FOUNDATION OF

COMMUNICATION
2nd week

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 Most people are not effective communicators.
 20% of the nation’s (USA) young people cannot
accomplish any of the simplest of
communication tasks,
 almost 63% cannot give clear oral directions,
 About 95 percent of the population reports some
anxiety about communicating with a person or in
groups,the apprehension level of those who fear
speaking in public is estimated at 50 to 70 %,
 And adults listen at a 25 % level of efficiency.

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 Skills in demand
 Percentage of executives who ranked skills as very important:
 Listening 80%
 Interpersonal 78
 Problem solving 76
 Technical within an industry 71
 Basic computer knowledge 70
 Creativity 46
 Administrative organizational 36
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 Did you know?
 The average person spends 30 percent of
his/her waking hours in conversation….

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 Communication defined
 Comm. İs a conscious or unconscious,
intentional or unintentional process in which
feelings an ideas are expressed as verbal and/or
nonverbal messages that are sent, received and
comprehended.
 This process can be;
 accidental (having no intent),
 expressive (resulting rom the emotional state of the
person),or
 rhetorical (resulting from specific goals of the
communicatior).

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 Intrapersonal comm
 Human comm occurs on the intrapersonal,
interpersonal and public level.
 Intrapersonal comm is communicating
with yourself. It encompasses such
activities as thought processing, personal
decision making, listening and determining
self-concept.

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 Interpersonal comm
 Refers to comm that takes place between
2 or more persons who estblish a
communicative relationship.
 Forms of interpersonal comm include
face-to-face or mediated conversations,
interviews, and small-gruop discussions.

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 Public comm
 Is characterized by a speaker’s sending a
message to an audience. It may be direct,
such as a face-to-face message dlivered
by a speaker to an audience, or indirect,
such as a message relayed over radio or
television.

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 All communication is:
 dynamic, because the process is
constantly in a state of change. As the
attitudes, expectations, feelings, and
emotions of persons who are cmunicating
change, the nature of their communication
changes as well.

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 Continuous
 Because is never stops.
 Whether asleep or awake, we are always
processing ideas and information through
our dreams, thoughts and expressions.
 Our brains remain active; we are
communicating.

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 Irreversible
 Once we send a message, we can not
undo it.
 Once we make a slip of the tongue, give a
meaningful glance, or generate an
emotional outburst, we cannot erase it.
Our apologies or denials cannot eradicate
what has taken place.

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 Interactive
 We are constantly in contact with other
people and with ourselves.
 Others react to our speech and actions,
and we react to our on speech and
actions, and then react to those reactions.
 Thus, a cyle of action and reaction
becomes the basis for our communication.

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 Contextual
 Itis a part of our entire human experience.
 The complexity of communication dictates
that we develop the awareness and the
skills to function effectively as
comunicatiors and to adapt to the setting,
the people who are present, and the
purpose of the communication.

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 To be an effective communicator;
 You need to understand;
 How the comm process operates as a
system,
 How you send and process information,
 How you reason your way to conclusions &
evaluate the ideas that others send,
 The relationship between communication &
culture,
 What ethical standards they use making their
decisions.
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 The components of human comm.
 As human beings, we are capable of selective
comm.
 That is, from the wide repertory available to us,
we can choose the symbol we believe best
represents the idea or concept we wish to
express.
 We can think in abstractions, plan events in the
future, & store & revall information.
 Selective comm allows us to combine sounds
into complicated structures and therefore
describe events & objects.

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 When we communicate
 we encode (take ideas & put theninto
message form),
 send the ideas through a channel
composed of our primary signal system
(the senses: seeing, hearing, tasting,
smelling, & touching) to someone who
receives them using his or her primary
signal system,
 decode (translate) the message. (Figure
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Figure 1: Encoding & decoding

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 You ask one of your friends, “may i borrow
a pencil?
 She says, “yes” & gives you a pencil.
 You have jist participated in an effective
comunication transaction.
 You (a communicator) encoded a
message (may i borrow a pencil?)&
 Send it out over a channel (vocal tones
carried on sound waves) to your friend.
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 Your friend received the message (by
using sensory agents, ears) &
 decoded it (understood that you wanted a
pencil.
 Your friend’s feedback (the word yes &
handing the pencil to you) indicated the
message was succesfully received &
decoded.

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 Now suppose that the person sitting next
to you is from France and speaks no
English.
 Unless both of you communicate in
French, he will be unable to decode your
message.

