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Accenting relationships are when the nonverbals accent the words; they are a type of exclamation mark, italics, or ALL CAPS nonverbal cue that goes with the words.

Acknowledging is a listening response (“uh-huh” and “that’s an interesting idea”).

Acquaintances are people in your life, for either short or long periods of time with whom you share a common experience or context.

Action chain is a behavioral sequence of standard steps for reaching a goal.

Active response style of listening is when the listener figures out key ideas while creating mutual understanding

Adaptation is altering the original message to ensure correct interpretation.

Adaptors are movements that accompany boredom, show internal feelings, or regulate a situation.

Aesthetics is the study of communication of a message or mood through color or music.

Affect displays are facial gestures that show emotions and feelings such as sadness or happiness. Pouting, winking, and raising or lowering the eyelids and eyebrows are examples of affect displays.

Affirmations are positive statements intended to guide positive thinking (e.g., “I am a kind person”, “I can speak to others in social situations”).

Aggression, which can be a type of abuse, is the taking of actions that advance personal goals without concern for the harm they may cause others.

Ambiguity occurs when vagueness about a word’s meaning makes it open for misinterpretation.

Analytical breakdown is taking a complex problem and breaking it into its individual components, listing as many alternatives as possible for each component, and then combining the alternatives to create new variations.

Analytical thinking are thought patterns emphasizing analysis and ideas are backed up with facts and examples, which is commonly used in the US.

Androgenic communication qualities are a combination of masculine and feminine communication qualities, when the person uses the communication style that works best in a particular situation.

Anger is a feeling of irritation, frustration, resentment, or antagonism toward oneself or another person,

Apology is a statement of remorse to the wronged person, for inappropriate behavior.

Apology is an earnest expression of regret for inappropriate words or deeds.

Appreciative listening takes place when you simply enjoy listening to a message, such as when you and a friend catch up on the news of the day.

Approachability cues are indications that the other person is available for conversation.

Approval-seeking behaviors is when people please others at the expense of their own needs and feelings of self-worth.

Argot is specialized language used by particular groups.

Artifacts are those things which adorn the body.

Assertion is an approach to conflict that uses the best of communication skills.

Assertive behavior occurs when an individual communicates his or her needs in a way that shows self-respect and respect for others.

Assignment of meaning is the process of putting the stimulus into some predetermined category, developed as you acquired your language system.

Attention represents the focus on one of the many stimuli around you at any given moment.

Attitudes are your perspective and viewpoints.

Attractiveness is your impression of someone as appealing.

Behavioral kinesiology holds that particular kinds of food, clothes, thoughts, and music strengthen or weaken the muscles of the body.

Beliefs are your convictions.

Bilingual means a person is fluent in two languages.

Biographics is personal information that tells about yourself, such as your name, occupation or college major, hometown, college attended or attending or slightly more personal information, such as hobbies, interests, future plans, acquaintances.

Bio-social attitudes determine the way the family deals with male and female identity, authority and power, and the rights of family members.

Blog is a weblog or public diary, which is a website with dated entries, usually by a single author, often accompanied by links to other blogs.

Bottom-up organization hierarchy is common in Japanese workplaces, where the employees are divided into work teams who collectively decide how tasks will be accomplished.

Brain dominance accounts for learning and listening in patterned ways.

Bridging is a listening response (indicating what topic or idea she’d like to talk about next by referring to a quote in a book or one just made by the interviewee).

Choice Therapy proposes that we live and act in the moment as people responsible for ourselves.

Chunking is the grouping of bits of information according to a mutual relationship.

Circular phenomenon is a use of time, in which there is no pressure or anxiety about the future.

Cluster is an interactive grouping of nonverbal cues.

Cognitive dissonance is the imbalance between your values, attitudes, and beliefs is called.

Cognitive modification centers on the concept that people who are communicatively anxious need to find strategies for replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts.

Cohabitating families are two adults living together who have not participated in a formal legal or religious ceremony. Children may or may not be present in the cohabiting household.[i]

Commitment is a pledge to become involved in or to the continuation of a relationship or project, includes your intentions, your perception of the other's intentions, and to what you are committed.

Commitment phobia is the fear of dedicating himself to a single person.

