Abstract: Oral communication skill has been a subject of human fascination for thousands of years, encompassing a broad range of specific competencies and levels of analysis that make it a central concern of a number of scholarly disciplines. The focus of this chapter is oral proficiency among adult, first-language speakers, who would typically be characterized as “normal” with respect to their intellectual and psychological functioning. As an aid in navigating such an expansive terrain, five fundamental observations, or points of reference, are invoked: 1. oral communication skills matter, 2. such skills involve proficiencies in carrying out identifiable communicative functions, 3. people differ, with some degree of consistency, in their communicative proficiencies, 4. sources of skill deficits can be identified, and 5. proficiencies can be improved.
Keywords: communication competence, communication effectiveness, communication skill, communication skill training, goals-plans-action (GPA) models, interpersonal skill, message production, skill acquisition
The literature on “oral communication skills” is truly vast – the subject has been the object of human scrutiny for millennia, and it encompasses an enormous range of behavioral phenomena and levels of analysis. Consider that, according to Hargie (2006a: 2), treatises on effective communication date to ancient Egypt and that discourses on persuasion techniques from the Greek Classical Age (some two millennia later) remain among the canon of Western literature to the present day. This same concern with enhancing communication effectiveness (in both mediated and public-speaking contexts) was the primary driver in the development of communication (speech, journalism) departments in American universities in the early twentieth century (see Delia 1987) and even now continues as a major focus of research and instruction in those institutions.119
And again, if the subject of oral communication skills has a long history, it is also enormously (almost impossibly) broad. Consider that the domain encompasses changes across the lifespan, from children’s language acquisition to decrements in encoding abilities in old age – both areas with extensive research traditions (see Kemper and Schmalzried 2008; Lust 2011). Similarly, research on second language acquisition is, at root, driven by a concern with message skill. In a different vein, “oral communication skills” also encompasses the spectrum of disciplines devoted to the study of message proficiency in populations with various psychological disorders and physiological impairments (see Bachman and Cannon 2005).
Even if we restrict our focus to verbal message production among “normal” populations of adults (my intention in what follows)120, the task remains rather daunting. The notion that speech and talk may be more or less proficient lends itself to an entire spectrum of levels of analysis ranging from basic mechanisms of speech production, to rules of syntax and grammar, to strategies for influencing the attitudes and behavior of both individuals and larger groups. Moreover, virtually every domain and context of human social endeavor lends itself to analysis in terms of the quality of what people say and how they say it. To illustrate, books devoted to surveying research on communication skill (e.g., Greene and Burleson 2003; Hargie 2006d) include chapters on “explaining,” “negotiating and bargaining,” “interviewing,” “arguing,” “persuading,” “parenting,” “group decision making,” “managing conflict,” “managing romantic relationships,” and on and on. In short, if humans do it with talk, there is almost certainly a literature on what it means to do it well.
Humankind’s longstanding fascination with communication skill, and the breadth of systematic examinations of such skills, are the products of the simple fact that skills matter – oral communication skills are related to a host of positive outcomes and conditions. And this seems to be something that people have recognized from the get-go: We learn in the fourth chapter of Exodus, for example, that Moses understood that his followers would not believe him because he was a slow speaker. And, in point of fact, considerable empirical evidence indicates that Moses was correct in his assumption that fluency is related to credibility and persuasiveness (see, for example: Burgoon, Birk and Pfau 1990; Street and Brady 1982).
Moreover, the effects of oral communication skill are not limited to persuasion contexts, and in fact, such skills are related to greater success in accomplishing a variety of instrumental objectives. Consider, for example, the effectiveness and salutary outcomes associated with the master teacher’s proficiency at explanation, the experienced reporter’s ability to pose probing questions, and the seasoned therapist’s skill in offering advice and counsel.
