This best-selling textbook for introductory human communication courses places communication theory within the context of everyday skills.

Human Communication: The Basic Course surveys the broad field of human communication, giving attention to theory, research, and skill development. This Twelfth Edition provides an in-depth look at the concepts and principles of human communication, emphasizing public speaking, interpersonal communication, and small group communication. Designed to allow flexibility in teaching approaches, Human Communication: The Basic Course offers instructors a wide range of topics to discuss and apply to real-world experiences.

Whether you’re asking for a raise, selling but holding your price, ending a relationship, or talking to children about divorce, success is predicated on planned, effective communication. Yet, most people fail to properly prepare their message. A veteran corporate attorney, sports agent, and expert consultant, Ronald M. Shapiro has spent years developing and honing his negotiation techniques. Now, Shapiro shares the bulletproof system of scripting he calls the Three D’s: Draft, Devil’s Advocate, Deliver. Illustrating his methods with fascinating real-life stories and helpful scripts, he walks readers through the process of creating an effective message, preparing for counterarguments, and delivering the results with confidence and grace. Applicable across a broad range of situations, Perfecting Your Pitch empowers us to get the results we want.

The book examines key topics such as interpersonal and family relationships in old age, media portrayals of aging, cultural variations in intergenerational communication, and health communication in old age.

Communication is a basic behaviour, found across animal species. Human language is often thought of as a unique system, which separates humans from other animals. This textbook serves as a guide to different types of communication, and suggests that each is unique in its own way: human verbal and nonverbal communication, communication in nonhuman primates, in dogs and in birds. Research questions and findings from different perspectives are summarized and integrated to show students similarities and differences in the rich diversity of communicative behaviours. A core topic is how young individuals proceed from not being able to communicate to reaching a state of competent communicators, and the role of adults in this developmental process. Evolutionary aspects are also taken into consideration, and ideas about the evolution of human language are examined. The cross-disciplinary nature of the book makes it useful for courses in linguistics, biology, sociology and psychology, but it is also valuable reading for anyone interested in understanding communicative behaviour.

Understanding Everyday Communicative Interactions is a unique text that uses a situated discourse analysis (SDA) framework to examine basic human communication and the interactions of those with communicative disorders in everyday and clinical settings. The book introduces SDA as a theoretical and empirical approach for examining the complexities of communicative interaction. It explores how people collaborate in everyday contexts to communicate successfully and how they learn to do so. From close analysis of a pretend game played by two children and their father to an observation of a man with aphasia and his family at a football match, the present volume offers rich portraits of communicative lives and illustrates the applications of SDA. The final part of the book uses SDA methods to demonstrate how clinicians can function as communication partners even during assessments and can design rich communicative environments for therapeutic interventions. In explaining the SDA framework and equipping readers with the tools to understand the nature of human communication, this sophisticated and engaging book will be an essential reference for students, researchers, and clinicians in communication sciences and disorders.

Anyone who wishes to pursue a career in communication with groups needs this comprehensive book on the theories behind communication. This volume provides practical, engaging overviews of over 42 different theories that readers will need to be aware of if they are pursuing this serious field. The authors, established writers and scholars who are known as "the park rangers of communication theory," have provided a user-friendly tour. Accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive, this volume will prove a valuable addition to the literature on the subject. Those involved in communication careers.

Updated in its 13th edition, Joseph Devito's The Interpersonal Communication Book provides a highly interactive presentation of the theory, research, and skills of interpersonal communication with integrated discussions of diversity, ethics, workplace issues, face-to-face and computer-mediated communication and a new focus on the concept of choice in communication. This thirteenth edition presents a comprehensive view of the theory and research in interpersonal communication and, at the same time, guides readers to improve a wide range of interpersonal skills. The text emphasizes how to choose among those skills and make effective communication choices in a variety of personal, social, and workplace relationships