Read the Article: Why Verbal Tee-Ups Like “To Be Honest” Often Signal Insincerity. By Elizabeth Bernstein, WSJ Answer the following questions in the essay: • What are tee-ups? • Identify and describe an incident that you used tee-ups when communicating with your group member. Why did you use tee-ups? • Identify and describe an incident that your group member used tee-ups when s/he communicated with you. Why did s/he use tee-ups? • Was the communication effective in each of the two incidents above? What were the impacts on your group as a whole due to each of the two incidents? You must also answer the following question but you must use at least two current journal articles to address this last question. Search for journal articles regarding gender and communication. NO on-line resources (e.g., .com, org., or .edu.) are allowed!!; NO books are allowed!! ONLY JOURNAL ARTICLES ARE ALLOWED FOR THIS QUESTION!! • Do you think women are more likely to use tee-ups than men? Why or Why not?

Tee-ups are seemingly positive prefatory remarks used by people in conversations when about to make a negative comment without sounding rude or offensive. They are used to divert the audience's attention from the speaker's statement to his intention in an effort to save face and appear sincere and polite. People use tee-ups either consciously or unconsciously in conversations all the time and I did in one instance during a recent group meeting. We were working on an assignment and one group member who doesn’t take correction positively was making a wrong argument and justifying it using inaccurate information. As I was opposing her point and bringing up the verifiable argument I told her that I was not saying she was wrong but her argument would make the group fail the assignment. I used the tee up to avoid hurting her feelings and making her feel embarrassed since she had persistently held on to her stand which was wrong.