Communication
Communication is the act
of conveying intended meaning to another entity through the use of mutually
understood signs and semiotic rules. The basic steps of communication are the
forming of communicative intent, message composition, message encoding,
transmission of signal, reception of signal, message decoding and finally
interpretation of the message by the recipient.
The study of
communication can be divided into communication studies, which concerns only
human communication, and biosemiotics, which examines the communication of
organisms in general. Communication is usually visual, auditory, or
biochemical, while human communication is unique for its extensive use of
language.
Nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication describes the
process of conveying meaning in the form of non-word messages. Examples of
nonverbal communication include haptic communication, chronemiccommunication, gestures, body language, facial expression, eye contact,
and how one dresses. Nonverbal communication also relates to intent of a
message. Examples of intent are voluntary, intentional movements like shaking a
hand or winking, as well as involuntary, such as sweating. Speech
also contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage,
e.g.rhythm, intonation, tempo,
and stress. There may even be a pheromone
component. Research has shown that up to 55% of human communication may occur
through non-verbal facial expressions, and a further 38% through paralanguage. It
affects communication most at the subconscious level and establishes trust.
Likewise, written texts include nonverbal elements such as handwriting style,
spatial arrangement of words and the use of emoticons to
convey emotion.
Nonverbal communication demonstrates one of Wazlawick's laws:
you cannot not communicate. Once proximity has formed awareness, living
creatures begin interpreting any signals received.[4] Some
of the functions of nonverbal communication in humans are to complement and
illustrate, to reinforce and emphasize, to replace and substitute, to control
and regulate, and to contradict the denotative message.
Verbal communication
Effective verbal or spoken communication is
dependent on a number of factors and cannot be fully isolated from other important
interpersonal skills such as non-verbal communication, listening skills and
clarification. Human language can be defined as a system of symbols (sometimes known as lexemes) and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated. The word "language"
also refers to common properties of languages. Language learning normally occurs most intensively during human
childhood. Most of the thousands of human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for symbols which enable communication with
others around them. Languages tend to share certain properties, although there
are exceptions. There is no defined line between a language and a dialect. Constructed languages such as Esperanto,programming languages, and various mathematical formalism is not
necessarily restricted to the properties shared by human languages.
Communication is two-way process not merely one-way.
An Effective Communication Process*:
• Use standard terminology when communicating information. •
Request and provide clarification when needed. • Ensure statements are direct
and unambiguous. • Inform the appropriate individuals when the mission or plans
change. • Communicate all information needed by those individuals or teams
external to the team. • Use nonverbal communication appropriately. • Use proper
order when communicating information. ″* for formal English-speaking
groups
Elements of Communication Skills
Communication is a continuous or two-way
process of reaching mutual understanding, in which participants not only
exchange (encode-decode) information, news, ideas and feelings but also create
and share meaning.
“Communication is simply
the act of transferring information from one place to another.” In general,
communication is a means of connecting people or places. In business, it is a
key function of management an organization cannot operate without communication
between levels, departments and employee.
Components of Communication Process
The main components of
communication process are as follows:
1. Context:
Communication is affected by the context in which it takes
place. This context may be physical, social, chronological or cultural. Every
communication proceeds with context. The sender chooses the message to
communicate within a context.
2. Sender / Encoder:
Sender / Encoder are a person who sends the message. A sender
makes use of symbols (words or graphic or visual aids) to convey the message
and produce the required response. Sender may be and individual or a group or
an organization.
3. Message:
Message is a key idea that the sender wants to communicate.
It is a sign that elicits the response of recipient. Communication process
begins with deciding about the message to be conveyed. It must be ensured that
tha main objective of the message is clear.
4. Medium:
Medium is a means used to exchange / transmit the message.
The sender must choose and appropriate medium for transmitting the message else
the message might not be conveyed to the desired recipients. The choice of
appropriate medium of communication is essential for making the message
effective and correctly. The choice of communication medium varies depending
upon the features of communication
Recipient / Decoder:
Recipient / Decoder are a person for whom the message is
intended / aimed / targeted. The degree to whish the decoder understands the
message is dependent upon various factors such as knowledge of recipient, their
responsiveness to the message, and the reliance of encoder on decoder.
5. Feedback:
Feedback is the main component of communication process as it permits the
sender to analyze the efficacy of the message. It helps the sender in
confirming the correct interpretation of message by the decoder. Feedback may
be verbal or non-verbal. It may take written form also in form of memos,
reports, etc.