Communication anxiety is the fear of engaging in communication interactions.

Communication boundaries are descriptions of what can and cannot be spoken about as well as how they should be discussed, regarding your job: appropriate communication content, appropriate communication style, appropriate communication methods, and appropriate communication time.

Communication is a conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional process in which feelings and ideas are expressed as verbal and/or nonverbal messages, which are sent, received, and comprehended. Communication is dynamic, continuous, irreversible, interactive, and contextual.

Communicative noise is any internal or external interference in the communication process. Factors that cause communication difficulties are sometimes called interference. In this textbook, these factors are referred to as noise.

Compassionate listening is a tool for conflict resolution, reconciliation, and the prevention of violence.

Complementary relationship is when one partner's behavior complements or completes the other's—the behaviors seem to go together.

Complementing relationship is when the words and nonverbal cues work together to make each more effective.

Compliance gaining is an active process to direct and influence your communication partner's behavior.

Compliance gaining is when you entice others to do something for you, agree with you, or otherwise engage with you.

Comprehension listening is when the objective is to understand and remember what the other person tells you.

Compressed speech is speeded up mechanically to more than three hundred words per minute.

Conflict aggression is driven by the need for power. Its purpose is to get another person to comply with or accept your point of view, or to do something they may not want to do.

Conflict avoidance is when instead of engaging and communicating with the other person, people ignore, stay away from, or procrastinate about the problem.

Conflict compromise is about “trading some of what you want for some of what I want. It’s meeting each other part way.”

Conflict is any situation in which you perceive that another person, with whom you’re interdependent, is frustrating or might frustrate the satisfaction of some concern, need, want, or desire of yours.

Conflict resolution is when you work toward an amicable solution to a problem.

Conflict-active societies are where people—particularly men—enjoy arguing, negotiating, and haggling.

Conflict-avoidance societies believe that people should stay clear of disagreements.

Conflicting relationship between the verbal and nonverbal is when the nonverbal seems to have a different meaning from the words.

Congruence is consistency of the nonverbal message or whether the present actions are parallel to or different from past actions.

Connotative words are those which refer to the attitudes or feelings people have for the word or what it symbolizes.

Contact cultures—those characterized by tactile modes of communication (e.g., Latin Americans, Mediterranians, French, Arabs, Israelis, Spanish, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans). People from these areas tend to touch, have a great deal of physical contact, face one another more directly in conversation, look each other in the eye more.

Context organizing centers on the principle that some individuals find that putting information in a place, a context, allows them to remember it.

Conversations are verbal interactions between people, usually start with small talk and then move to more in-depth sharing.

Couple is two adults living together in a relationship, commonly a paperless marriage, with no child(ren.)

Creative thinking is looking for alternatives and ideas and expanding on and diverging from what is discovered.

Creativity is the ability to create things that are new and different and to think in unusual ways.

Credibility is believability, and is determined by whether a person is considered trustworthy, competent, and dynamic

Critical listening is the process of carefully analyzing and judging a message.

Critical response style of listening is one where you decide to pass judgment about what the other person says.

Criticism is the act of judging someone or something.

Cultural noise is when culture interferes with communication.

Cultural-negative language expresses stereotyped attitudes or feelings of superiority of one culture over another.

Cyber addiction fits into the Psychological Addiction Cycle, which is need leads to use which leads to trouble which leads to repeating the action to satisfy the need.

Cyber bullying--also known as digital harassment--is mistreatment that takes place using an electronic medium.[ii]

Cyber stalking centers on online following and harassing both males and females.

Cyberdating and cyber-meeting (developing relationships on-line), has proven to be popular among all age groups.

Cybernetic process functions much like a computer, in that you use your brain and senses to select what to pay attention to in your environment, make sense of the stimuli, and store information in your memory bank.

Deception is self-serving communication that is dishonest or unethical, can be problematic. Examples of deception include saying something that is not true, telling a partial truth, falsifying information, and omitting key information.

Decode is to translate, understand the message.

Denotative words are commonly identified as those words which have explicit meanings which can clearly be stated in a dictionary.

Dialect is the regional use of a language.

Dialectical tensions are our intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts over our wants and needs.

Direction giving includes instructions for accomplishing a task, achieving an effect, or getting somewhere.

