The Evaluative Consequences of Hedges, Hesitations, and Intensifies: Powerful and Powerless Speech Styles

This article examines the separate and combined impact of hedges, hesitations, and intensifiers on perceptions of authoritativeness, sociability, character, and similarity, and the extent to which messages containing one or more of these language variables differs from a “prototypically” powerless message in evaluative consequences. A “prototypically” powerless message is one that contains not only hedges, hesitations, and intensifiers, but also contains polite forms and meaningless particles, such as “oh, well” and “you know.” Two studies indicated that hedges and hesitations individually affected perceptions of authoritativeness and sociability, but interactions among the variables were not found in the studies. Furthermore, only high intensifiers/low hedges/low hesitations and low intensifiers/low hedges/low hesitations messages differed significantly from the “prototypically” powerless message. The second study revealed that speaker status interacted to affect evaluative consequences. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the power of speech style construct

The Relationships Among Need for Privacy, Loneliness, Conversational Sensitivity, and Interpersonal Communication Motives

The present study explored the relationships among privacy, loneliness, and interpersonal communication. Specifically, it examined the relationships among individuals\u27 preferences for six types of privacy, loneliness, conversational sensitivity, and interpersonal communication motives. The results revealed that preferences for different types of privacy were most strongly related to interpersonal communication motives or the uses to which people put interpersonal communication. Loneliness was also related to interpersonal communication motive. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the study of privacy and interpersonal communication

The Relationship Between Locus of Control and the Evaluative Consequences of Powerful and Powerless Speech Styles

This article examines the impact of receivers\u27 locus of control on their evaluations of speakers exhibiting powerful or powerless speech. The results indicated that those with an external locus of control evaluated a high-power message more positively than did those with an internal locus of control. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that a speaker using a powerful style is threatening to receivers and causes them to bias their speaker evaluations positively. The results also address the apparent paradox between the positive evaluations received by a high-pourer message and the negative connotations associated with power and dominance

The Evaluational Consequences of Topic Reciprocity and Self-Disclosure Reciprocity

Although numerous studies have examined the evaluative consequences of topic‐ or self‐disclosure reciprocity, none has examined the combined consequences of topic‐and self‐disclosure reciprocity. This study focuses on the combined evaluative consequences. It was hypothesized that messages which reciprocated both topic and intimacy would be more positively evaluated than messages which reciprocated only topic or intimacy. In turn, messages which reciprocated only topic or intimacy would be more positively evaluated than those reciprocating neither. An experimental study supported the hypothesis for initial low intimacy messages, and partially supported it for initial high intimacy messages. The results are examined in terms of competing interactional goals in a self‐disclosure context

Hedges, Tag Questions, Message Processing, and Persuasion

This study explored the effects of tag questions, hedges, and argument quality on receivers\u27 perceptions of a speaker, perceptions of message quality, cognitive responses, and attitude change. The results showed that tag questions and argument quality directly affected speaker and message quality perceptions and cognitive responses. They also interacted to directly affect perceptions of the speaker\u27s power and credibility. Mediational analyses also showed that tag questions and argument quality had indirect effects on attitude change. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the cognitive processing of and research on linguistic markers of powerlessness

Powerful and Powerless Language Forms - Their Consequences For Impression Hosted At Formation, Attributions of Control of Self and Control of Others, Cognitive Responses, and Message Memory

This study investigates the effect of hedges, tag questions, intensifiers, and powerful messages on four sets of dependent variables: speaker evaluation, control of self and control of others attributions, cognitive responses, and message memorability. The results show that the four message types differ across measures of dynamism, control of self and control of others attributions, and three cognitive response categories. For the speaker-evaluation and control-attribution variables, intensifiers are evaluated most positively and hedges are evaluated most negatively. On the cognitive-response measures, a more mixed pattern of results emerges. The results are discussed in terms of their importance for understanding the cognitive processing of these four message types

Relationship Intimacy, Need for Privacy, and Privacy Restoration Behaviors

This study had two purposes: 1) to examine the relationship between relationship intimacy, type of privacy violation, and privacy restoration behaviors, and 2) to examine the relationship between need for privacy and these other three variables. The results showed that relationship intimacy and privacy violation type interacted to affect the likelihood of using interaction control restoration strategies. Need for not neighboring interacted with type of privacy invasion to affect the likelihood of using expression of negative arousal strategies

Effects of Context on Children\u27s Metaphor Comprehension

This study replicates Siltanen\u27s (1986) investigation of four developmental stages of metaphor comprehension and tests the effects of two levels of context on children\u27s ability to comprehend metaphors. A total of 159 subjects ranging in age from 6 through 12 years were asked to provide an open-ended response to 16 test metaphors which varied in difficulty. The metaphors were presented either with a 60- to 100-word-story context or as simple sentences. Metaphor comprehension was operationalized as type and number of grounds used in constructing conjunctive, disjunctive, and/or relational categories when interpreting a metaphor. Children\u27s responses were coded to indicate type of comprehension: perceptually grounded, conceptually grounded, and combined perceptually and conceptually grounded comprehension. Findings replicated Siltanen\u27s results concerning age differences and cognitive elaboration of comprehension, and supported the four-stages theory of metaphor comprehension. However, contrary to other research, context did not significantly affect metaphor comprehension. Results are discussed in terms of metaphor difficulty, type of context, and power of the manipulation. (Author/RH

The Implications of Multiple Dimensions of Self-Disclosure for the Nature and Functions of Reciprocity in Initial Interactions

A review of the literature on reciprocal self-disclosure indicates that scholars have limited their investigations to one aspect of disclosure--intimacy--while recent research suggests that disclosure is a multidimensional phenomenon. A study was conducted to assess the possibility of reciprocation of intimacy, amount, and valence (positive or negative nature) of disclosure. From this assessment, six combinations emerged: (1) intimacy/intimacy, (2) intimacy/amount, (3) amount/amount, (4) intimacy/valence, (5) amount/valence, and (6) valence/valence. The relationship between these forms of reciprocity and evaluations of personality and communication competence as well as uncertainty reduction were then investigated using 126 college students. The subjects were asked to get acquainted with a new classmate and then to complete self-report measures of disclosure and evaluation. The results of a canonical correlation indicated that two forms of reciprocity resulted in positive evaluations of communicative competence: intimacy/amount and intimacy/valence. (FL