TYPES OF COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGY

People communicate every day to establish and maintain relationships, know

and understand themselves, and find meaning in the daily grind. Moreover, since
humans are social beings who survive more effectively through sensible discourses,
they are always driven to learn the skills of creating and sustaining meaningful
conversations. Successful communication requires understanding of the relationship
between words and sentences and the speech acts they represent. However, a
conversation may be complex at times; that is why some people get lost along the way
and misunderstand each other. It is only when we willingly cooperate and speak in
socially-approved ways that we can make a conversation meaningful.

Types of Communicative Strategies

Since engaging in conversation is also bound by implicit rules, Cohen (1990) states
that strategies must be used to start and maintain a conversation. Knowing and
applying grammar appropriately is one of the most basic strategies to maintain a
conversation. The following are some strategies that people use when communicating.

1. Nomination
A speaker carries out nomination to collaboratively and productively establish a
topic. Basically, when you employ this strategy, you try to open a topic with the
people you are talking to.
When beginning a topic in a conversation, especially if it does not arise from a
previous topic, you may start off with news inquiries and news announcements
as they promise extended talk. Most importantly, keep the conversational
environment open for opinions until the prior topic shuts down easily and initiates
a smooth end. This could efficiently signal the beginning of a new topic in the
conversation.

2. Restriction
Restriction in communication refers to any limitation you may have as a speaker.
When communicating in the classroom, in a meeting, or while hanging out with
your friends, you are typically given specific instructions that you must follow.
These instructions confine you as a speaker and limit what you can say.

For example, in your class, you might be asked by your teacher to brainstorm on
peer pressure or deliver a speech on digital natives. In these cases, you cannot
decide to talk about something else. On the other hand, conversing with your
friends during ordinary days can be far more casual than these examples. Just
the same, remember to always be on point and avoid sideswiping from the topic
during the conversation to avoid communication breakdown.

3. Turn-taking
Sometimes people are given unequal opportunities to talk because others take
much time during the conversation. Turn-taking pertains to the process by which
people decide who takes the conversational floor. There is a code of behavior
behind establishing and sustaining a productive conversation, but the primary
idea is to give all communicators a chance to speak.

Remember to keep your words relevant and reasonably short enough to express
your views or feelings. Try to be polite even if you are trying to take the floor from
another speaker. Do not hog the conversation and talk incessantly without letting
the other party air out their own ideas. To acknowledge others, you may employ
 visual signals like a nod, a look, or a step back, and you could accompany these
signals with spoken cues such as “What do you think?” or “You wanted to say
something?”

4. Topic Control
Topic control covers how procedural formality or informality affects the
development of topic in conversations. For example, in meetings, you may only
have a turn to speak after the chairperson directs you to do so. Contrast this with
a casual conversation with friends over lunch or coffee where you may take the
conversational floor anytime.
Remember that regardless of the formality of the context, topic control is
achieved cooperatively. This only means that when a topic is initiated, it should
be collectively developed by avoiding unnecessary interruptions and topic shifts.
You can make yourself actively involved in the conversation without overly
dominating it by using minimal responses like “Yes,” “Okay,” “Go on”; asking tag
questions to clarify information briefly like “You are excited, aren’t you?”, “It was
unexpected, wasn’t it?”; and even by laughing!

5. Topic Shifting
Topic shifting, as the name suggests, involves moving from one topic to another.
In other words, it is where one part of a conversation ends and where another
begins.
When shifting from one topic to another, you have to be very intuitive. Make sure
that the previous topic was nurtured enough to generate adequate views. You
may also use effective conversational transitions to indicate a shift like “By the
way,” “In addition to what you said,” “Which reminds me of,” and the like.

6. Repair
Repair refers to how speakers address the problems in speaking, listening, and
comprehending that they may encounter in a conversation. For example, if
everybody in the conversation seems to talk at the same time, give way and
appreciate other’s initiative to set the conversation back to its topic.
Repair is the self-righting mechanism in any social interaction (Schegloff et al,
1977). If there is a problem in understanding the conversation, speakers will
always try to address and correct it. Although this is the case, always seek to
initiate the repair.

7. Termination
Termination refers to the conversation participants’ close-initiating expressions
that end a topic in a conversation. Most of the time, the topic initiator takes
responsibility to signal the end of the discussion as well.

Although not all topics may have clear ends, try to signal the end of the topic
through concluding cues. You can do this by sharing what you learned from the
conversation. Aside from this, soliciting agreement from the other participants
usually completes the discussion of the topic meaningfully.