Communication
Communication
Communication
activity of exchanging information and meaning across space and time using various technical or
natural means, whichever is available or preferred.
Communication requires a sender, a message, a medium and a recipient, although the receiver does
not have to be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication;
thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space. Communication requires
that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonality. The communication
process is complete once the receiver understands the sender's message. [citation needed]
Discursive communication three primary steps:[2]
Thought: First, information exists in the mind of the sender. This can be a concept, idea,
information, or feeling.
Decoding: Finally, the receiver translates the words or symbols into a concept or information
that a person can understand.
There are a range of verbal and non-verbal forms of communication. These include body
language, eye contact, sign language, haptic communication, and chronemics. Other examples
are media content such as pictures, graphics, sound, and writing. The Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities also defines the communication to include the display of
text, Braille, tactile communication, large print, accessible multimedia, as well as written and plain
language, human-reader,augmentative and alternative modes, means and formats of
communication, including accessible information and communication technology.[3] Feedback is a
critical component of effective communication.
Contents
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1 Theory of Communication
2 Non-verbal communication
3 Verbal communication
4 Oral communication
5 Business communication
7 Effective communication
9 Nonhuman communication
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10 Communication cycle
11 Communication noise
13 See also
14 References
15 Further reading
Theory of Communication[edit]
Main article: Communication Theory
Some definitions of Communication include:
Expression, interaction, and influence: how people interact causes and effects
communication, and it is mediated by psychological variables that cause behaviour such as
emotions, attitudes, beliefs, personality.[7]
Information processing.[8]
Participation in a common culture and society: shared patterns of action and meaning make
communication possible.[9]
Non-verbal communication[edit]
Main article: Nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication describes the process of conveying meaning in the form of non-word
messages. Some forms of non verbal communication include chronemics, haptics, gesture, body
language or posture,facial expression and eye contact, object communication such
as clothing, hairstyles, architecture, symbols, infographics, and tone of voice, as well as through an
aggregate of the above. Speech also contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage. This
form of communication is the most known for interacting with people. These include voice lesson
quality, emotion and speaking style as well as prosodic features such
as rhythm, intonation and stress. Research has shown that up to 55% of human communication may
occur through non verbal facial expressions, and a further 38% through paralanguage. [10] Likewise,
written texts include nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words
and the use of emoticons to convey emotional expressions in pictorial form.
Verbal communication[edit]
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 spoken and pictorial 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" 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 seem to share certain properties although
many of these include 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 from one person to another or a
group of people.
Oral communication[edit]
Oral communication, while primarily referring to spoken verbal communication, can also employ
visual aids and non-verbal elements to support the conveyance of meaning. Oral communication
includes speeches, presentations, discussions, and aspects of interpersonal communication. As a
type of face-to-face communication, body language and choice tonality play a significant role, and
may have a greater impact upon the listener than informational content. This type of communication
also garners immediate feedback, and generally involves the cooperative principle.
Business communication[edit]
Main article: Business communication
A business can flourish only when all objectives to the organization are achieved effectively. For
efficiency in an organization, all the people to the organization must be able to convey their message
properly.[citation needed] Communication skills have proven to be the most powerful element to possess for
in a skill set of employee.To equip yourselves for a smooth career in the field of management, it is
even more essential to grasp, practice and put on display high levels of communication skills in
regular and crisis situations. Effective communication skills act as ladder to the managers and
leaders for quick progression in their careers.
misunderstandings in advance. A frequent method for this purpose is reiterating what one heard in
one's own words and asking the other person if that really was what was meant. [13]
Effective communication[edit]
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 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.
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.[citation needed]
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.
Physiological barriers. These may result from individuals' personal discomfort, causedfor
exampleby ill health, poor eyesight or hearing difficulties.
Nonhuman communication[edit]
See also: Biocommunication (science), Interspecies communication and Biosemiotics
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 the plant and fungalkingdoms.
Animal communication[edit]
The broad field of animal communication encompasses most of the issues in ethology. Animal
communication can be defined as any behavior 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 of ethology,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 and learning,
and even sexual conduct, long thought to be well understood, has been revolutionized.
Plants also communicate via volatiles when exposed to herbivory attack behavior, thus warning
neighboring plants.[19] In parallel they produce other volatiles to attractparasites which attack these
herbivores. In stress situations plants can overwrite the genomes they inherited from their parents
and revert to that of their grand- or great-grandparents.[citation needed]
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 as filamentation, 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 nonself, a biotic indicator, biotic message from similar, related, or non-related species, and even filter out
"noise", i.e. similar molecules without biotic content.[20]