TV Communication Styles

Communication is one of the issues in the modern society that has attracted scholars and researchers on how it is carried out in the society.

There are various forms of communication that have been employed in the recent past to pass on information from one person to another. Similarly, it is important for one to realize that there are also channels that are utilized by people in communication. In this regard, among the most profound channels of communication in the 21st century is the television. Among the people that have largely employed the television as a medium or rather channel of communication are the politicians and influential speakers in the society. In this regard therefore, these politicians and speakers have managed to pass their messages to the audience in regard to their policies and on what they think is being done right or wrong through the television.

However, their rhetoric on the television was found to have a lasting negative impact on the society. It is important for one to understand that most of these speakers and politicians employed a culture of arguments or rather arguing and debate as a way of passing their message to their audience. In reference to Goshgarian and Krueger (2002), Tannen in her articles “Taking TV’s ‘War of Words’ Too Literally” argues that the American rhetoric culture has adopted an argumentative style of communication as a way of persuading the audience on critical issues in the society (18). In this regard, the influential speakers and politicians argued out their case in a ferocious way, disregarding any point from the opponent as long as it did not support them. One of the major problems that were identified by Tannen in her essay was the use of emotional appeals in rallying for support by politicians and other influential speakers that had an opportunity to appear on national televisions. In some cases, these speakers forged their emotions to gather sympathy from the public or rather audience in order to accomplish their dreams.

As a result of this, the public found itself being swayed by these politicians without their knowledge and finally ended up supporting them. These emotional appeals were found to ignore the important aspects of sensibility and reason in any form of arguments (Goshgarian and Krueger 18). Similarly, the war of words between or among different speakers continued to take root in the American rhetoric. Following this point, there were a lot of politicians and public speakers that emerged with their differences on national television and argued against each other with each of them trying to appear more sober and more correct than the other. Whereas this was a way of selling for the television industry, there was an element of distortion of key information that emerged in such cases since nobody could tell who is saying the truth.

In some cases, these speakers opted to discrediting one another in the public without the sanity to restrain their words towards each other (Goshgarian and Krueger 18). Therefore, these speakers blatantly proved to the public that their opponents were wrong and they were right. Such cases were common among politicians who proved their opponents wrong on key policy issues in the society and disapproved their specific plans that had been laid down by their opponents. The principle of divide and rule therefore applied in these cases. In line with this, the major aim of such speakers was to divide the public on a particular key issue in the society and then implement their own strategy by imposing their ideas that were perceived as correct to the public.

It was noted that it is not the ideas alone of particular people that were disregarded. Instead, these speakers found out ways of tainting the character of their opponents in such as a way that their opponents could not be able to gain trust from the public again in future on any issue. One amazing thing about this was the fact that these issues including defamation of character was done under the umbrella of debate. On the other hand, the television owners would claim that they were not responsible for any information that implicated any person in the so called debate as a way of avoiding liability for the way the debate was carried out (Goshgarian and Krueger, 19). There were real life situations that were exact copies of what happened on the televisions. To begin with, the family unit adopted communications tactics that were mostly employed on the television in dealing with their household problems or rather challenges.

To begin with, whenever there was a problem in the family, it was more common to see one partner or both partners defaming each other so that they could be able to draw the attention of people from their own personal problems (Goshgarian and Krueger, 19). For example, if the husband had a drinking problem and the wife walked out on this marriage, the husband might be found arguing that he was the one that walked out on his wife since she was unfaithful to him. The same case applies to the wife who might bring an issue in between the really problem in their marriage and the abstract or rather what was seen from the outside by the public. Similarly, there were also cases whereby one partner in marriage or in any form of partnership in the society had been found to exaggerate the problem at hand in order to gain sympathy from the public and therefore find people to rally behind him or her. For example, a husband might have pushed his wife because he was angry with what she had done.

Instead of seeking ways of dealing with this, the wife would then go to her friends and inform them that she had been beaten by her husband. There were also cases whereby the police were involved. The main aim of doing this was to obtain mercy from the public and deviate it from one’s wrong doings in such kind of a family. Whereas this was perceived as a perfect way of dealing with emergent problems in the society, the solutions that were provided in this case did not last for a longer period of time. Instead, after the public was gone, one had to go back to the drawing board to work out on ways of reconciling with the person that was involved (Goshgarian and Krueger, 19).

This was difficult to achieve and in most cases, this relationship was completely ruined never to recover again. Communication therefore was an important aspect that could not be overlooked by the society. In line with this, it is worth noting that there were different forms of communication that had been adopted by the society as a way of passing or rather sharing information in the society. However, it was evident that the recent communication trends in the society had focused on argumentative or debate communication rather than dialogue. Under this form of communication, the communicator worked on ways of persuading the public or his audience in regard to a particular issue without necessarily taking into account the effects that his message or information had on the public. On the other hand, one of the institutions that was at risk due to communication styles that were portrayed on the television was the family unit.

Therefore, there was need for the society to adopt appropriate communication models or styles to avoid plunging into problems in future.