a student can participate. There are individual debates, partner debates, poem recitals and speeches. Me and a classmate participated in the partner debates. There also are students who can be judges and help organize the event. At the time, I was taking a Comm 40 argumentation and debate class and I found I enjoyed arguing both sides to every speech we gave in class. Our job to prepare for the tournament was to prepare strong arguments for each side for three issues. Some of the issues we were going to be debating were:

• Should sports be eliminated from SJSU?
• Should bullying be considered a crime?

            We made a list of positive and negative points for each. We had a strong argument for each side, so we were very confident. We wouldn’t know who our opponents were until the day of.

            The day came and we went through each of the debates. Unfortunately, the side of the argument we hoped we would be on was not the side we were assigned. It was tough, but we had to make that argument ours even if we did not completely agree with it. Some of the opponents were not humble and treating it as if we seriously were arguing with them. One of the judges even was friends with one opponent. Then and there, my partner and I knew we would lose.

            But guess what? We won SECOND place!! Those girls that we thought would do better than us, because she was friends with the judge was not even on a top place, which made us glad that the judge was still fair.

            Now, what communication theory can we apply to mine and my partner’s successful participation in the forensics tournament? I chose the Muted Group theory. It is defined as “people belonging to low power groups who must change their language when communicating publicly, thus, their ideas are often overlooked”, according to A First look at Communication Theory by Em Griffin. Those low power groups that are mentioned in the definition are usually women or minority groups.

            The intramural tournament had obvious people who were in forms of power, which were the judges. I mean, they had the power to choose a winner for each debate and an overall score for each team at the end. That sounds like a tremendous amount of power to me.

            When dealing with the muted group theory, there ALWAYS has to be some sort of hierarchy. There is always a group or an individual whose voice is more heard than the other. In the debate where my partner and I felt we were going to lose, the girl that was friends with the judge seemed more in power than any power we might have had. I felt that anything we said, whether they be good arguments or not, would not matter.

            I believe that sometimes the muted group theory sometimes is something that plays out in one’s mind. In my example, it was all in my head that someone had more power than my team did. But I do believe that this theory can apply to everyone almost anywhere they go, whether their feeling of having less power than that of someone else is real or not.

Symbolic Interactionism in the work place

            At my work, the associates are divided into the level of work they can do. It goes from Level 1 to 7, then the manager positions. As we each train for the next position up from ours, we get feedback every few times we train. We also get feedback and compliments everyday we work and it helps us know how we are doing as well as motivate us. I strongly believe that my job has helped me improve my communication skills and also helped me help others improve theirs. I decided to use a theory called symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead to explain my experience with communication with coworkers. In Griffin’s book, A First look at Communication theory, the symbolic interactionism theory is defined as the ongoing use of language and gestures in anticipation of how the other will react; a conversation.

            One thing I love about my job is that I don’t do the same thing every single time I work. I always work a different position or multiple in the same day. Not only does it help pass time, but I get to get better at my communication skills with each position. Like when I am on the register, I probably interact with more than a hundred people in one shift. When I interact with customers, I use the term “minding”, which is another word for thinking before you speak. I want to offer the customers awesome customer service, because well, that’s my job. To do this, I have to interact with them in a professional and friendly way. Some customers are tougher to interact with than others and will give different responses than others even if you act the same. This requires me to do a little rehearsing in my head on how to act with certain types of customers. For example, I would not act the same with an elder customer as I would with a customer who is 10 years old. If a kid customer comes up to me, I will offer them kid stickers and speak in a more upbeat tone. If I handed stickers to an old woman or man, they’d give me blank stares. As the book also says, “humans act toward people or things on the basis of the meanings they assign to those people or things.”

            I train for my next level position a couple times a week and have received feedback on my performance. I get comments on things I can improve on as well as what I should keep doing. Not only do I receive these compliments after my shift, but during the rush, managers like to compliment you if you are doing a good job. That’s another one of the things I love about my job. The positive atmosphere around me as I am working makes me feel like I can do a good job on anything I do. The looking glass self term described in the book can help explain the fact that I always have an image of myself I want to be. I don’t expect to look like I am doing a perfect job every single time, but I like to look like I am trying.  The term is defined as the mental self image that results from taking the role of the other or being the objective self. According to the book, you see yourself how you imagine others see you. If I feel as if I am doing a horrible job at my position that is how I am going to come off as being.

            The symbolic interactionism theory is all about interaction between an individual and the “other”. There are many ways to look at you as an individual at your job, but I thought this was the best way to describe mine. Each day I learn to communicate in better and efficient ways and thanks to this theory, I can understand why workers communicate the way they do.