Getting Your Hands On The Devito Communication Textbook
Most people looking for Essentials Of Human Communication By Devito Joseph A Pearson 2010 Paperback 7th Edition Paperback are students trying to finish an assignment or faculty checking a syllabus. The reality is pretty dry. It is a standard college textbook covering interpersonal communication, listening skills, nonverbal behavior, and conflict management. The content is straightforward. The problem is usually where to find it without spending $120 at the campus bookstore. I spent about six months tracking down legitimate sources for this edition when I was TAing an intro communication course. Here is what actually works versus what wastes your time.
Where To Find Essentials Of Human Communication By Devito Joseph A Pearson 2010 Paperback 7th Edition Paperback
The cheapest legitimate route is usually checking your university library first. Many schools have one or two copies on reserve. If you grab one, scan the chapters you need using a phone app like Adobe Scan or vFlat. This saves you having to sit in the library with a highlighter for three hours straight. I learned this the hard way after sitting through a two-hour session only to realize the book was printed on thin paper and the binding would crack if I opened it flat. Beyond the library,abebooks and ThriftBooks tend to have used copies in the ten to twenty dollar range. Amazon holds the price higher because they know nobody wants to wait two weeks for a textbook. If you need it yesterday, Amazon Prime shipping gets it in two days but costs more. eBay is another option if you are willing to buy from individual sellers. Just check the seller rating before committing. Library genesis and similar shadow libraries exist. I am not going to link them or encourage you to use them. The ethics around copyright are your call to make. What I will say is that scanning the textbook yourself from a library copy is legal in most jurisdictions under fair use, especially for personal study purposes.
What This Book Actually Covers And How It Plays Out
The Devito text organizes communication into competencies rather than abstract theories. Chapter by chapter you get listening, perception, emotions, language, nonverbal communication, relationships, conflict, and culture. Each chapter ends with exercises. The exercises are not filler. They are where the learning actually happens. Reading the chapter without doing the self-assessment quizzes means you skim the material and forget it by midterms. One thing the book does well is the listening skills section. Most introductory courses treat listening as a vague concept. Devito breaks it down into stages: receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding. This framework matters because you can point to exactly where a conversation broke down. If your partner never repeated back what you said, the failure happened at the responding stage. If they nodded but clearly misinterpreted your intent, the problem was at the understanding or evaluating stage. Pinpointing it like this turns an argument into a repairable process instead of a character flaw. The conflict chapter has a practical model for managing disagreement. It distinguishes between competitive, cooperative, and avoidant styles. The counter-intuitive part most students miss is that competitive conflict management is not always wrong. In emergency situations or when someone is violating a clear boundary, a competitive approach is the right move. The book frames conflict styles as tools in a toolbox rather than moral judgments. That framing alone makes the text useful past graduation.
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A Problem I Ran Into And How I Worked Around It
When I used this textbook in a seminar setting, I hit a specific issue with the nonverbal communication chapter. The section on kinesics includes a lot of Western-centric examples of gestures and facial expressions. A student in my section pointed out that the eye contact norms described did not apply to their cultural background, where prolonged eye contact is considered disrespectful. The book acknowledges cultural variation in later chapters but buries it instead of weaving it throughout. The workaround was simple. I had the class supplement the kinesics section with readings from Samovar and Porter's Communication Between Cultures alongside Devito. This took maybe ten minutes of prep on my part and eliminated the gap. If you are reading this solo, just Google "cultural differences in nonverbal communication" alongside each chapter. You will find plenty of free articles that fill in the blind spots. Another edge case is the listening assessment tools. The self-tests in the book use a five-point Likert scale. These are fine for a baseline but not reliable enough for any formal evaluation. If you are a teaching assistant grading listening portfolios, do not rely solely on Devito's rubric. Cross-reference it with the Richmond's Basic Scale of Listening Competence, which has better psychometric backing. It took me an afternoon to map the two together. After that, grading became much faster and more defensible.
Common Mistakes People Make With This Text
The biggest mistake is treating it as a reference manual instead of a workbook. Students buy the book, highlight everything, and then wonder why they cannot apply the concepts during discussions. Highlighting is passive. The exercises require active recall. If you skip the exercises, you are reading a magazine, not studying. A second mistake is reading the chapters in order without returning to earlier ones. The listening chapter builds the foundation for the conflict chapter. The conflict chapter relies on the nonverbal section. Reading ahead helps, but skipping backwards hurts your retention. The material compounds across chapters. The book also has some dated examples. Published in 2010, it does not cover social media communication in depth. You will need to supplement with newer materials if your course focuses on digital interaction. Nothing major, just a gap you should be aware of.
Bottom Line
This is a solid introductory text for human communication. It is not groundbreaking, but it is organized well and the exercises are functional. The listening framework and conflict model are the standout sections. Get it used from abebooks or ThriftBooks, scan your own copies from the library if you need it sooner, and actually do the chapter exercises. The rest is up to how much effort you put into applying the material.
