2.2 What is subtle about social interaction?  (Page 15/26)

• action may not be so readily instantiated in overt behavior… the inept athlete, dancer, actor or public speaker may well have a perfectly adequate abstract representation of what he or she needs to do, but what actually gets enacted is rather divergent from his or her image of that action.

Skilled behaviours are goal-directed. They are those behaviours the individual employs in order to achieve a desired outcome, and are therefore purposeful, as opposed to chance, or unintentional. As Huang Huang, L. (2000) 'Examining candidate information search processes: the impact of processing goals and sophistication', Journal of Communication 50:93-114. (2000:111) noted, 'the purposes people bring into communication have important consequences on communication processes'. For example, if A wishes to encourage B to talk freely, A will look at B, use head nods when B speaks, refrain from interrupting B, and utter 'guggles' ('hmm hmm'; 'uh, hu'; etc.) periodically. In this instance these behaviours are directed towards the goal of encouraging participation.

Skilled behaviours must be interrelated, in that they are synchronised in order to achieve a particular goal. Thus the individual will employ two or more behaviours at the same time. For example, when encouraging B to talk, A may smile, use head nods, look directly at B, and utter guggles, and each of these signals will be interpreted by B as a sign of encouragement to continue speaking. Each behaviour relates to this common goal, and so the behaviours are in this way interrelated and synchronised.

Skills should be appropriate to the situation in which they are being used. The skilled individual adapts behaviours to meet the demands of particular people in specific contexts. Dickson Dickson, D. (2001) 'Communication skill and health care delivery', in D. Sines, F. Appleby and B. Raymond (eds) Community health care nursing (2nd edn), London: Blackwell Science. (2001) referred to this aspect of skilled performance as contextual propriety. In their review of this area, White and Burgoon White, C. and Burgoon, J. (2001) 'Adaptation and communicative design patterns of interaction in truthful and deceptive conversations', Human Communication Research 27:9-37. (2001:9) concluded that, 'the most essential feature of human interaction is that it involves adaptation'. Indeed, linguistic conceptualisations purport that skill is mutually constructed through dialogue and so can only be understood by an interpretation of how narratives develop in any particular context (Holman Holman, D. (2000) 'A dialogical approach to skill and skilled activity', Human Relations 53:957-80. , 2000).

Competence, therefore, is more likely to the extent that communicators pursue both self-interests and the interests of the other person(s) involved. Persons who want to initiate a romantic relationship with another need to appear composed and expressive if the other person is to perceive them as competent. Composure displays the suitor as confident and focused, and the expressiveness leaves vivid impressions and helps the other person know them. These skills help people pursue their own goals. However, unless the other person is made to feel important through coordination and altercentrism, attraction is unlikely to follow. Coordination shows a concern for making the interaction more comfortable, and the altercentrism gets the other person's interests involved in the conversation, and perhaps, the relationship. Thus, to be competent, interactants need to use their communication skills to promote both their own interests and the interests of the coparticipants.