Everyday intuition about the importance of oral message skill is borne out by studies of communication competency in a variety of contexts. As just one example, surveys of employers consistently show that oral communication skills (or more generally in some cases, “communication skills”) are rated at, or very near, the top of desirable attributes for prospective hires (e.g., Maes, Weldy and Icenogle 1997; O’Neil, Allred and Baker 1997). Not surprisingly, then, various aspects of oral communication skill have been shown to be related to success in the employment interview (e.g., Ugbah and Evuleocha 1992), and once hired, to job performance (e.g., Kolb 1996; Papa 1989) and upward mobility in the workplace (e.g., Sypher and Zorn 1986).
But the positive impact of communication skills is not limited to accomplishing instrumental objectives like persuading, teaching, or success in one’s career. Beyond the task dimension of social interaction, message-production skills are also related to both relational satisfaction and personal well-being. With respect to the first of these, evidence suggests that children with poor communication skills are less popular (see Burleson, Delia and Applegate 1992; Hartup 1989) and that, in young adulthood, lower levels of interpersonal competence are associated with higher levels of loneliness (e.g., Segrin and Flora 2000; Spitzberg and Hunt 1987). Moreover, skill deficits are associated with less success in dating and marital relationships (see Burleson 1995; Burleson and Denton 1997; Flora and Segrin 1999). Indeed, negative interaction patterns have been shown to be substantially related to marital distress and divorce (see Bradbury, Fincham and Beach 2000), although the nonverbal features of couple communication may outweigh those of the verbal channel in this regard (see Kelly, Fincham and Beach 2003).
Finally, in light of the fact that communication skill is related to instrumental and material success, and to the number and quality of one’s close relationships, it should not be surprising that there is considerable evidence relating various aspects of communication skill to people’s psychological and physiological well-being, including factors such as negative self-perceptions and social anxiety (see Patterson and Ritts 1997), depression (see Segrin 2000), and even in some cases, conditions such as alcoholism (e.g., Miller and Eisler 1977; Nixon, Tivis and Parsons 1992) and cardiovascular disease (Ewart, Taylor, Kraemer and Agras 1991). Clearly caution is in order in drawing conclusions about direction of causality in much of this research, and observed effect sizes in some studies are small (see Segrin 1999), but overall, it does appear that various aspects of communication skill are related to personal adjustment and well-being.
At first blush one might assume that the very notion of oral communication skills is an intuitively obvious and readily tractable concept – after all, each of us has encountered individuals we can readily identify as eloquent speakers, or people with a knack for casual conversation, and even those who can “spin a good yarn” (or conversely, those who “can’t tell a joke”). And yet nailing down the essence of skilled message-making has proven to be a slippery enterprise marked by controversy and dispute (see Hargie 2006b; Sanders 2003; Wilson and Sabee 2003). Indeed, one writer notes that “few concepts are as difficult to define and assess as interpersonal skills” (Spitzberg 2003: 93), and another pair of authors questions whether an adequate definition of “social skills” might ever be developed (Segrin and Givertz 2003: 136).
The elusiveness of “communication skill,” or, more to the present point, “oral communication skill,” is the product of at least four factors – two that might be thought of as ultimately deriving from potential construals or characterizations of the message behavior itself, and two that can be seen as ramifications of social context. Regarding the former, the first factor concerns the fact that oral message behavior is not a unitary “thing”, enacted with some level of skill, but rather an amalgam of numerous components, some of which may reflect greater proficiency than others: As a familiar example, one’s command of vocabulary may outstrip his or her abilities in pronunciation. Distinct from the fact that message behavior involves multiple components is the fact that it lends itself to analysis at multiple levels of abstraction. Thus, a single utterance might be characterized at low levels of abstraction in terms of adherence to rules of grammar, or at a more abstract level, in terms of the degree to which it reflects a command of conventions of politeness and face-work, or even more abstractly, in terms of its level of sophistication in social perspective-taking.
