Conversations

What does it take to be a good listener? I have touched on what we can listen for such as the various linguistic actions and others’ concerns. However, we can also look at how we can engage in others in conversations. Openness Openness speaks to an acceptance of others’ ways of being and worldview and […]

This approach is based on a new understanding of language where language is seen as action. This interpretation provides us with a new way of looking at the phenomenon of listening. J.L.Austin, a British philosopher who was one of the first people to identify language as an active process, identified three primary levels of action

Like many things we do in life, we have learnt how to have conversations simply by observing and engaging with others. In general, we are not taught how to have effective conversations with others to address our or their concerns. Indeed, most people would not see conversational practice as something to learn other than in

In his book, ‘The Good Listener’, Hugh Mackay termed this approach to communication the ‘injection myth’.  “The ‘injection myth’ treats messages rather like drugs which act on other people’s mind. It assumes that messages have inherent power (their ‘meaning’). In order to be effective communicators – the theory goes – we first have to craft