Most people believe that knowledge of how to communicate is required exclusively by salespeople or managers, and at work. But in ordinary everyday life, such skills are not needed at all, on the contrary, they deprive the relationship with people of sincerity, give conversations false and flattering. Some even flaunt the lack of the ability to build a dialogue or competently conduct a conversation.
This is a fundamentally wrong understanding of what communicative behavior is. Human speech behavior, which is part of a communication culture, is important in everyday communication even more than in the performance of official duties. Communication should be understood not only as a verbal, verbal manner of behavior of people, but also much more.
What it is?
The very concept of “communicative behavior” is an aggregate, a combination of the norms accepted at the current time and the traditions of communication that have been formed by generations within a certain isolated group of people.
From the point of view of representatives of a separate society, behavior itself can be both normal and not. Peculiarities of behaviors that challenge society, but do not go against the dogmas adopted in it, are called eccentric behavior.
What is normal behavior?
Normal is the behavior of a person that is accepted in the surrounding social environment, in the circle of communication. For example, what is considered the norm among Aboriginal Australia will be completely unacceptable in a small village among Devonshire marshes or in any major city.
The smaller the number of individual communities of people, the more specific and less influenced by outside their communicative behavior. This can be observed in cities in the form of maintaining traditions within the national diasporas, specific moments in the communication between members of interest clubs, sects and other associations of people into narrow communities within a large society.
That is, the smaller the size of the team, community or some other group of people, the more pronounced are the features of their behavior, the observance of traditions in communication and customs. In everyday speech about this nuance in the organization of societies they say "it is so customary here."
What is this abnormal behavior?
Abnormal communicative behavior is all that differs from the customs and traditions accepted within a particular community.
That is, the absolute concept of normality and its reverse side for a person does not exist. For example, everyone knows that "the natives ate Cook." However, for individual tribes, that is, certain groups of people, cannibalism is an absolute norm, part of religious beliefs, a sign of respect and an expression of reverence. But eating people in the center of Moscow is not just abnormal, but condemned by society. Such an action is an occasion for a compulsory psychiatric examination of sanity and a person’s continued life in isolation.
That is why sociologists and psychologists try to avoid the words “normality” when speaking about the laws of construction, development and features of societies. It is replaced by a more correct word - “normativity”.
What are norms of behavior?
Norms of behavior are not the same as conformity with the rules adopted in society, although they are related in meaning. What all communicative behavior accepted in society can be divided into is its norms. Thanks to them, one or another society can be described. Of course, their number does not have a strict number of components, and the division itself is rather arbitrary.
Norms of human behavior that allow us to characterize a community of people are interconnected. That is, one idea or a point of behavior follows from the previous one and moves to the next, there is no clear framework between them. Moreover, compliance with the norms is also rather arbitrary and depends on a large number of variable factors - with whom communication takes place, in what environment, and others.
What are the basic norms?
The main norms of communicative behavior, thanks to which you can characterize a community of people, are:
- accepted rules in etiquette, that is, general, cultural skills;
- situational;
- group
- individual.
The list of norms into which human behavior can be divided does not end there. However, these characteristics are the main ones. They are present in every society, regardless of its size and age.
About cultural skills
The habit of shaking hands or just smiling at acquaintances during a conversation is also a communicative activity. And communicative behavior can not be imagined without elements related to this group of characteristics of people's communication.
Etiquette, its rules, and simply speaking, cultural behavior skills include:
- ways to attract attention;
- manner of greeting;
- appeal to others;
- style of online or regular correspondence;
- telephone calls;
- congratulations;
- condolences;
- expression of feelings and emotions.
Of course, this is not a complete list of what characterizes the etiquette of behavior accepted in society. But he gives an idea of ​​what exactly belongs to this group of characteristics.
Cultural skills, in turn, can be complicated by dependence on status, age, place of communication, traditions, and many other points.
The same group of behavioral characteristics includes the manner of receiving guests, the choice of gifts and a number of other actions. That is, etiquette or cultural skills are not limited solely to verbal communication. Even the manner of sitting or standing is also part of this group of norms of behavior.