Turning to issues associated with social context, a third factor contributing to difficulties in defining or identifying characteristics of oral communication skill is quite simply the number and variety of communicative activities in which people engage. To illustrate, consider that what constitutes “skillful” communication in doctor-patient interactions, collegiate debate, and poker-game kibitzing may be markedly distinct. Finally, the picture is further complicated by the fact that what constitutes “skillful message behavior” is contextually contingent. This last is the elusive “except when” or “it depends” aspect of communication skill: No matter what is usually the most appropriate or effective course of action, there will always be cases where the converse is true; for example, what might count as rude, even boorish, in polite company might be the very act that serves to define and cement a close and (mutually) satisfying interpersonal relationship.
The upshot of these various considerations is that attempts to catalogue oral communication skills are likely to be, at once, both incomplete and unwieldy. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the project of surveying and imposing some conceptual order on the area is dead in the water. In the remainder of this section and the next, then, I want to turn to a pair of simple propositions that should afford some purchase on the issues at hand.
At the very foundation of the notion of “skill” is the idea that a person may be more or less proficient at doing something. Thus, the skilled craftsman, athlete, or surgeon is able to carry out certain tasks in a competent manner. Let us take as our first organizing principle, then, that oral communication skills center on the ability to carry out communicative functions in proficient ways. The proposition is seemingly obvious, but it serves to foreground an essential question: Standards of excellence for craftsmen, athletes, and physicians are rather discernable, but in the domain of oral communication skills, what are the functions that might be carried out poorly or well? There are various ways that one might address this issue (e.g., Buhrmester, Furman, Wittenberg and Reis 1988; Heggestad and Morrison 2008; Spitzberg and Cupach 2011), but a four-tiered hierarchical scheme provides a principled and parsimonious approach to the question.
At the most fundamental level, oral communication skill involves proficiency with respect to production standards – that is, the ability to produce intelligible, fluent discourse. It is at the level of speaking intelligibly that issues of enunciation, working vocabulary, grammar, accent, and so on, come to the fore. But beyond basic competencies in making oneself understood on a micro-level, sentence-by-sentence (or clause-by-clause) basis, production standards also encompass abilities related to constructing macro-level sequences, such as stories and arguments, that can be followed by others (see Kintsch 1998; van Dijk and Kintsch 1983).
The second level of the functional hierarchy involves abilities related to interleaving one’s own actions with those of his or her interlocutor(s). These regulatory functions include topic management, interaction initiation and termination, and especially, turn-taking. Unlike first-level functions, where the ability to produce intelligible utterances seems an obvious and necessary component of oral skill, regulatory proficiency may not seem as readily apparent, but, in point of fact, the significance of these functions is difficult to overestimate. Indeed, in his seminal essay on communication competence, Wiemann (1977) identified interaction regulation as the sine qua non (‘without which there is nothing’) of competent interaction.
Beyond abilities pertaining to production of intelligible utterances and social coordination, a third level of competencies involves establishing a mutually acceptable working definition of what might be termed “social reality” – the backdrop of the interaction that grounds and makes sensible the actions of the participants. As such, social reality can be seen to involve at least four components: 1. presentation of self, 2. presentation of one’s view of the other (e.g., his or her knowledge and expertise, interests, etc.), 3. presentation of one’s construal of the nature of the relationship that exists between self and other (e.g., friends, lovers, opponents, etc.), and 4. presentation of one’s interpretation of the nature of the social setting (i.e. situational exigencies, social rules, etc.). Effective presentation and negotiation of each of these elements, then, involves standards of proficiency, many of which pertain to the verbal realm – what one says and how he or she says it.
The final level of the proficiency hierarchy involves abilities related to achieving interaction goals in an effective and appropriate manner. Thus, the sales representative is able to “close the deal,” the politician is able to sway the undecided, and the traffic offender can to talk his or her way out of a ticket. But it is not enough simply to be effective – the twin consideration here is social appropriateness. Consider that a person might accomplish some objective, but do so by threatening, bullying, or belittling another, or by otherwise acting unethically. It is this fourth hierarchical level, and the interplay of effectiveness and appropriateness, that has traditionally dominated discussion of communication proficiency among scholars in the field of Communication (see Rubin 1990; Segrin and Givertz 2003; Spitzberg and Cupach 2011; Wiemann 1977).
