Source Credibility

In this week’s reading it talks about “Communication Today: Contemporary Departments of Rhetoric and Communication Theory”.  This section was interesting to me as a whole.  There were not many key terms within this reading, but the one that stuck out the most to me was source credibility. Source credibility is the extent to which a communicator is considered believable and competent (Trenholm 11).  There are many things in life that catch our attention, a pretty girl walking down the street, a buff guy on a construction site, even a cute child playing in the park, but as soon as any of those people said a statement that the listener deemed to be untrue, or non-credible the listener would tune them out. The extent to which we pay attention to a speaker almost always depends on how believable they are and how much research we, as a listener, believe them to have done prior to the conversation or speech.  If an orator sited a doctor in a research study, the audience would probably count that as a credible source, but if the same orator sited the same doctor for a speech on how to build a playground, the source would no longer be credible.  It all depends on speech content as to what would be credible source. "We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox."
— Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)