Barriers to effective human communication
Barriers to effective communication can retard or distort the
message and intention of the message being conveyed which may result in failure
of the communication process or an effect that is undesirable. These include
filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotions, language,
silence, communication apprehension, gender differences and political
correctness
This also includes a lack of expressing
"knowledge-appropriate" communication, which occurs when a person
uses ambiguous or complex legal words, medical jargon, or descriptions of a
situation or environment that is not understood by the recipient.
· Physical barriers. Physical barriers are often due to the nature of the
environment. An example of this is the natural barrier which exists if staff
are located in different buildings or on different sites. Likewise, poor or
outdated equipment, particularly the failure of management to introduce new
technology, may also cause problems. Staff shortages are another factor which
frequently causes communication difficulties for an organization.
· System design. System design faults refer to problems
with the structures or systems in place in an organization. Examples might
include an organizational structure which is unclear and therefore makes it
confusing to know whom to communicate with. Other examples could be inefficient
or inappropriate information systems, a lack of supervision or training, and a
lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities which can lead to staff being
uncertain about what is expected of them.
· Attitudinal barriers. Attitudinal barriers come about as a result of problems
with staff in an organization. These may be brought about, for example, by such
factors as poor management, lack of consultation with employees, personality
conflicts which can result in people delaying or refusing to communicate, the
personal attitudes of individual employees which may be due to lack of
motivation or dissatisfaction at work, brought about by insufficient training
to enable them to carry out particular tasks, or simply resistance to change
due to entrenched attitudes and ideas
· Ambiguity of words/phrases. Words sounding the same but having
different meaning can convey a different meaning altogether. Hence the
communicator must ensure that the receiver receives the same meaning. It is
better if such words are avoided by using alternatives whenever possible.
· Individual linguistic ability. The use of jargon,
difficult or inappropriate words in communication can prevent the recipients
from understanding the message. Poorly explained or misunderstood messages can
also result in confusion. However, research in communication has shown that
confusion can lend legitimacy to research when persuasion fails.
· Physiological barriers. These may result from individuals' personal discomfort,
caused—for example—by ill health, poor eyesight or hearing difficulties.
· Cultural differences. These may result from the cultural differences of
communities around the world, within an individual country (tribal/regional
differences, dialects etc.), between religious groups and in organisations or
at an organisational level - where companies, teams and units may have different
expectations, norms and idiolects. Families and family groups may also
experience the effect of cultural barriers to communication within and between
different family members or groups. For example: words, colours and symbols
have different meanings in different cultures. In most parts of the world,
nodding your head means agreement, shaking your head means no, except in some
parts of the world.
· Bypassing. These happens when the communicators (sender and the
receiver) do not attach the same symbolic meanings to their words. It is when
the sender is expressing a thought or a word but the receiver take it in a
different meaning. For example- ASAP, Rest room
· Technological multi-tasking and absorbency. With a rapid
increase in technologically-driven communication in the past several decades,
individuals are increasingly faced with condensed communication in the form of
e-mail, text, and social updates. This has, in turn, led to a notable change in
the way younger generations communicate and perceive their own self-efficacy to
communicate and connect with others. With the ever-constant presence of another
"world" in one's pocket, individuals are multi-tasking both
physically and cognitively as constant reminders of something else happening
somewhere else bombard them. Though perhaps too new of an advancement to yet
see long-term effects, this is a notion currently explored by such figures as
Sherry Turkle.
Fear of being criticized is a major factor that prevents good
communication. If we exercise simple practices to improve our communication
skill, we can become effective communicators. For example, read an article from
the newspaper or collect some news from the television and present it in front
of the mirror. This will not only boost your confidence, but also improve your
language and vocabulary.
Nonhuman
communication
Every information exchange between living organisms — i.e. transmission of signals that involve a living sender and receiver can be considered a form of communication; and even primitive
creatures such as corals are competent to communicate. Nonhuman communication
also include cell signaling, cellular
communication, and chemical transmissions between primitive
organisms like bacteria and within theplant and fungal kingdoms.
Animals
The broad field of animal communication encompasses most of the issues in ethology. Animal communication can be defined as anybehavior of one animal that affects the current or future behavior of
another animal. The study of animal communication, called zoo semiotics(distinguishable
from anthroposemiotics,
the study of human communication) has played an important part in the
development ofethology, sociobiology, and the
study of animal cognition.
Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of the animal world in
general, is a rapidly growing field, and even in the 21st century so far, a
great share of prior understanding related to diverse fields such as personal
symbolic name use, animal emotions, animal culture andlearning, and
even sexual conduct,
long thought to be well understood, has been revolutionized. A special field of
animal communication has been investigated in more detail such as vibrational
communication.
Plants and fungi
Communication is observed within the plant organism, i.e. within plant cells and between plant cells, between plants of the same or related
species, and between plants and non-plant organisms, especially in theroot zone. Plant roots communicate with rhizome bacteria, fungi, and insects within the soil. These interactions are governed by
syntactic, pragmatic, and semantic rules, and are possible because of the
decentralized "nervous system" of plants. The original meaning of the
word "neuron" in Greek is "vegetable fiber" and recent
research has shown that most of the microorganism plant communication processes
are neuron-like. Plants also communicate via volatiles when exposed to herbivory attack behavior, thus warning neighboring plants. In parallel they produce other volatiles to attract parasites which attack these herbivores. In stress situations plants can overwrite the genomesthey inherited from their parents and
revert to that of their grand- or great-grandparents.
Fungi communicate to coordinate and organize their growth and
development such as the formation of Marcelia and fruiting bodies. Fungi communicate with their
own and related species as well as with non fungal organisms in a great variety
of symbiotic interactions, especially with bacteria, unicellular eukaryote, plants and insects through biochemicals of biotic
origin. The biochemicals trigger the fungal organism to react in a specific
manner, while if the same chemical molecules are not part of biotic messages,
they do not trigger the fungal organism to react. This implies that fungal
organisms can differentiate between molecules taking part in biotic messages
and similar molecules being irrelevant in the situation. So far five different
primary signalling molecules are known to coordinate different behavioral
patterns such asfilamentation, mating, growth, and pathogenicity.
Behavioral coordination and production of signaling substances is achieved through
interpretation processes that enables the organism to differ between self or
non-self, a biotic indicator, biotic message from similar, related, or
non-related species, and even filter out "noise", i.e. similar
molecules without biotic content.
Bacteria quorum sensing
Communication is not a tool used only by humans, plants and
animals, but it is also used by microorganisms like bacteria. The process is
calledquorum sensing.
Through quorum sensing, bacteria are able to sense the density of cells, and
regulate gene expression accordingly. This can be seen in both gram positive
and gram negative bacteria. This was first observed by Fuqua et al. in marine microorganisms
like V. harveyi and V. fischeri.
Models
of communication
Linear Communication Model
The first major model for communication was introduced by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver for Bell Laboratories in 1949 The original model was designed to
mirror the functioning of radio and telephone technologies. Their initial model
consisted of three primary parts: sender, channel, and receiver. The sender was
the part of a telephone a person spoke into, the channel was the telephone
itself, and the receiver was the part of the phone where one could hear the
other person. Shannon and Weaver also recognized that often there is static
that interferes with one listening to a telephone conversation, which they deemed noise.
In a simple model, often referred to as the transmission model
or standard view of communication, information or content (e.g. a message innatural language) is sent in some form (as spoken language)
from an emisor/ sender/ encoderto a destination/ receiver/ decoder.
This common conception of communication simply views communication as a means
of sending and receiving information. The strengths of this model are
simplicity, generality, and quantifiability. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver
structured this model based on the following elements:
1. An information source, which produces a message.
2. A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals
3. A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission
4. A noise source, which distorts the signal while it propagates
through the channel
5. A receiver, which 'decodes' (reconstructs) the message from the
signal.
6. A destination, where the message arrives.
Shannon and Weaver argued that there were three levels of
problems for communication within this theory.
The technical problem: how accurately can the message be
transmitted?
The semantic problem: how precisely is the meaning 'conveyed'?
The effectiveness problem: how effectively does the received
meaning affect behavior?
It assumes communicators are isolated individuals.
No allowance for differing purposes.
No allowance for differing interpretations.
No allowance for unequal power relations.
No allowance for situational contexts.
In 1960, David Berlo expanded on Shannon and Weaver's (1949)
linear model of communication and created the SMCR Model of Communication. The Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of communication
separated the model into clear parts and has been expanded upon by other scholars.
