Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

just ask my daddy for the money card.”
• The guy was looking on a website for cars, when a rich coworker asks, “why don’t you just buy
the car with cash so you don’t have to make payments?” When the guy told his coworker he
couldn’t afford to pay for a car in cash, his rich coworker replied, “Why don’t you just have
your parents buy it for you?”
• “If you’re making $50,000 and your salary gets down to $40,000 and you have to cut, it’s very
severe to you. But it’s no less severe to these other people with these big numbers.”
• “People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress. Could you imagine what it’s like to
say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do
that?”
• “You don’t get the vote if you don’t pay a dollar in taxes. But what I really think is it should be
like a corporation. You pay a million dollars, you get a million votes. How’s that?”
The perspectives illustrated in these statements are ones that most of us cannot easily relate to. The
opposite is also true. People who live in the top 1% often have very flawed perceptions of what life is like
for those who don’t have piles of money sitting around. Often those in the dominant group (in this case
the top 1%) have no conceptualization of what life is like for those in muted groups (the bottom 99%). As
such, those in muted groups often have a much clearer perception of reality.
Some research in this theory has been done on other subverted groups such as new kids at school. 22
They found that it was normative patterns that created a system of subversion in the classroom. When
a new student arrived, they inadvertently went against the popular normative habits of the class and, in
doing so, ostracized themselves. Other students simultaneously asserted and solidified their dominance
while lowering the status of the new student. This same thing can be seen in our male-dominated society.
As women seek to make themselves known and heard, they are continually reduced, and male-centric
standards are reinforced.
Research Spotlight
Research
Heather Kissack (2010) focused on the subversion and muting of women in
email communication within businesses. She found that women are consistently
marginalized and muted in organizational emails in the workplace. This is
surprising because it would seem that without the nonverbal cues of face-to-face
communication, there would be less muting of women in computer-mediated
communication. Unfortunately, in this study, one can see that it is the malecentric
verbiage that has created this divide in social and organization status. Even
as women attempted to un-mute themselves, they were increasingly muted and
subverted.
Kissack, H. (2010). Muted voices: a critical look at e-male in organizations. Journal of European Industrial
Training, 34(6), 539-551. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090591011061211
Key Takeaways
Names can impact how we perceive others. It can also impact how we feel about
ourselves.
We can increase affiliation with others through converging our language to others.
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