2 5. Communicative styles.

• The concept of communicative style.
• Model of various communicative styles.

The concept of a communicative style denotes familiar, sustainable behaviors inherent in a given person, which he uses when establishing relationships and interacting with other people. Understanding your own communicative style and the ability to recognize the style of a communication partner are important characteristics of communicative competence.

The well-known Austrian psychologist A. Adler introduced the concept of life style into psychology, considering it as a unique combination of traits, behaviors and habits, which, taken together, define a unique picture of the individual's existence. A. Adler proposed a typology of life styles. In his classification, the scientist uses as variables two driving forces of personal development - social interest and degree of activity.

Interpersonal behaviors, outlined in the concept of Adler, received in-depth research and development in the works of the German psychologist K. Horney. The main thesis of her approach is as follows: in order to achieve a sense of security in the outside world, to reduce anxiety, a person resorts to different defensive strategies. Each strategy has a certain basic orientation in relations with other people:

• orientation to people, or compliant type,
• orientation from people, or an isolated type,
• orientation against people, or hostile type.

V. Satir focused on the description of communication patterns, i.e. used verbal and non-verbal signs and techniques. Satir is based on the assumption that a change in external behavioral reactions can help in changing a person’s attitude to himself, first of all, to increase his self-esteem. To do this, it is necessary to present as accurately as possible, to feel exactly which behavioral patterns — intonation, body movements and postures, facial expressions and characteristic vocabulary — correspond to one or another style.

The model that allows you to present different communication styles is the so-called “Johari window” (the name is formed by the initial letters of the names of two American psychologists who proposed this model - Joseph Luft and Harry Ingam). Its essence is to demonstrate the interdependence between information about ourselves, which is available only to us, and the awareness of how others perceive us.

In their behavior, people are quite consistent, so the authors of the “window of Johari” consider it possible to talk about a person ’s communicative style depending on the dominance of a particular zone in its characteristics.

• What is a person’s life style?

• What is the interdependence between information about ourselves and how others perceive us?