Communication is usually described along a few major dimensions:
Message (what type of things are communicated), source / emisor / sender / encoder (by whom), form (in which form), channel (through which medium),
destination / receiver / target / decoder (to whom), and Receiver. Wilbur
Schram (1954) also indicated that we should also examine the impact that a
message has (both desired and undesired) on the target of the message. Between parties, communication includes acts that confer
knowledge and experiences, give advice and commands, and ask questions. These
acts may take many forms, in one of the various manners of communication. The
form depends on the abilities of the group communicating. Together,
communication content and form make messages that are sent towards a destination. The target can be oneself,
another person or being, another entity (such as a corporation or group of
beings).
Communication can be seen as processes of information
transmission governed by three levels of semiotic rules:
1. Pragmatic (concerned with the relations between
signs/expressions and their users)
2. Semantic (study
of relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent) and
3. Syntactic (formal properties of signs and
symbols).
Therefore, communication is social
interaction where at least two
interacting agents share a common set of signs and a common set ofsemiotic rules. This commonly held rule in some sense ignores autocommunication, including intrapersonal
communication via diaries or self-talk, both secondary phenomena that followed the primary
acquisition of communicative competences within social interactions.
In light of these weaknesses, Barnlund (2008) proposed a
transactional model of communication. The basic premise of the transactional model of communication is
that individuals are simultaneously engaging in the sending and receiving of
messages.
In a slightly more complex form a sender and a receiver are
linked reciprocally.
This second attitude of communication, referred to as the constitutive model or
constructionist view, focuses on how an individual communicates as the
determining factor of the way the message will be interpreted. Communication is
viewed as a conduit; a passage in which information travels from one individual
to another and this information becomes separate from the communication itself.
A particular instance of communication is called a speech act. The
sender's personal filters and the receiver's personal filters may vary
depending upon different regional traditions, cultures, or gender; which may
alter the intended meaning of message contents. In the presence of "communication
noise" on the transmission channel (air, in this case),
reception and decoding of content may be faulty, and thus the speech act may
not achieve the desired effect. One problem with this
encode-transmit-receive-decode model is that the processes of encoding and
decoding imply that the sender and receiver each possess something that
functions as a codebook, and that these two code books are,
at the very least, similar if not identical. Although something like code books
is implied by the model, they are nowhere represented in the model, which
creates many conceptual difficulties.
Theories of coregulation describe communication as a creative and dynamic continuous
process, rather than a discrete exchange of information. Canadian media scholar Harold Innis had the theory that people use different types of media to
communicate and which one they choose to use will offer different possibilities
for the shape and durability of society (Wark, McKenzie 1997). His famous
example of this is usingancient Egypt and looking at the ways they built themselves out of media with
very different properties stone and papyrus. Papyrus is what he called 'Space Binding'. it made possible the
transmission of written orders across space, empires and enables the waging of
distant military campaigns and colonial administration. The other is stone and
'Time Binding',
through the construction of temples and the pyramids can sustain their
authority generation to generation, through this media they can change and
shape communication in their society (Wark, McKenzie 1997).
Noise
In any communication model, noise is interference with the
decoding of messages sent over a channel by an encoder. There are many examples
of noise:
· Environmental noise. Noise that physically disrupts communication, such as standing
next to loud speakers at a party, or the noise from a construction site next to
a classroom making it difficult to hear the professor.
· Physiological-impairment
noise. Physical maladies that prevent effective communication, such as
actual deafness or blindnesspreventing messages from being
received as they were intended.
· Semantic noise. Different interpretations of the meanings of certain words. For
example, the word "weed" can be interpreted as an undesirable plant
in a yard, or as a euphemism for marijuana.
· Syntactical noise. Mistakes in grammar can disrupt communication, such as abrupt
changes in verb tense during
a sentence.
· Organizational noise. Poorly structured communication can prevent the receiver from
accurate interpretation. For example, unclear and badly stated directions can
make the receiver even more lost.
· Cultural noise. Stereotypical assumptions can cause misunderstandings, such as
unintentionally offending a non-Christian person by wishing them a "Merry
Christmas".
· Psychological noise. Certain attitudes can also make communication difficult. For
instance, great anger or sadness may cause someone to lose focus on the present
moment. Disorders such as autism may
also severely hamper effective communication.
Source: wikipadia
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