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 Remember that;
 The act of speech is not itself comm.
 Speech is only a biological act: the
utterance of sounds, possiblyof vocal
symbols of language.
 Comm is broader: it involves the
development of a relationship amng
people in which there is shared meaning
among the participants.
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 Component of Comm
 Figure illustrates how the components of the
communication process work.
 The circles representing;
 the source (the originator of the message) and
 the receiver (the recipient of the message)
 overlap as each person sends messages
(communication) and
 feedback (response toa message)
 to other through a frame of reference (a perceptual
screen).

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 Communicator perception
 Your perception –the way you view the world – affect
your interpretation of a communication stimulus.
 Man factors make up your perceptual filter. These
factors include;
 Your culture (the background worldview you hold)
 Communication skills (develop from experience & training)
 Physical & emotional states (how you feel at this particular time)
 Experiences (your cultural background)
 Attitudes (negative and positive predispositions to respond to
any particular stimulus)
 Memory (ability to store and recall information)
 Expectations (what you anticipate will occur)

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 Because of perceptual differences, 2 people
reporting on an incident they have both seen
may report their observations differently.
 You encode & decode messages through your
perceptual filters.
 These percepual filters establish expectations
for the outcome of the comm, & expectations
guide your interpretation of communicator’s
message.

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 The source & the message
 The comm process begins when the
source is consciously or unconsciously
stimulated by some event, object, or idea.
This need to send a message is then
followed by a memory search to find the
appropriate language (verbal or nonverbal
or both) in which to encode the message.

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 The channel
 During a communicative act, the encoded message is
cared through a channel/s
 If the comm occurs face-to-face, these channels may be
some or all of the five senses.
 Typically, w rely on sight and sound as channels in
speaking and listening.
 Instead of communicating face to face, however, we may
choose to use an electronic channel that uses sound
(eg, telephone) or seeing & hearing (eg. Tv).
 In some instances, we may choose to send a message
to someone by means of physical contact,such as by
tapping the person on the shoulder.
 In this case, we use the touch channel.

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 The receiver and the message
 At the end of the channel, the receiver must decode the
message before comm can be accomplished. On going
verbal and nonverbal signals, the rceiver processes
them through a memory search so that the signals are
translated into the receiver’s language system.
 This decoded message is not identical to the one
encoded by the source because each person’s symbol
system is shaped by a unique set of perceptions.
 A chef & an amateur cook, for instance, may have
different concepts of what “season to taste” means in a
recipe.

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 Feedback
 Once the receiver assigns meaning to the received
message, he is in a position to respond.
 This responce, called feedback, can be a verbal or a
nonverbal reaction to the message, or both.
 Feedback indicates whether the receiver understand (eg.
by nodding), misunderstands (eg. by shrugging the
shoulders and saying, “I don’t understand”), encourages
the source to continue (eg. by leaning forward & saying
“yes”), or disagrees (eg. by pulling back & saying “no”).
 The act of responding, by which the receiver sends
feedback to the source, actually shifts the role of the
receiver to that of source.

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 Noise
 Messages are influenced not only by the
interpretations of each communicator but
also by noise, which is any internal or
external interference in comm process.
 Noise can be cause by some problems:
>>

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 Environmental noise
 is outside interference that prevents the
receiver from gaining the msg.
 This can happen when you are in the
kitchen running water and the sound
muffles your friend’s voice when he asks
you a question from the adjoining room.

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Physiological-impairment noise
A physical problem can block the effective
sending or receiving of a msg, thus
creating physiological-impairment noise.
 For example, deaf persons do not have
the sensory capabilities to receive a msg
in the same way as do hearing people.

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 Semantic noise
 Problems may arise regarding the meaning of
words -- semantic– creating semantic noise.
 For example, semantic noise may result when
people use language that is common only to one
specific group, a particular part of a country,
another nation, or a particular field, profession or
organization.
 Travellers frequently encounter semantic
problem.
 eg. A man asks for a soda will probably get a
soft drink, rather than a mixture of ice cream,
fruit flavoring and soda water.
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 Experts (eg. professor, doctor, lawyer,
mechanics) sometimes forget that those
who do not have as much knowledge of
their field may not be familiar with its
vocabulary.
 eg. Clients often complain that lawyers fail
to communicate clearly because they use
legal jargon, which is confusing to
nonlawyers.

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 Similarly, people sometimes use the initials of
organizations, equipment or activities rather than
their full names.
 Computer specialists use such initials as LC D,
GDSS, CMS etc., forgetting that most people do
not recognize these abbreviations.
 To avoid semantic problems, communicators
must be aware that although they know the
meanings of the words they use, those at the
receiving end must assign similar meanings for
comm to be effective.
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 Syntactical noise
 Each language has a syntax, a customary way
of putting words together in a grammatical form.
 Various types of syntactical noise, that is
inappropriate grammatical usage, can interfere
with clear comm.
 eg. Receivers may become confused if
someone changes tenses in the middle of a
story (“she went down the street and says to
him…”).

