Communication Incompetencies: A Theory of Training Oral Performance Behavior

Gerald M. Phillips

ene 1991 · SIU Press

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Gerald M. Phillips draws on his twenty-five-year, five-thousand-client experience with the Pennsylvania State University Reticence Program to present a new theory of modification of "inept" communication behavior.

That experience has convinced Phillips that communication is arbitrary and rulebound rather than a process of inspiration. He demonstrates that communication problems can be described as errors that can be detected and classified in order to fit a remediation pattern. Regardless of the source of error, the remedy is to train the individual to avoid or eliminate errors--thus, orderly procedure will result in competent performance.

Inept communicators must be made aware of the obligations and constraints imposed by deep structures that require us to achieve a degree of formal order in our language, without which our discourse becomes incomprehensible.

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Gerald M. Phillips is Professor of Speech Communication at Pennsylvania State University.