Discriminative listening is when you attempt to distinguish among auditory and visual stimuli.

Doublespeak is an imprecise use of language designed to be confusing, elusive, intentionally misleading, or cagey.

Dysfunctional families are families in which the members find themselves living in fear or chaos or are emotionally and/or physically endangered.

Dysfunctional family is one operating in chaos

Dysfunctional relational system is one in which its members are confused about the roles they are to play, where “I” is more important than the “we,” where one partner feels he or she must be in control, where jealousy and distrust exist, where weak communication skills are present, recalibration is often impossible.

Dysfunctional relational system is when someone wants alterations, wants to do things that are not normally done, so the relationship has operational problems.

E-bbreviations is computer or texting shorthand and Internet nonverbal indicators without concern for whether or not the receiver understands the argots.

Ebonics, also known as Black English, is the primary language of many African Americans in the United States, which refers to grammar, syntax, paralinguistic, and gestural features of African American communication.

E-commerce is online business interaction.

Economic Model of Relationships is when people make judgments about interpersonal contacts by comparing relational rewards and costs

Economic Theory of Costs and Rewards is a way of looking at the cost(s) of being in the relationship are exceeding the reward(s) being received.

Egospeak is the process of focusing on what you want to say instead of listening to the other person.

Electronic Mediated Communication [EMC] has become pervasive in personal, academic, and business contexts and continues to grow in importance and types of techniques.

E-lingo is computer or texting shorthand and Internet nonverbal indicators without concern for whether or not the receiver understands the argots.

E-mail bankruptcy is to delete all E-mails not answered within a specific period of time, such as 24 hours.

E-mail twitching is reading every new E-mail as it arrives.

Emblems are nonverbal acts that have a direct verbal translation or dictionary definition, which usually consist of a word or two. Sign language of the deaf, gestures used by behind-the-scenes television personnel, and signals between two underwater swimmers are all examples of the use of emblems.

Employment interview is a process by which organizations select their employees, in order to be hired for the position in the organization.

Empowerment is when individuals feel they have great control over their lives and even the lives of others, that they are "masters of their own fate," and that they can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

Encodes puts the message into the form he/she is going to use to send it.

Entry relational development phase is the beginning, when biographical information and general attitudes are exchanged.

Environmental noise is interference within the context of the communication, which prevents the communicators from understanding each other.

Ethnocentrism occurs when a person thinks his or her group is the best and all other people should be measured against that group.

Exit phase of a relationship is the end.

Expert power comes from a person's knowledge and skills.

Explosive anger is directed outward.

Extended family (biological) contain relatives, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as parent(s) and child(ren) who may or may not be living in the same residence.

Extended family (communal) is a designated family of acquaintances who have declared themselves to be a family, such as members of a cult or religious community.

Fair fighting is a respectful way of confronting others on issues that are causing conflict.

Familiarity is knowledge and understanding of someone, although it may breed contempt, more often breeds liking.

Family boundaries are the limits a family sets on its members' actions.

Family communication is how members of a family unit communicate within the family, we must understand what a family is.

Family conflicts are disagreements that center on the exercise of power--the amount of control the family should be allowed to have over individual member's lives.

Family conflicts are disagreements within the family.

Family images are the mental pictures and illusions the family holds of itself and its members

Family of origin is the family one grows up in.

Family rules form a large part of family life, whether they are spoken or implied.

Family stories are narratives, told in the family context, that feature a family member or several members; involve a plot line; furnish a sense of family identity, provide lessons, morals, and a sense of connection to family members who tell and listen to them.

Family themes are the patterns of feelings, motives, roles, fantasies, understandings, and rules that family members hold about the family and their relationships with the outside world.

Family traditionally has been defined as a group of interconnected people with some history who are typically with blood or legal ties.

Feedback is a verbal or nonverbal reaction to the original message.

Flaming is E-mail or text aggression, happens when people send hostile, insulting, or intimidating messages online or via phone.

Flattened organization hierarchy has fewer levels of employee status, with more upward communication, and often use group collaboration.

Formal time is the way in which a culture defines its time, and it plays a daily role in most of our lives. It refers to centuries, years, months, weeks, days, hours, and minutes.