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 Organizational noise
 When the source fails to realize that certain
ideas are best grasped when presented in a
structured order, organizational noise may
result.
 A geography instructor presents ideas in a
random fashion: first he talks about India, then
China, then Turkey, then India & than China.
 After a while, his students become so confused
they have absoletly no idea which country he is
discussing.

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 Many methods of org. can provide a clear
structure.
 In giving directions, a person may set a pattern
by starting at the departure point & processing in
geographical order (eg. Go to the first street,
turn right, proceed 3 blocks, & turn left)
 If material is presented in a specific pattern, the
receiver is likely to grasp the meaning.
 If the material is not organized, the receiver
must not only try to figure out what is said but
also sort out the information.

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 Cultural noise
 Results from preconceived, unyielding
attitudes derived from a group or society
about how members of that culture should
act or in what they should / not believe.
 Individuals in a culture who believe in a
set pattern of rules and regulations might
say, “Nice people don’t do things like that”
and “we do it this way”.

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 An instance of cultural noise is the attitude that
any action by a representative of one’s own
group is always right whereas the actions by a
member of another group are wrong.
 Thus, a person who has always voted for
candidates of one political party may find it
difficult to be open-minded when listening to
information about the opposing political party’s
candidates.

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 Psychological noise
 We sometimes find ourselves in situations
where psychological noise --stress,
frustration, irritation– causes us to send or
receive msg ineffectively.
 Think of what happens when you are so
angry that you “can’t think straight”.
 This is a normal example of psychological
noise getting in the way of effective comm.

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 Some people have severe psychological
problems that cause them to communicate in
unusual ways.
 People with schizophrenia (a disintegration of
personolity) or catatonia (immobilty &
speechlessness) may have great difficulty
communicating.
 They may talk in riddles and rhymes, makep up
words, switch personalities, or not speak at all.

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 These noise factors can interfere with effective comm in
varying stages of the
 linear,
 interactional or
 transactional models.
 eg. Semantic noise may stop the sender from encoding
a msg if she does not have the vocabulary to create the
msg.
 The msg may not get into the channel if there is
physiological-impairment noise because the sender has
laryngitis.
 The msg may not get clearly out of the channel if there is
environmental noise that creates static on the telephone
line carrying the signal. >>

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 The receiver may not be able to receive the msg
if she is deaf & can’t hear the intended msg.
 The receiver may be experiencing psychological
noise: though he receives the msg, he may be
so disoriented that he doesn’t really grasp the
intent of the information.
 Semantic and syntactic noise, he may not be
able to decode the msg because he doesnt
speak the same language as the sender. (Fig)

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 Dealing with noise
 Although noise interferes with comm, we must
learn to adapt to & compensate for it because it
is commonly present.
 For example: a source should offer opportunities
for feedback to make sure that a msg has been
received & understood.
 Rather than assuming that someone in another
room has heard your msg, ord the statemnt so
that it requires an answer: “the phone is for you;
are you going to answer it?”

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 Another way to compensate for noise is to define
terms that might be misunderstood or may not
be part of the receiver’s vocabulary.
 Rather than repeating exactly the same words in
a msg that has been misunderstood, you can
change the terms or the sentence structure to
aid the receiver in decoding the msg.
 In the same way, a receiver should ask
questions or repeat the msg’s general ideas to
be sure that distractions have not interfered with
comprehension.
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 The context
 Comm does not occur in a vacuum. It always
relates to the context:
 Who is present, where the comm is taking place,
&
 General attitude of those assembled.
 Where we are & who is with us affect our comm.
 Such factors as the size of the room, the color of
the walls, & the type & placement of the furniture
can all affect how we feel, the way in which we
communicate, & the type of communicating we
engage in. For example: >>

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 Placinga large number of people in a
small work area, as is often the case with
direct-phone salespeople, may bring
about emotional stress that can be
reflected by erratic comm.

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 Comm as a system
 Think of your daily msgs, your sending &
receiving.
 There is a system, a pattern, to the way you
communicate with others.
 The pattern centers on who speaks, what the speaker
says or is allowed to say, the way in which the msg is
sent, & where the speaker and receiver are.
 The participants, the setting, the purpose, and how they
interact form the basis of the comm system.

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 Thefollow of comm in a consistent pattern
… p. 14

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