A Dissertation by GRACE HUI-CHIN LIN Submitted to the Office of ...

keep away from the wearisome topics. There were two advantages of this
strategy. First, the chat would be more stimulating and smoother. Second, the
chat could last longer. Changing topics was important because when the topic
was wrong, the communication became ineffectual. It was like the speaker
talked enthusiastically to you, but you felt beaten, confused or bored.
It was not right when the interlocutors’ emotions did not blend and integrate
into the same concepts during communication. The speaker should not enjoy
his own content and talking to him/herself while the listeners were made
fatigued by unknown ideas. I believed that unequal communication became
meaningless interaction. At this moment, the topic avoidance strategy should
be used to bring the speaker and the listener into the equal status in
communication.
In his first and second interview, Cheng Chih gave advice for how a right topic could
be determined:
I believed that, according to your partners’ backgrounds of age, gender,
profession, and interest, selecting a right topic was very important. I believed
a communication sometimes was like a lecture; when the topic was
interesting, the speaker was able to stimulate the audience’s motivation in
listening. Therefore, a lecturer should consider the audience’s backgrounds
and think of what his/her audience would like to hear. For example, a
teacher’s and a doctor’s interests and knowledge could be very assorted. A
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