Posts tagged communication
The Politics of Language

Interview with "The Politics of Language" Author and Yale University Professor of Philosophy Jason Stanley

Speech is more than just about factuality. [Effective activists] try to point (people) to actual circumstances in their communities that ... the local community sees. ... You switch the vocabulary up to avoid the expressions that are connected with polarization... One goal of politics, a political strategy, is to infuse more and more words with this kind of identity.

So, as soon as your political opponent uses one of those words, in this case, climate change, people's minds shut off. So, they group people into groups and people don't listen to the arguments... The vocabulary affected policy... It justified treating children in terrible ways

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CulturalWade Lee HudsoncommunicationComment
What Conversation Can Do for Us

By Hua Hsu

Excerpts from the March 20, 2023 Issue of The New Yorker

Our culture is dominated by efforts to score points and win arguments. But do we really talk anymore?

...“In past eras, daily life made it necessary for individuals to engage with others different from themselves,” Paula Marantz Cohen explains... Cohen, a professor of English at Drexel University, is the author of “Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation” (Princeton). She makes the case that talking to others—sharing our stories—is how we learn things and sharpen our belief systems, how we piece together what it means to be funny or empathetic. Conversation can change our minds while sustaining our souls...

Cohen returns to true conversation as a kind of sanctuary... In its ideal form, it involves no audience or judge, just partners; no fixed agenda or goals, just process...

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SocialWade Lee HudsoncommunicationComment
Georgia Football: Team "Connection"

In the business world, a company may hold a corporate retreat for employees for team building in hopes of producing better results.

The Georgia football team turned inward for players to get to know the guy across from them in the locker room or the person who they lined up besides or against on the practice field.

Skull sessions, they called them. It started last winter after an 8-2 season in which Georgia failed to win the SEC East for the first time since 2016 and the pandemic altered usual player interactions.

For three days a week, players met in small groups for as long as 20 to 25 minutes. They were held after weight lifting sessions. Coach Kirby Smart moved from meeting to meeting and assistant coaches rotated.

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SocialWade Lee Hudsoncompassion, communication, mutual supportComment
Creating Positive Community Information Exchange

In 2001, Hector E. Garcia attended a St. Paul meeting between a Minnesota immigrant group and the INS (Immigration & Naturalization Services — federal agency charged with handling immigration matters, which was converted after 9/11 into three separate departments — CIS, ICE and CBO). The meeting was one of a series of tense interactions between INS and the immigrant community in person and through the media. Hector observed that community members left angrier than when they arrived and no solutions had been identified.

After the meeting, Hector suggested to Curt Aljets, District Director of INS, and to a Pastor who spoke for the community that it was possible to attain more constructive results from such meetings. Hector, at that time, was MN/Dakotas District Director for NCCJ (National Conference for Community & Justice). He offered to hold an interactive session with Mr. Aljets' staff. Out of that session, evolved a group decision to start the Twin Cities Immigrant Community Roundtable.

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SocialWade Lee Hudsoncommunity, communicationComment