About situational norms
This section of the qualities that characterize society includes the features of communicative behavior, manifested under the influence of any particular situation.
This can be either an extra-linguistic situation, that is, directly the situation in which the communicative contact takes place, or any other. For example, situational norms of behavior that do not imply a long exchange of interlocutors with information or dialogue are characteristic of emergency incidents, such as floods or fires.
About group norms
Group skills of communicative behavior are formed as a result of mutual communication of people and in accordance with the purpose for which a specific community arose or was created.
Features of behavior and communication within the group are not always in accordance with the rules, customs and traditions accepted in society outside the collective. For example, religious sects have the most pronounced features in communication and behavior within their communities, which often go against the traditions of those countries on whose territory this group of people is located.
A special development of communicative behavior takes place in labor collectives, student associations, classmates and other small teams in which people are united by a common goal and location.
Group norms of conduct include business etiquette, subordination requirements, submission to general discipline, and the performance of certain duties. The corporate culture that came from the West to Russia after perestroika is also part of the group norms of communicative communication and behavior.
About individual standards
These norms include personal behavior of a person, which is formed under the influence of general cultural and situational communicative traditions, customs and group nuances of communication.
This section also includes personal characteristics of behavior, such as eccentricity, a tendency to violate any disciplinary rules, and much more, which is characteristic of only one person, and not of society as a whole.
How is behavior formed?
The formation of a person’s communicative behavior occurs in his childhood. The main goal of instilling in children the main accepted social practices of behavior and communication between people is to:
- the child felt comfortable among people;
- as he grew up he found himself in demand among friends, in school, at work;
- had no difficulty in transmitting and understanding information;
- possessed the same moral principles as those around him.
In principle, the development of the baby's communicative behavior can be reduced to the content of the poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, “What is good and what is bad?” What are the features of this phenomenon? The education of the basics of communicative behavior is the instilling on the reflex level of concepts about the acceptable and the unacceptable. The importance of this process is difficult to overestimate.
It is especially important to develop the correct communicative behavior of the child in the families of immigrants and immigrants. The need for this action is due to the fact that children will have to live in a different culture and in other accepted norms of behavior, than their parents grew up.
Why is it important to instill accepted norms?
Without instilling the norms of communication and behavior of the community in which the children of immigrants are to live, they may experience any kind of incidental, curious stories or real serious troubles.
For example, in Bulgaria it is customary to wiggle or turn your head to the side while expressing your own agreement with something. In most countries of the world, refusal is expressed in this way, and they nod in agreement. Since this gesture is conditioned reflex, it is very difficult for an adult to control it. Accordingly, absurd cases that occurred due to the difference in the accepted communicative behavior can be many.
Are behavioral elements important?
Communicative behavior as a whole consists of an endless set of certain elements of communication inherent in people. In fact, the whole set of elements of human behavior has only one goal - the transfer of any information and ensuring its maximum understanding.
It is precisely in this that the elements of their behavior help people - gestures, timbre of the voice, manner of sitting, accentuation in pronounced phrases, facial expressions and so on. That is, if a person’s speech is deprived of emotional coloring, pauses and accents are removed, gestures, facial expressions and, in principle, the whole body language are excluded, it will be extremely difficult to understand what exactly he is trying to say.
The fact is that a behavioral communicative set of techniques used by a person does not consist solely of words or phrases. In the same way, the perception of information is not only in understanding the meaning of what is heard. For example, a person says the phrase: "It's raining outside." Without the participation of elements such as facial expressions, voice accents, gestures and others, the interlocutor will only receive information about the weather. But as soon as other elements of communicative behavior join the spoken words, the interlocutor receives a much larger amount of information. Firstly, immediately the attitude of the informant to the weather conditions becomes apparent. Secondly, the language of the body is intuitively clear - cold rain or warm, lingering or mushroom, which prevents exit to the street or not.
Accordingly, the importance of elements in communicative behavior cannot be underestimated. For those who, on duty, deal with people, entire systems of behavioral elements have been developed, which include gestures-motivators for action, facial expressions, the fight against objections, and so on.
Punctuation marks play the role of such elements in correspondence and literature, and smiles in modern means of online communication.