Communicator attitudes, communicator style, and communication competence

Abstract

This study investigated whether communicator style variables could distinguish among three archetypal attitudes toward communication (rhetorical sensitivity, noble self, rhetorical reflector), whether these attitude types would be perceived as being more or less competent depending on situational variables, and if competent communication was constituted differently for each of the three attitude types. Results indicated that nobel selves were rated as being more impression leaving, dominant, and less friendly than the other two and that rhetorical sensitives and rhetorical reflectors were distinguished from each other in terms of degrees of perceived competence among situations and in terms of the style variables that were seen as contributing to perceptions of communicative competence.