There are various ways that the specific components or processes underlying effective and appropriate goal pursuit might be described, but one widely recognized and influential approach is found in goals-plans-action models (G-P-A; see Berger 1995; Dillard 1990; Greene 2000; Greene and Graves 2007). On this view, situationally bound objectives (to make a sale, sway voters, or avoid a ticket) give rise to plans for achieving those objectives, which, in turn, drive mechanisms for enacting those plans. Proficiencies, then, involve realistic goal-setting, accurate anticipation of others’ reactions, formulating and choosing between alternative courses of action, and the ability to actually implement one’s plans via overt behavior (see Wilson 2002).
In Section 2.1 above I noted that, despite the fact that surveying the domain of oral communication skills is a rather formidable task, it might be possible to make some progress by working from a pair of simplest first propositions (i.e. “to start at the very beginning” as it were). Thus, the idea that “oral communication skills center on the ability to carry out communicative functions in proficient ways” was used to provide a conceptual point of departure for identifying a parsimonious typology of four clusters of social/ communicative functions (and attendant proficiencies).
Like the first foundational observation, the second is seemingly equally apparent – and as consequential in its implications. Consider that just as with skilled musicianship, dance, or what have you, capacities for performing well at message-making are acquired, possessed, and enacted by the individual. An essential corollary of this point is that the person skilled in some domain of oral communication not only performs well, he or she is also able to do so with some consistency – the skillful communicator exhibits a degree of regularity in the quality of his or her performance.
As noted at the outset, my intention here is to limit the focus of discussion to adult, native-language speakers, free of physiological anomalies, both central (i.e. neural) and peripheral (i.e. articulatory), related to speech production, and who would be typically be characterized as “normal” with respect to their intellectual and psychological functioning.121 Given this seemingly restricted population, one might assume that individual differences in oral communication skills would be minimal, and that skill deficits would be rather rare. But this conjecture is refuted by both everyday experience and by research on the prevalence of communication problems. With regard to the former, as previously noted, we all recognize that people exhibit a range of levels of skill in public speaking, small talk, parenting, teaching, and so on. Moreover, studies of skill deficits reveal that a substantial number of people, even college students, exhibit problems in such fundamental communication tasks as asking a question or giving directions (see Spitzberg & Cupach 2011).
The fact that we do find variations in levels of message-production proficiencies brings to the fore the question of the source(s) of such individual differences. As with the problem of delineating communication functions discussed above (Section 2.2), there are any number of ways, representing varying levels of parsimony and elegance, that one might address the etiology of skill differences (see, for example: Hargie 2006c; Liberman, DeRisi and Mueser 1989; Trower, Bryant and Argyle 1978), but holding to the premise that oral communication skills are acquired affords a principled way of organizing discussion of the sources of variations in proficiency – and of eventually arriving at the heart of the question of why some people consistently exhibit more proficient behavior than others.
The scheme I want to propose consists of three levels, the first consisting of relatively enduring person-factors such as temperament (see Buss and Plomin 1984), personality traits (see Digman 1990), various intellectual capacities (see McGrew 2009), and so on. Factors at this first level are not, themselves, oral communication skills, but they may either: (1) facilitate skill acquisition, or (2) predispose individuals to acquire such skills. As an example, consider that extraversion, in and of itself, is not a skill (indeed, extraverts may exhibit any number of performance deficits, e.g., over-disclosure, talking too much, etc.), but, on balance, we might expect to find that individuals high in the propensity to engage others and to enjoy social interaction are more likely to exhibit various oral proficiencies, and this does appear to be the case (e.g., Siegman 1978; Thorne 1987).
Dispositional and information-processing contributions to individual variations in message skill are overlaid by a second set of factors, these derived from people’s social (and quasi-social) experiences. It is at this level that influences such as parenting styles, family communication patterns, peer influences, and even media portrayals of social interaction come into play. Here it is possible to distinguish two broad sub-categories of socially derived influences. On one hand, social interaction is a source of conceptions of how to speak and what to say. Adopting the behavior of others as models, through overt instruction and admonishment, and in other ways, we learn how to conduct ourselves. At the same time, social experiences also impact message skill via self-relevant mechanisms such as self-esteem and self-efficacy – the idea being that such self-relevant conceptions are formed, at least to some extent, by interaction with others, and that these self-relevant conceptual frames, in turn, impact message behavior.
