Page 15 - Effective Communication Skills by Dalton Kehoe

The system of face-to-face talk is outlined in a set of axioms that were
published by Paul Watzlawick in one of the classic treatises on interpersonal

talk, Pragmatics of Human Communication. The ¿rst axiom is that in face-to-
face situations, communication is inevitable. You don’t have to say a word;
as soon as you’re in somebody’s sight, you’re telling them something. The
second axiom says that face-to-face communication always combines words
and nonverbals. What you say and how you say it is tied together—and these
two levels can reinforce or contradict each other. The third axiom is that it’s
always about content and relationship at the same time. The fourth axiom
says that all communication is either symmetrical or complementary. Face-
to-face communication is a process of mutual exchange and adjustment, and

the ¿fth axiom is that this process
is punctuated differently by each of
Face-to-face communication is the participants.
a process of mutual exchange
and adjustment. Our model includes external
communication and internal
feedback as well as messages
working at two levels (topic and relationship feedback) that happen
instantaneously, also at two levels (verbal and nonverbal). People are senders
and receivers at the same time—encoding and decoding while talking to
themselves very, very quickly, all while talking to somebody else. If it seems
very complicated, it is! But rather than focus on the complexity, look at
what this model does. It gives us many more ways of understanding how
talk works; perhaps more importantly, it gives us explanations for why talk
doesn’t always work. Ŷ

Suggested Reading

Barnlund, “Towards a Meaning-Centered Philosophy.”

Devito, The Interpersonal Communication Book.
Stewart, Bridges Not Walls.
Watzlawick, Bavelas, and Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Communication.

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