Communication Assignment

 

COMMUNICATION ASSIGNMENT

 

I chose to watch the television show Meet the Jacksons.  The show was about an African American family, husband, wife and son and daughter.  They appear to be an upper class family.  The wife is a doctor and the father a lawyer.  The daughter is older than the son; they appear to be maybe 13 and 12 years old.  The son and the daughter do not appear to be getting along with each other; they always have frowns on their faces throughout the entire show until the end.  The husband and wife seem to have a good relationship.  They are always seen happy and smiling, and talking to the children.  The children and the parents get along well.   The son complains to his father about his sister and the daughter complains to her mother about her brother.  They get along well at the end of the episode.  There were various non-verbal feelings expressed such as smiles, frown, some eye contact and not eye contact at times, hand gestures, hugs, kisses, etc.

After watching the show with the sound on, I realized that some of my assumptions regarding the son and daughter were in accurate.  In this episode, the only reason they were not getting along was because they were both running for president of a club at school.   They never showed them while they were at school, therefore I would never have known that this was the reason they always seemed mad at one another.   Apparently, the son had more friends at school that were going to vote for him than his sister.  She told him that he was making promises that he would not keep in order for the students at school to vote for him.  This is where they began disliking each other.  I just assumed they just did not get along.   At the end of the show they sit down and talk to each other and work out their differences. 

This was an assignment that helped me realize that our assumptions can always be misinterpreted very easily.  It showed me that effective communication, verbal as well as non-verbal are very important and it is also good to be a good effective listener.