Unit 13 Communication

1. What Is Communication?
Communication is a process whereby information is enclosed in a package and imparted by a sender to a
receiver via some medium. The receiver then decodes the message and gives the sender a feedback. All
forms of communication require a sender, a message, and an intended recipient.

Communicating with others involves three primary steps:

Thought: first, information exists in the mind of the sender. This can be a concept, idea, information, or
feelings.

Encoding: next, a message is sent to a receiver in words or other symbols.

Decoding: lastly, the receiver translates the words or symbols into a concept or information that a
person can understand.

There are a variety of verbal and non-verbal forms of communication. These include verbal means, such
as speech, song, and tone of voice, and nonverbal means, such as body language, sign language,
paralanguage, touch, eye contact, through media, i.e. pictures, graphics and sound, and writing.
Feedback is a critical component of effective communication.

Information communication revolutions

Over time, technology has progressed and has created new forms of and ideas about communication.
These technological advances revolutionized the processes of communication. Researchers have divided
how communication was transformed into three revolutionary stages:

In the 1st Information Communication Revolution, the first written communication began, with
pictographs. These writings were made on stone, which were too heavy to transfer.

During this era, written communication was not mobile, but nonetheless existed.

In the 2nd Information Communication Revolution, writing began to appear on paper, papyrus, clay,
wax, etc. Common alphabets were introduced, allowing the uniformity of language across large
distances. Much later the Gutenberg printing-press was invented.

In the 3rd Information Communication Revolution, information can now be transferred via controlled
waves and electronic signals.

Communication is thus a process by which information is conveyed in an attempt to create shared

understanding. This process requires a variety of skills in interpersonal processing: listening, observing,
speaking, questioning, analyzing, gestures and evaluating. It is through communication that
collaboration and cooperation occur.
Verbal communication
Human spoken and written languages can be described as a system of symbols (sometimes known as
lexemes) and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated. The word “language” is also
used to refer to common properties of languages. Most human languages use patterns of sound or
gesture for symbols which enable communication with others around them. There are thousands of
human languages, and these seem to share certain properties, even though many shared properties have
exceptions. There is no defined line between a language and a dialect. Constructed languages such as
Esperanto, programming languages, and various mathematical formalisms are not necessarily restricted
to the properties shared by human languages. Communication is the flow or exchange of information
within people or a group of people.

Nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication is the process of communicating through sending and receiving wordless
messages. Such messages can be communicated through gesture, body language or posture; facial
expression and eye contact, object communication such as clothing, hairstyles or even architecture, or
symbols and infographics, as well as through an aggregate of the above, such as behavioral
communication. Nonverbal communication plays a key role in every person’s day to day life, from
employment to romantic engagements.

Speech may also contain nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, emotion
and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress. Likewise, written
texts have nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words, or the use of
emoticons.

Other communication channels such as telegraphy fit into this category, whereby signals travel from
person to person by an alternative means. These signals can in themselves be representative of words,
objects or merely be state projections. Trials have shown that humans can communicate directly in this
way without body language, voice tonality or words.

Effective communication
Effective communication occurs when a desired effect is the result of intentional or unintentional
information sharing, which is interpreted between multiple entities and acted on in a desired way. This
effect also ensures that the messages are not distorted during the communication process. Effective
communication should generate the desired effect and maintain the effect, with the potential to increase
the effect of the message. Therefore, effective communication serves the purpose for which it was
planned or designed. Possible purposes might be to elicit change, generate action, create understanding,
inform or communicate a certain idea or point of view. When the desired effect is not achieved, factors
such as barriers to communication are explored, with the intention being to discover how the
communication has been ineffective.

Barriers to effective 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.

Communication noise
In any communication, noise is interference with the decoding of messages sent over a channel by an
encoder. There are many examples of noise: environmental noise, physiological-impairment noise,
semantic noise, syntactical noise, organizational noise, cultural noise and psychological noise.

Nonhuman communication
Communication in many of its facets is not limited to humans, or even to primates. 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 includes animal communication, cell
signaling, cellular communication, and chemical transmissions between primitive organisms like
bacteria and within the plant and fungal kingdoms.

Communication as academic discipline

Communication as an academic discipline, sometimes called “communicology,” relates to all the ways
we communicate, so it embraces a large body of study and knowledge. The communication discipline
includes both verbal and nonverbal messages. A body of scholarship all about communication is
presented and explained in textbooks, electronic publications, and academic journals. In the journals,
researchers report the results of studies that are the basis for an ever-expanding understanding of how
we all communicate.

Words & Expressions

paralanguage: 副语言

pictograph: 象形文字

papyrus: 莎草纸

esperanto: 世界语

infographic: 信息图表

prosodic: 韵律的

primate: 灵长类
2. Human Communication
Definition of human communication
Human Communication is giving, receiving or exchanging ideas, information, signals or messages
through appropriate media, enabling individuals or groups to persuade, to seek information, to give
information or to express emotions.

This broad definition includes body-language, skills of speaking and writing. It outlines the objectives of
communication. It emphasizes listening as an important aspect of communication.

Forms of human communication

There are various forms in communication like intrapersonal communication, interpersonal
communication, group communication and mass communication. Mass communication plays a vital role
because it reaches a very large number of audiences.

Intrapersonal communication is a communication which happens yourself. Here both source(sender) and
receiver is only one, so the feedback works without any interruption. For example, a person can
communicate himself or herself through pain, thinking, feelings and emotions, etc.

Source
↕
Receiver

Intrapersonal communication

Interpersonal communication is to convey information face to face between two or more persons, or
through some simple non-mass media, such as telephone and letters. In the interpersonal
communication, the source and receiver are involved in the communication process together. Here the
source becomes a receiver and receiver becomes source because the dynamic communication process
will generate the feedback shared between source and receiver.

Source / Receiver ↔ Receiver / Source

Interpersonal communication

Group communication is mainly involved in the information exchange inside a group. In the
communication process, every member becomes a source as well as receiver through sharing
information and gives the feedback to another.

Multiple Source / Receiver participants exchanging information and feedback

Group communication

In mass communication, basically there are a large number of audiences and they are not grouped
together in one place, so we need certain tool or technology for communication process. In mass
communication, there is no direct access to receiver. For that they need media like newspaper, radio,
television and internet. Here the audience feedback is very less or delayed.

Source → Medium → Source / Receiver

Mass communication

Words & Expressions

elicit: 引发，诱出

intrapersonal communication: 人内传播

interpersonal communication: 人际传播

3. Mass Communication
Mass communication is the study of how individuals and entities relay information through mass media
to large segments of the population at the same time. It is usually understood to relate to newspaper,
magazine, and book publishing, as well as radio, television and film, as these media are used for
disseminating information, news and advertising.

Source notes

What is communication[EB/OL].(2013-03-28)[2022-01-18].[Link]
document/pdf/[Link].

Forms of communication[EB/OL].(2014-07-12)[2022-01-23].[Link]
forms-of-communication/

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