Frame of reference is your background, experiences, and perceptions.

Friends are much more than acquaintances—you know more about your friends than your acquaintances, your friends know more about you than their relational acquaintances, you feel comfortable with friends.

Functional family is a balanced unit of a family system in which the members have learned to make decisions constructively, engage appropriately in conflict with each other, handle pain, and assume risk in constructive ways.

Functional relational system is a system that is operating to the general satisfaction of the participants.

Gay or lesbian family contains two same gendered people (male-male or female-female) in an intimate relationship, with or without their own biological or adopted child(ren). The same gendered persons may be married, in a civil union, part of a registry or in a paperless marriage.

Gestural Theory of language development contends that our movements and other gestures influence speech.

Gestures are nonverbal communication, which include posture, walk, stance, hand movements, body shifts and head nods which can give clues about a person’s status, mood, ethnic and cultural affiliation, and self-perception.

Global listeners/learners have a preference for a generalized rather than specific description, right-brain.

Good friends are much more than friends.

Green flags are words that trigger particular, positive, emotional responses

Group collaboration or teamwork is a commonly used communication pattern in about half of US organizations.

Guilty conscience is the real or perceived fear that we are going to get caught, get punished, or “found out.”

Hierarchy of top-down hierarchy is the lines of authority from top to bottom, which is used in most traditional U. S. Organizations.

Holistic thinking looks at the big picture instead of dissecting events or concepts, is more typical in many South American, Asian, Arabic, American Indian and African cultures and people descended from these cultures.

Idealized self is what you perceive yourself to be if you were "perfect."

Illustrators are kinesic acts accompanying speech that are used to aid in the description of what is being said.

Implosive anger is directed toward the self.

Impression management is a skill where individuals pay attention to how they come across to others so that they make a good impression or impact.

Inarticulates are vocalized pauses between words with meaning, such as “um,” “er” and “like.”

Informal time refers to a rather flexible use of time such as “soon,” or “right away.”

Information-seeking listening response style is when you ask for additional information when you want to clarify your understanding.

Innate neurological programs are automatic nonverbal reactions to stimuli with which you were born.

Internal summaries are listening responses (summarizing one topic before going on to the next).

Interpersonal conflict is a conflict between people.

Intimacy is an umbrella term that includes, among other things, emotional closeness and intellectual sharing.

Intimate relationships are like good friends with significant additions.

Intimate space distance covers a space varying from direct physical contact with another person to a distance of eighteen inches.

Intrapersonal communication is self communication, which is systematic interfacing with the self.

I-statements explain ideas from your perspective rather than your perceived perspective of the other person.

Johari window is a way of looking at the self, which allows you to ascertain your willingness to disclose who you are and allow others to disclose to you.

Kinesics is the use of the body to communicate.

Knapp Relationship Escalation Model is a communication-based explanation of how relationships develop and disintegrate.

Knapp’s Relationship Termination Model describes how, at any stage of the model, participants may work toward ending the relationship.

Language distortion can be caused by uncertainty, doubt, mental leaps, and message problems.

Language Instinct Theory argues that language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution much like spiders spin webs.

Language is communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary symbols.

Language-Explosion Theory proposes that your language develops as a basis from the key person in your early life.

Legitimate power is ascribed to people as a result of the status and prestige of their positions.

Like is a rational evaluation of a person which is conditional.

Linear learners/listeners use a straight-line in their learning preferences, left brained.

Linear time is a use of time focused primarily with the future.

Linguistics is the study of the common elements in all languages. What are the common characteristics of all languages?

Listener apprehension is a fear of the listening process.

Listening is a process that involves a message going through reception, perception, attention, the assignment of meaning, and feedback (a response by the listener to the message presented).

Lose-lose is when no one receives what they want or need. If conflict goes on too long, everyone could be a loser.

Love is for all intents and purposes unconditional.

Matchmaking centers on introducing individuals by a matchmaker, a person supposedly skilled in finding people of common interests and desires.

Mnemonics is an artificial memory aid which can be used to remember something important. If you have difficulty remembering the Great Lakes, for instance, the word HOMES can help you (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior).