Finally, at the third level of the proposed hierarchy are factors directly related actual behavioral production. As noted in the preceding paragraph, second-level influences include conceptions of what to do and say, but the real trick, of course, is to actually implement those conceptions in overt behavior (see Greene 2000, 2006). Third-level factors contributing to individual variations in performance, then, are those that bear on people’s ability to translate abstract conceptions of action into behaviors that meet the standards of proficiency outlined above. Specification of the exact nature of these translational mechanisms varies from theory to theory (and exposition of those various frameworks would take us well beyond the scope of this chapter; see Greene and Graves 2007), but in one way or another, virtually every theory gives emphasis to the role of experience or practice in the production of skilled behavior.
Oral communication skills do not simply appear, in an instant, fully developed and ready for use. Rather, they emerge over time as a result of implementation and successive refinement. Thus the performance of the experienced teacher, interviewer, or negotiator will almost certainly exceed that of the novice. Studies of the course of oral communication skill acquisition typically involve examination of various temporal indices before (e.g., speech-onset latency) and/or after (e.g., speech rate, pause/phonation ratio) speech begins, assessments of dysfluencies and other speech errors (e.g., mispronunciations, restarts), filled pauses (e.g., “er”, “um”), and sociocentric sequences (e.g., “you know”, “or whatever”).122 The research in this area indicates that the course of skill acquisition is marked by a number of behavioral and cognitive changes (see Greene 2003), including, among others: (1) greater speed (as in the case of higher speech rates), (2) greater accuracy (e.g., fewer dysfluencies and speech errors), (3) greater flexibility (e.g., the ability to adapt one’s message behavior to meet situational exigencies), and (4) reduced cognitive load associated with message formulation.
A great deal of research (see Lane 1987; Newell and Rosenbloom 1981) on the nature of the function relating amount of practice (X axis) and performance quality (Y axis) in domains other than communication skills indicates that this relationship is described by a general power function given by the equation:
P = A – B N-α
where P represents performance quality, B is the level of performance with no practice (i.e. the Y intercept), N is the number of practice trials, α is the learning-rate parameter (indicating the steepness of the skill-acquisition curve), and A is the performance asymptote (representing some hypothetical optimal level of performance). Graphically, this equation describes a decelerating curve where early performance gains are substantial, but with each successive practice trial, performance improvements diminish, and eventually the learning curve approaches the asymptotic limit.
One of the implications of this “power law of practice” is that the process of achieving truly expert performance in many skill domains is much more protracted than one might suppose. Indeed, the equation above says, in effect, if performance improves by some factor, x, in n trials, then it will take n (n– 1) additional practice trials for performance to improve by a factor, x, again. To illustrate, suppose that the quality of one’s performance doubled (improved by a factor of 2) in 100 practice sessions. By the power law of practice, it would take 9,900 more sessions [i.e. 100 (100 – 1)] to once again double the quality of his or her performance. In light of this fundamental regularity it is not surprising that research indicates that achieving truly expert performance in a variety of skill domains requires 10 years of focused preparation (see Ericsson and Lehman 1996).
Various models have been developed to account for the course of skill development described by the power law, but, specific details aside, the general idea is that skill acquisition proceeds through three stages (see Anderson 1983). In the first stage, a person learns a set of facts or rules about how to carry out the skill, and by keeping these rules about what to do in mind, it is possible to execute the skill, albeit in a slow and error-prone fashion. In the second stage, the person begins to acquire skill-specific procedural memory structures such that it is no longer necessary to keep the rules for performing the skill in mind while carrying out that activity. Finally, as a result of continued implementation, these procedural memory structures are refined and strengthened such that performance becomes increasingly rapid, accurate, and effortless.
