Equivocal Communication (SAGE Series in Interpersonal Communication) Book

Equivocation is non-straightforward communication, including messages that are ambiguous, indirect, contradictory or evasive. This volume, the result of a ten year report, highlights `poor' communication as an important phenomenon. The authors show how equivocation can be measured with a scaling method that offers an objective assessment of the amount and kind of equivocation that exist in a message and as such can be used in a wide variety of different research programmes.The authors bring together and illuminate several independent lines of contemporary communication research dealing with ambiguous communication: lying and deception; indirect speech acts; strategic ambiguity; devious messages; and contradictory verbal and noverbal messages. They show how equivocal communication can be effective communication and challenge several widely held beliefs about the nature of deceptive messages; they also place the driving force for equivocal messages in the situation rather than in the person.This rich volume provides a variety of experiments to document the nature of equivocal communication in face-to-face encounters, written messages, telephone conversations and in responses of political conventioneers. It is intended to reach researchers, teachers, graduate and upper-division undergraduate students in the fields of communication and sociology. The findings in this book will also be of special interest to sociolinguists and discourse analysts as well as to psychologists and political scientists.Read More