Speech acts and styles

1. Speech
Styles

2. Speech Acts
Refers to any utterances that convey
meaning and results in the listeners to act
or conduct specific actions
e.g. commands, requests, suggestions,
apologies, offers

3. Speech Acts
1. Assertive: Speaker expresses belief
about proposition
2. Commissive: Speaker commits to doing
something in future
3. Directives: Speaker attempts to get
addressee to carry out action
4. Declarations: Speaker’s utterances
directly affect immediate change of
affairs
5. Expressives: Speaker expresses feelings
or emotions

4. Managing Conversations

5. Managing Conversations
Rules of conversation
1. Good balance between talking and listening
2. Be friendly, polite and use positive body
language
3. Avoid potential controversial topics.
4. Use questioning techniques to establish
common ground
5. Respond accordingly with verbal & non
verbal cues
6. Excuse yourself in boring conversation

6. Improving Social Skills
Some rules:
1. Build up confidence by interacting with others
2. Develop strong communication to increase
successful relationships
3. Practice, practice, practice

7. Overcoming Shyness
Some rules:
1. “Fake it until you make it” strategy
2. Play the 60-seconds game
3. Walk up to someone and give
genuine compliment

8. How To Make Small Talk
Rules of conversation
1. Be interesting
2. Take active role in conversation
3. Keep conversation going in interesting
direction
4. Reflect through:
-Mirroring and repeating what
speaker says
-Paraphrasing original content
accordingly

9. How To Make Small Talk
Rules of conversation
5. Clarifying through:
-Posing questioning techniques or
summarizing. Do use:
-Closed questions
-Open-ended questions
-Leading questions
-Recall and/or process questions
-Rhetorical questions

10. How To Make Small Talk
6. Responses:
Use different ones to facilitate/kill
conversation:
-A direct and honest answer
-A lie
-Out of context response
-Partial answering
-Avoid answering
-Distortion
-Refusal
Rules of conversation

11. Conversation: Rules & Etiquette
- Rules / Principles for establishing who talks
- Also known as turn taking
- Indicate turn taking through:
1. Formal/direct methods
2. Adjacency pairs
3. Intonation
4. Gestures

12. Turn taking
 Interruption: Speaker interrupts to speak and
gains floor control
 Butting in: New speaker enters but not
successful in the turn
 Overlaps: Two speakers speak same time
 Minimal response: Phrases used to indicate
listener pays attention

13. Other listener cues
 Turn taking cues: indicate desire to speak
 Turn denying cues: deny control of
conversation
 Back channeling cues: Let speaker know
person is listening

14. Aspects of Conversational skills
 Be empathetic
 Have dual perspective
 Use self disclosure
 Include involvement & immediacy

15. Assertiveness
Refer to honest opinion of one’s own needs, w
ants and feelings
1. Work on your values & rights
2. Be vocal about your needs
3. Realise you cannot know how others react
4. Be open to criticism and compliments
5. Learn to say “No”

16. Why Use Role Play
1. Can take place between 2 or more people wit
h pre assigned role
2. Can explore situation and find out how other
s respond to different approaches
3. Get sense of what others may think
4. Provides self-confidence to handle similar situ
ations in real life

17. How To Use Role Play
Step 5: Feedback
Discuss what you learned - identify key moments - repeat with different approach if necessary
Step 4: Act out the scenario
act it out - try different approaches - escalate the situation to practice conflict management
Step 3: Assign roles
identify roles - put yourself in their shoes - try to understand their perspectives & motivation
Step 2: Add details
Add details to set the scene - ensure all on same understanding - Work towards same goals
Step 1: Identify the Situation
Conduct group discussion - introduce problem - uncover all relevant issues