Monochronic time culture is where people adhere to schedules, arrive on time (or early), and care about segmenting and organizing according to time units. United States, German, Canadian, Japanese, and Scandinavian businesses tend to use monochromic time.

Negotiation is a “discussion between two or more disputants who are trying to work out a solution to their problem.”

Networking is the practice of creating a web of support and influence with other professionals.

Noise is any sort of interference in the communication channel, which can diminish the effectiveness of the listener.

Noise or communicative noise is any internal or external interference in the communication process. Factors that cause communication difficulties are sometimes called interference. In this textbook, these factors are referred to as noise. The identifiers of the noise factors are arbitrary and are not necessarily limited to these identifiers.

Noncontact cultures (Euro-Americans, Germans, English, Chinese, Japanese, Swedes) tend to be more stand-offish, not touching or having a great deal of physical contact.

Non-revealing culture is a culture in which personal issues are not discussed, such as in the Chinese culture.

Nonstandard dialects tends to be a low prestige dialect.

Nonverbal communication or nonword communication refers to communication affected by means other than words (assuming words are the verbal element.)

Nuclear family is a wife, husband and their biological child(ren )or adopted child(ren)

Open-mindedness is the willingness to receive new information, perspectives, assumptions, beliefs, and opinions.

Ordering is the arranging of bits of information into a systematic sequence.

Organizational climate is the holistic perception of life in the organization, including the emotional or psychological dimensions conveyed through communication.

Organizational culture is the shared personality or character of the organization as a whole.

Organizational hierarchy is a system which codifies a company’s ladder of command.

Organizational noise is when different people process differently based on the arrangement of a message.

Paperless marriage is a couple living together without being legally married, and thus do not have lawful protections and obligations

Parallel relationship is when complementary and symmetrical aspects are combined.

Paraphrasing is making a summary of the ideas you have just received, and it will provide you with a concise restatement of what has been presented.

Paravocalics are the vocal elements beyond the words themselves. Vocal quality communicates nonverbally to the listening ear.

Passive aggression is communication tactics which attack in subtle, often unobtrusive ways.

Pause is stopping, hesitation, length of pause of the voice.

Perception is the process where you take the material received and attempt to evaluate what has been input.

Perceptual filter screens what you notice (perceive) and separates what makes sense from what doesn’t.

Personal phase is the maintenance of a relationship.

Personal space distance, eighteen inches to four feet, is sometimes called the comfort bubble.

Person-oriented family has flexible boundaries and allows a wide range of communication behaviors related to an individual's needs rather than her or his position in the family

Phishing is an attempt to obtain information from an individual’s computer, and can include criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication) and virus-infected webpages.

Physical aggression--hitting, slapping, pushing, beating or battering another person--is endured by 30 to 50% of people in dating relationships.

Physical characteristics are nonverbal communication, such as how much you weigh, your height, skin color, and age.

Physiological-impairment noise is when a person's physical state causes misunderstanding.

Pitch is the highness or lowness of tone of the voice, such as soprano or bass.

Polychronic time cultures is the use of time is more fluid, with less emphasis on a certain time being absolute or strict adherence to a schedule. Cultures of Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East tend to be polychromic.

Popcorn meeting is where everyone stands in a circle and each person quickly gives an opinion or information about the topic.

Position-oriented family is where there are sharp boundaries for family roles based on status and social identities related to sex and age.

Positive visualization is when a person prepares for an anticipated unpleasant experience by picturing the situation being carried out successfully.

Power is the ability of one person to influence another to do something.

Power is the ability to control what happens, to create things you want to happen and to block things you don't want to happen.

Probing is to ask for information that is necessary to insure that the sender’s message is clear and free of noise, and is essential to effective communication.

Proxemics is the study of how individuals use space to communicate.

Proximity is how near you are geographically to someone, which may be an important determinant of relationship.

Psychological vulture is a person’s self attack because of perceived weaknesses and insecurities about self-worth.

Public self is the extent to which you allow your real self to be displayed.

Public self is the you you let others know.

Public space distance may dictate a separation of as little as twelve feet, but it is usually more than twenty-five.

Pupilometrics is a theory of nonverbal communication, which suggests that eyes dilate when they are focused on a pleasurable object, and contract when focused on those which are not pleasurable.