The significance of the power law of practice in the context of the present discussion is that, although there are relatively few studies of oral-communication-skill acquisition that involve performance improvements over more than a handful of practice trials, where such studies have been conducted, they indicate that, just as for other skill domains, message-production-skill acquisition is characterized by a power function (see Greene 2003). For example, in one study (Greene, Sassi, Malek-Madani and Edwards 1997, Study 1) subjects learned a simple six-step organizing sequence for describing geometric arrays – a skill not unlike learning a sequence of steps for conducting an interview or giving a persuasive speech.123 Each person then applied this new skill in a series of 150 trials, describing a new array each time. The results indicated that, aggregating over subjects, a power function accounted for more than 90 percent of the variance in message-production performance.
One of the chief insights to be gleaned from understanding that the course of skill acquisition is characterized by a power function is that there are individual differences in the skill-acquisition parameters that describe that function. That is, people differ in the values of α (the learning-rate parameter), B (quality of initial performance), A (asymptotic performance level), and so on. The person factors that potentially bear upon skill acquisition are numerous, and the picture is further complicated by the fact that any particular individual-difference variable may play a role at one of the three stages of skill acquisition discussed above, and yet not be particularly important at one or both of the other stages (see Ackerman 1990; Mumford, Baughman, Uhlman and Threlfall 1993). As previously noted, to date there have been relatively few studies of oral-communication-skill acquisition that involve a sufficient number of performance trials to lend themselves to analysis of learning-curve parameters, but where such studies do exist they suggest that relatively enduring person factors (e.g., personality traits and information-processing abilities), state variables (e.g., communication anxiety), and a person’s age (i.e. younger versus older adults) impact his or her skill learning (see Greene 2003).
The idea that communication skills (oral and otherwise) can be improved through training (instruction, practice, etc.) lies at the very core what legitimates and informs activities in sales-training classes, professional development seminars, relationship counseling sessions, and university courses in departments of communication, child development and family studies, and numerous others. Students pursuing professions in education, human relations, management, social services, and patient care (as ready examples) will doubtless encounter a curriculum predicated to a considerable extent on the idea that performance in their occupations requires good communication skills and that these skills can be learned.
In light of widespread recognition of the importance of communication-skills training it should not be surprising that much attention has been given to identifying key elements of such training programs. In a comprehensive review of the area, Segrin and Givertz (2003) conclude that well-developed programs typically include: 1. initial assessment of performance requirements and individuals’ current proficiencies, 2. instruction concerning attributes of desirable performance, 3. presentation of models of proficient and inadequate behavior, 4. practice in the form of role-playing, homework assignments, and so on, and 5. follow-up assessments of skill-retention and transfer.
The importance of opportunity for practice in oral-communication-skill acquisition can hardly be overstated. As was noted above (Section 3.1.1) communication skills emerge over time, through use and refinement. Indeed, at least as early as the pioneering work of Michael Argyle and his associates (e.g., Trower, Bryant and Argyle 1978), it was recognized that “practice is essential” (p. 71) for social-skill acquisition. And, courses in public speaking, group discussion, interviewing, or what have you virtually always reflect the (often implicit) assumption that multiple exercises and performance trials need to be built into class activities. It is important to keep in mind, however, that not all practice/implementation is equally effective.124 In the more general universe of studies of skill-acquisition (e.g., musicianship, chess, motor skills) there is an extensive body of work on the characteristics of more and less effective types of practice, but this is much less true of adult, first-language-speaker acquisition of oral communication skills where patterns or conditions of practice/implementation are rarely examined or pitted against alternative regimens. Nevertheless, with all due caveats, it is at least plausible to extrapolate beyond the broader domain of studies of skill acquisition to arrive at some general principles concerning the characteristics of more effective conditions of practice/implementation for oral communication skills: 1. focused practice – implementation trials are more effective when, rather than “going through the motions,” people attend to the details of what they are saying and how they are saying it; 2. practice with variety – focused practice is cognitively