CMS 115: Interpersonal Communication

"You'll not only break the ice, you'll melt it away with your new skills." -- Larry King "The lost art of verbal communication may be revitalized by Leil Lowndes." -- Harvey McKay, author of “How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive” What is that magic quality makes some people instantly loved and respected? Everyone wants to be their friend (or, if single, their lover!) In business, they rise swiftly to the top of the corporate ladder. What is their "Midas touch?" What it boils down to is a more skillful way of dealing with people. The author has spent her career teaching people how to communicate for success. In her book How to Talk to Anyone (Contemporary Books, October 2003) Lowndes offers 92 easy and effective sure-fire success techniques-- she takes the reader from first meeting all the way up to sophisticated techniques used by the big winners in life. In this information-packed book you’ll find: 9 ways to make a dynamite first impression 14 ways to master small talk, "big talk," and body language 14 ways to walk and talk like a VIP or celebrity 6 ways to sound like an insider in any crowd 7 ways to establish deep subliminal rapport with anyone 9 ways to feed someone's ego (and know when NOT to!) 11 ways to make your phone a powerful communications tool 15 ways to work a party like a politician works a room 7 ways to talk with tigers and not get eaten alive In her trademark entertaining and straight-shooting style, Leil gives the techniques catchy names so you'll remember them when you really need them, including: "Rubberneck the Room," "Be a Copyclass," "Come Hither Hands," “Bare Their Hot Button,” “The Great Scorecard in the Sky," and "Play the Tombstone Game,” for big success in your social life, romance, and business. How to Talk to Anyone, which is an update of her popular book, Talking the Winner's Way (see the 5-star reviews of the latter) is based on solid research about techniques that work! By the way, don't confuse How to Talk to Anyone with one of Leil's previous books, How to Talk to Anybody About Anything. This one is completely different!

Providing a thorough review and synthesis of work on communication skills and skill enhancement, this Handbook serves as a comprehensive and contemporary survey of theory and research on social interaction skills. Editors John O. Greene and Brant R. Burleson have brought together preeminent researchers and writers to contribute to this volume, establishing a foundation on which future study and research will build. The handbook chapters are organized into five major units: general theoretical and methodological issues (models of skill acquisition, methods of skill assessment); fundamental interaction skills (both transfunctional and transcontextual); function-focused skills (informing, persuading, supporting); skills used in management of diverse personal relationships (friendships, romances, marriages); and skills used in varied venues of public and professional life (managing leading, teaching). Distinctive features of this handbook include: * broad, comprehensive treatment of work on social interaction skills and skill acquisition; * up-to-date reviews of research in each area; and * emphasis on empirically supported strategies for developing and enhancing specific skills. Researchers in communication studies, psychology, family studies, business management, and related areas will find this volume a comprehensive, authoritative source on communications skills and their enhancement, and it will be essential reading for scholars and students across the spectrum of disciplines studying social interaction.

With its beginnings as a festschrift in honor of language and social interaction scholar Robert Hopper, this book is an edited collection of empirical studies and theoretical essays about human communication in everyday life. The primary focus is upon small or subtle forms of communication that are easily overlooked and too often dismissed as unimportant. Authors examine various features of human interaction occurring naturally within a variety of settings whereby interiocutors accomplish aspects of their interpersonal or institutional lives, all of which may relate to larger social issues. The collection is bound together by a recognition that social life is largely a communicative accomplishment, that people constitute the social realities experienced everyday through small and subtle ways of communicating, carefully orchestrated but commonly taken for granted.