Chapter 5 “Finding out about others: the skill of questioning” (Hargie, O. 2011)

The main aim of Chapter 5 is to examine nature, function and effects of various forms and types of questions across a range of social situations. The main themes are; Children, Crime and professional sectors such as teaching and doctors. A claim that is made in this chapter is that in the health sector doctors and nurses were the main people who asked questions to their patients. Their patients would not ask questions as Siminoff et al. (2oo6) states that, patients never asked very many questions as they did not want it to seem like they were lacking in knowledge about the situations they were in. There is an idea throughout the chapter that the people who ask the questions are powerful people such as; teachers, doctors, lawyers and detectives, this is mainly down to them knowing the answers to the questions that they ask. Although when asked questions by someone the respondent may feel anxious and become stressed regardless if they know the answer to the question or not. This is because they do not want to be judged by the answer that they give. For example in a school scenario where a teacher asks pupils a question pupils may feel anxious to answer the question the teacher is asking. I agree with the majority of the chapter although there are somethings I disagree with for example; Closed questions being the most important set of questions to be asked, I feel that closed questions can often miss out some important information that open questions can provide. Some of the words I struggled with were multifaceted, stenographer and ubiquitous.

Reference List

“Finding out about others: the Skill of questioning” – Chapter 5 – Hargie, O. (2011) Skilled interpersonal Communication: Research, Theory and Practice 5th ed. London: Routledge