2.1. Interpersonal communication.

• Social situation
• The communicative side of interpersonal communication.

The concept of "interpersonal communication" is aimed at analyzing the ways of exchanging messages between partners, their reception and processing. This is the process of exchanging messages and their interpretation by two or more individuals who have come into contact with each other.

In its most general form, a social situation is a natural fragment of social life determined by the people included in it, the place of action and the nature of the unfolding actions or activities. A group of social psychologists at the University of Oxford under the direction of M. Argyle suggested highlighting the following universal factors present at any stage of social interaction, which give certainty to the situation:

• goals;
• rules i the generally accepted view of acceptable and unacceptable behavior in a number of specific situations;
• roles i.e. models of interaction adopted in this culture;
• a set of elementary actions - the simplest verbal and non-verbal forms of participation in interaction;
• a sequence of behavioral acts (for example, the adopted order of change in the roles of the speaker and hearer);
• concept knowledge, i.e. the presence in the cognitive structure of certain categories that provide an understanding of the situation;
• physical environment, elements of which are the boundaries of the situation (closed room, street, square, etc.), physical qualities of the environment that affect the senses (color, noise, odors, etc.), props (for example, blackboard, school desks in the classroom), spatial conditions (distances between people, objects);
• language and speech, i.e. situationally determined vocabulary, speech turns, intonations, used by participants of interaction;
• difficulties and skills - various obstacles for interaction and skills to overcome them.

The analysis of interpersonal communication is an analysis of under what conditions and with the help of which means of presenting ideas, knowledge, moods, that is, the subjective experience of one subject can be moved and more or less accurately interpreted by another.

The concept of communicative competence is used to assess the level of formation of skills and skills necessary for effective communication. It is composed of:

• the ability of a person to predict the communicative situation;
• communicative performance skills;
• the ability to understand yourself, your own psychological potential and the potential of a partner;
• skills of self-adjustment, self-regulation in communication and overcoming psychological barriers.

Axioms of interpersonal communication (Wenceslas P. et al., 2000):

1. The impossibility of lack of communication. No matter how hard a person tries, he cannot but enter into communication, even applying a number of strategies for avoiding it.
2. Any communication has a level of content and level of relationship. The content level is the information that is transmitted in the message. At the relationship level, it is conveyed how this message is to be perceived.
3. Punctuation sequence of events. Semantic dominants of human behavior are organized by those events that influence the ongoing interaction.
4. Symmetric and complimentary interaction. Partners can copy each other’s behavior or supplement the other’s behavior with their behavior (it’s not important whether their behavior is moral or immoral). In complementary relationships, two positions can be distinguished: a higher (stronger) and subordinate or less strong.
5. Communication can be both intentional and unintentional, effective and ineffective. In a collaboration, a member of any group expects not only self-respect, but also a certain sensitivity. It is important to save face in any situation.
6. Communication is irreversible. Sometimes I would like to return the time and fix something, but this is impossible.

• What is the social situation?
• How are the axioms of interpersonal communication formulated?