Rate is how fast you talk

Real self is what you think of yourself when you are being most honest about your interests, thoughts, emotions, and needs.

Recalibrated relationships is when a relationship is restructured and growth can take place.

Recalibration of a family is the changes made in the patterns that could make the system work effectively.

Receiver is the person who gets the message.

Reception of a stimulus or message includes both the auditory message and in some cases, the visual message.

Recommending response style of listening is when you are an advice giver who wants to tell your friend what to or not to do.

Red flags arouse biases because they are negatives terms and phrases.

Referent power emerges from perceptions that people have or give to a person because of being liked or having good character.

Reflexive reactions are automatic responses caused by neurological need drives. Reflective reactions are the nonverbals you use because you were taught them by your family, friends, and culture. In this case, you reflect back the nonverbal communication of people you observe in your life.

Regulators are nonverbal acts that maintain and control the back-and-forth nature of speaking and listening between two or more people.

Relational coach is a person who teaches clients people skills such as how to be a competent communicator, effective conversational techniques, and confidence.

Relational fusion takes place when one partner defines, or attempts to define, reality for the other.

Relational goal is some relational outcome that each person wishes to achieve.

Relational rules are the regulations that govern actions in a relationship, are necessary for you to make predictions about another person's behavior.

Relational structure is the patterns of how the relationship works.

Relationship is a bond, connection, interaction, or engagement between two people who have an emotional link.

Relationship is a connection, association, or involvement, an emotional or other connection between people

Reordering is the changing of an existing system of organized information so that a new or different sequence is developed.

Revealing culture, such as North America, is where self-image, self-esteem, and self-awareness are important and the word "I" appears with great regularity.

Rhetorical sensitivity is a learned skill, where a person uses words and nonverbal communication to adapt with flexibility to the people and context at hand.

Role relationships are characterized by your interacting with others in light of the roles (such as the positions, functions, or jobs) you and the other person play.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests that a people’s language serves as a key to understanding their culture.

Schema are scripts for processing information.

Schemata are the mental representations that you carry in your brain, which are shaped by language categories and by the way your brain processes information.

Selective perception is narrowing your focus to some specific information. An idea’s distinctiveness or the satisfaction of your needs is often the basis for why you will pay attention to a particular stimulus.

Self- talk is communication to yourself in which you talk internally.

Self-concept includes the idealized self, the real self, and the should self.

Self-concept is your understanding of yourself.

Self-confidence is a feeling of competence and self-assurance--this self-confidence can affect your interpersonal effectiveness positively.

Self-disclosure involves sharing information about yourself including your history as well as your present emotions and thoughts.

Self-disclosure is the process of revealing a depth and breath of your self so that you can begin, maintain and develop a relationship.

Self-esteem is an awareness that we are distinct from others and that we express this awareness in either productive or nonproductive ways.

Self-fulfilled person is the person who confidently chooses what to reveal and to whom.

Self-fulfilling prophecy is the tendency that what you predict to happen, will happen, and what you expect to do wrong, will be done wrong.

Self-love means accepting yourself as a worthy person because you choose to do so.

Semantic differential is a tool that measures a person’s reactions to an object or concept by marking spaces between a pair of adjectives, one positive and one negative, with each space representing an attitude position.

Semantic noise is problems that arise regarding the meaning of words, semantics.

Sensory channels are seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling

Sexting is the sending of nude, semi-nude, or erotic pictures or video via cell phone.

Short term memory, refers to the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time.

Should self is part of the self concept, which contains all the "oughts" and "shoulds" that serve as your moral guidelines.

Significant-Other Theory proposes that the most important person in your early development, such as your mother, become the key influence in your language development.

Silence as nonverbal communication is not speaking or making nonverbal vocal sounds, such as "um," when you are interacting with another person, which is highly varied in meaning. Silence may communicate anger, attentive listening, grief, depression, respect, awe, or the message "leave me alone."

Single-parent family is one adult with child(ren).

Slang is typically related to a certain activity or incident, by using words that are less formal and more open to misunderstanding because the words are understood by people of a certain group, age, or region.

Small talk is an exchange of information with someone on a surface level.

Small-group ecology is nonverbal communication, which includes the placement of chairs, the placement of the person conducting a meeting, and the setting for a small-group encounter, clearly influences the group’s operation.

