Talking Styles
Talking Styles
Chadwick S. deVries
COM200
Reginald Doctor
June 25, 2012
Talking Styles Talking styles plays an important part of the communication in our everyday lives. These styles can both hinder and help communication. This is especially true in close relationships with others. This essay will discuss the article “Shared Talking Styles Herald New and Lasting Romance” as well as discussing the accuracy of a language style matching program and whether or not the language style matching is a comprehensive way to predict quality in an interpersonal relationship. According to the article “Shared Talking Styles Herald New and Lasting Romance”, “a subtle, surprisingly mundane type of banter lies at the heart of romance. Love’s flames get fanned when a man and women similarly employ words such as I, it, but and under in everyday conversations” (Bower, 2010). These words seem so little but mean so much when used romantically. The article also discusses different aspects on how those that truly hate each other can show a high amount of language style. This means that those who are fighting tend to talk in similar ways. If two people like and understand each other, they will use similar function words regardless of the different nouns and verbs that they may use to communicate with each other. One way of testing this kind of communication is a website which will provide results of language style matching. I took two emails that my wife and I shared between each other while I was deployed in Afghanistan. Out of these emails, we only matched at 48 percent. Given this information, I feel that the results are inaccurate. I do however believe that this program may present accurate results when there is enough information in the emails or text messages that are input into the program. The two emails that I entered did not present much information as most of our conversations were through telephone calls and webcam sessions. I believe that this
Chadwick S. deVries
COM200
Reginald Doctor
June 25, 2012
Talking Styles Talking styles plays an important part of the communication in our everyday lives. These styles can both hinder and help communication. This is especially true in close relationships with others. This essay will discuss the article “Shared Talking Styles Herald New and Lasting Romance” as well as discussing the accuracy of a language style matching program and whether or not the language style matching is a comprehensive way to predict quality in an interpersonal relationship. According to the article “Shared Talking Styles Herald New and Lasting Romance”, “a subtle, surprisingly mundane type of banter lies at the heart of romance. Love’s flames get fanned when a man and women similarly employ words such as I, it, but and under in everyday conversations” (Bower, 2010). These words seem so little but mean so much when used romantically. The article also discusses different aspects on how those that truly hate each other can show a high amount of language style. This means that those who are fighting tend to talk in similar ways. If two people like and understand each other, they will use similar function words regardless of the different nouns and verbs that they may use to communicate with each other. One way of testing this kind of communication is a website which will provide results of language style matching. I took two emails that my wife and I shared between each other while I was deployed in Afghanistan. Out of these emails, we only matched at 48 percent. Given this information, I feel that the results are inaccurate. I do however believe that this program may present accurate results when there is enough information in the emails or text messages that are input into the program. The two emails that I entered did not present much information as most of our conversations were through telephone calls and webcam sessions. I believe that this
References: Bower, B. (2010, November). Shared talking styles herald new and lasting romance. U.S. News & World Report, 1. Retrieved from ABI/INFORM Global. Document ID: 2223940991 Sole, K. (2011). Making connections: Understanding interpersonal communication. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. (https://content.ashford.edu)