demanding and difficult to sustain, as a result, implementation exercises should introduce an element of novelty, even as they ultimately center on some focal skill; 3. practice with spacing – as an extension of the preceding point, because focused practice is difficult to sustain, implementation opportunities should be spaced to reduce cognitive fatigue and facilitate memory consolidation; 4. task simplification – many oral communication “skills” are, in fact, composites of various sub-skills, so much so that attempting to learn the overarching skill is dauntingly difficult; for this reason, implementation regimens may need to involve “segmentation” and “fractionalization” of component activities (as, for example, when interviewers work on building skills relevant to various phases of employment interviews; see Stevens 1998); and 5. timely feedback – skill acquisition is facilitated when people are provided information about both what they did (i.e. the characteristics of their own behavior), and the outcomes or results of their actions (e.g., credibility ratings, customer evaluations).125
To catch our bearings, Section 3 of this chapter is concerned with sources of individual differences in message-production proficiency (and most directly with what were termed “third-level factors” in Section 3.1). To this point the discussion has centered on the role of skill-acquisition processes (i.e. modeling, instruction, practice, etc.) in contributing to skilled behavior. The essential thrust of the discussion has been that people need to have some understanding (even if only tacit) of what to do and multiple opportunities to implement and refine that knowledge.
But third-level factors (i.e. those that bear directly on actual enactment of proficient behavior) are not limited to adequate conceptions of what one should do, and how to do it. Among other candidate factors theorized to bear upon the quality of oral communication performance, the most common are various conceptions of motivational influences – the idea being that in order to communicate in a proficient fashion, an individual must not only know what to do, but must also be motivated to actually engage in that action (see Greene and Geddes 1993). Thus, a person might learn strategies for use in bargaining sessions (e.g., logrolling, expanding the pie), but in the heat of an exchange, or with egos on the line, have little interest in applying those techniques.
Beyond various motivationally based constructs thought to underlie performance deficits, other sorts of factors are also proposed to play a role in sub-optimal communicative performance. In many cases, these additional factors are foregrounded in theories of message production which emphasize the idea that rather than a unitary and seamless act, message behavior is, at any instant, an amalgam of numerous component elements (e.g., Greene 2000; Vallacher and Wegner 1987). Examples of sources of performance deficits in theories such as these are numerous (see Greene and Geddes 1993), but they include factors such as: 1. the ability to flexibly allocate attention to relevant aspects of one’s behavior, 2. an inability to suppress or override more readily available, but less appropriate, responses, and 3. difficulties in combining or integrating various features of one’s actions.
This chapter began with the observation that the domain of “oral communication skills” is both tremendously broad and an enduring subject of human scrutiny. These characteristics make the task of surveying the topic in a single, brief chapter an undertaking that is, to say the least, challenging. Potential approaches to such a project might involve either (or both) attempts to: 1. trace key theoretical developments or lines of thought, or 2. catalogue research findings about which we can have some degree of confidence, as in Greene and Burleson (2003) and Hargie (2006). A third alternative, and the approach ultimately adopted for use here, is founded in a conception of two diametric states of affairs that one might encounter in attempting to map some terrain. At one pole is a domain that is virtually trackless; at the other is an expanse so tracked-over that, like bootprints in the snow meandering in all directions, there is no discernable path to follow. Either extreme suggests the same course of action: Whether little is mapped (studied, theorized, debated), or many differing maps are drawn (“this way!,” “here!,” “no, here!”), the task reduces to identifying essential landmarks or points of reference for making one’s way.
The strategy here, then, has been to identify a small number of “first principles” to guide our discussion. Without attempting to re-hash these in detail, our essential reference points look something like this: 1. oral communication skills matter, 2. such skills involve proficiencies in carrying out identifiable communicative functions, 3. people differ, with some degree of consistency, in their communicative proficiencies, 4. sources of skill deficits can be identified, and 5. proficiencies can be improved (and improvement is likely to be enhanced under certain conditions). And, as a final note, if these fundamental principles provide a means of navigating the expanse of what has been done in the study of oral communication skills, they might also guide us in what is to come.
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