Smell adaptation occurs when we gradually lose the distinctiveness of a particular smell through repeated contact with a specific odor.

Smell blindness occurs when a person is unable to detect smells.

Smell discrimination is the ability to identify people, places, and things on the basis of their smell.

Smell memory is the ability to recall previous situations when encountering a particular smell.

Smell overload takes place when an exceptionally large number of odors or one extremely strong odor overpowers you.

Smoothing over is a style that preserves the image that everything is okay above all else.

Social Construct of Reality Theory suggests that our words and language shape the way we view the world.

Social Interaction Theory claims that the presentation of our self is actually a carefully conceived performance.

Social networking is the process of using an online social community as Facebook.com, myspace.com, or Twitter.com.

Social reality is created by language because it affects the way people view the world, and in turn creates rules, and values about how to live and act in a culture.

Social reality is the process of perceiving a relationship outside of a social context and making it real through processing ideas internally.

Social space distance covers a four-foot to twelve-foot zone that is used during business transactions and casual social exchanges.

Source is the person who sends the message.

Spanglish is a combination of Spanish and English words.

Speech-independent gestures are not tied to speech. These gestures are referred to as emblems.

Speech-related gestures are directly tied to, or accompany, speech. These gestures are illustrators, affect displays, regulators, and adaptors.

Speed dating is a face-to-face meeting between a prescribed group of people who are brought together to interact with others for potential relational development.

Standard American English is the dialect linguists consider representative of the US American public.

Standard dialects is a high prestige dialect, and are dialects used by people in a society who are in power, better educated, the keepers of official records, and writers of science and literature.

Stand-up meeting is where everyone stands and discusses the issues in a short, focused time frame, such as five minutes for the whole meeting.

Step family contains two adults and child(ren) who are not the biological off-spring of both adults who have combined into a family unit. Usually, the adults are married, but could be in a paperless marriage.

Stress is your vocal emphasis or intensity of sounds all have particular meanings.

Substitution is when two people use means other than words to communicate, thus creating a substituting relationship (nonverbals stand for words).

Symmetrical relationship is when the partners contribute equally to their relationship, thus creating a balance.

Syntactic rules are rules that govern how words can be arranged.

Syntactical noise is related to the structure rules of the language being spoken.

System of relational operation is the structure of the relationship.

Systematic desensitization is when individuals visualize or participate in communication situations while learning how to notice tension that creeps into their body and learning to release that tension.

Tag questions are questions added onto the end of statements, such as “That movie was terrific, don’t you think?”

Taste adaptation takes place when you become used to a taste to the degree that you can eat a substance and not taste it. If you eat a lot of very spicy foods you may become insensitive to the tang.

Technical time is precise time, as in the way some scientists look at how things happen in milliseconds.

Text messaging, or Short Message Service (SMS) is communication of very short written messages via cell phones.

Texting addiction is excessive texting, when people must check their phones constantly.

Theory of Love/Like is a theory that love is an emotional feeling of relational bonding.

Therapeutic listening is the process of probing in order to help the other person think through a problem or situation.

Two-valued orientation is an either/or approach.

Usual thinking concerns itself with one alternative or idea at a time and building one thought on the other.

Vagueness results from words or sentences lacking clarity.

Values are what you perceive to be of positive or negative worth.

Verbal aggression includes the use of words to attack another person, nagging, yelling, insulting, attacking character, crying, accusing, rejecting, refusing to talk, and swearing.

Verbal/Sexual harassment is gender-based unwelcome words or actions.

Vocalics are sound through cries and grunts.

Volume is how loudly you talk

Win-win negotiation is when the goal is to find a solution that works for everyone. Win-lose negotiation centers on one person whose needs are met when the other person receives nothing or worse than nothing.

Work teams contain workers who form a group to pool their knowledge and skills in order to accomplish a task, have been formed and are making suggestions as to how the production line is to operate.

Workshop process of change is when family members get together, list the family rules of operation, and test them to see if some are unacceptable and if not, are then changeable.

Yinglish is a combination of Yiddish and English.

About the Authors

Under Construction: This website will be completed for release of the book,

Fall, 2010.