Chapter 1: Preliminaries to Human Communication

Benefits and forms of human communication
The benefits of human communication -

•  Communication is the act, by one or more person, of sending and receiving messages that occur within a context, are distorted by noise, have some effect (and some ethical dimension), and provide some opportunity for feedback. 
• Communication study will enable you to improve your presentation skills , relationship skills, interaction skills, thinking skills, and leadership skills. 

1. Presentation skills: Enable you to present yourself as a confident, likeable, approachable, and a credible person. Your effectiveness in just about any endeavour depends heavily on your self presentation.
2. Relationship skills: Enable you to build friendships, enter into love relationships, work with colleagues, and interact with family members.
3. Leadership skills: Enable you to communicate information effectively in small groups or with large audiences and your ability to influence others in these same situation are among your most important leadership skills.
4. Critical and creative thinking skills: Help you to approach new situation mindfully- with full concious awareness, increase your ability to distinguish between a sound and valid arguments and one that is filled with logical fallacies, and your ability to use languages to reflect reality more accurately.
5. Interaction skills: Help you to improve your communication in a wide range of forms, from the seemingly simple talk to the employment interview for the job of a lifetime.   

The forms of human communication: 

The major types of human communication are intrapersonal, interpersonal, small group, organizational, public, computer-meditated and mass communication. 

1. Intrapersonal: communication with oneself. Enhancing self esteem, increasing self-awareness, improving problem solving and analysing abilities, increasing self control, reducing stress, managing intrapersonal conflict. 
2. Interpersonal: Communication between two or a few person. Increasing effectiveness in one to one communication, developing and maintaining productive relationships, improving conflict management abilities. 
3. Interviewing: Communication that proceeds through questions and answers. Phrasing questions to get the information you want, presenting your best self, writing resumes and cover letters.
4. Small group: Communication within a small group (5 to 10) of people. Increasing effectiveness as a group member, improving leadership abilities, using groups to achieve specific purposes (brainstorming, problem solving).
5. Organizational: Communication within an organization. Transmitting information, motivating workers; dealing with feedback, the grapevine, and gossip; increasing worker satisfaction, productivity and retention. 
6. Public: Communication of speaker with audience.Communicating information more effectively; increasing persuasive abilities; developing, organizing styling and delivering messages; becoming a more critical listener. 
7. Computer-meditated: Communication within people via computers. Increasing security in e-communications, combining CMC with face to face communication; networking for social and professional purposes.
8. Mass: Communication addressed to an extremely large audience, mediated by audio and/or visual means. Improving abilities to use the media to greater effectiveness, increasing ability to control the media, avoiding being taken in by the media, becoming a more critical consumer. 

 Elements of human communication
The communication context

• Communication context has at least 4 dimensions: physical, social-psychological, temporal and culture.

1. The physical context is the tangible or concrete environment in which communication takes place.
2. The social-psychological context  includes the friendliness or unfriendliness, formality or informality, and seriousness or humorousness of the situation. 
3. The temporal context  includes the time of the day, the time in history in which the communication takes place and how a message fits into the sequence of communication events.
4. The cultural context has to do with your culture: the beliefs, values and ways of behaving that are shared by a group of people and passed down from one generation to the next.

Source receiver

1. SENDER/ENCODER
The sender also known as the encoder decides on the message to be sent, the best/most effective way that it can be sent. All of this is done bearing the receiver in mind. In a word, it is his/her job to conceptualize.
The sender may want to ask him/herself questions like: What words will I use? Do I need signs or pictures?

2. MEDIUM
The medium is the immediate form which a message takes. For example, a message may be communicated in the form of a letter, in the form of an email or face to face in the form of a speech.

3. CHANNEL
The channel is that which is responsible for the delivery of the chosen message form. For example post office, internet, radio.

4. RECEIVER
The receiver or the decoder is responsible for extracting/decoding meaning from the message. The receiver is also responsible for providing feedback to the sender. In a word, it is his/her job to INTERPRET.

5. FEEDBACK
This is important as it determines whether or not the decoder grasped the intended meaning and whether communication was successful.

6. CONTEXT
Communication does not take place in a vacuum. The context of any communication act is the environment surrounding it. This includes, among other things, place, time, event, and attitudes of sender and receiver.

7. NOISE (also called interference)
This is any factor that inhibits the conveyance of a message. That is, anything that gets in the way of the message being accurately received, interpreted and responded to. Noise may be internal or external. A student worrying about an incomplete assignment may not be attentive in class (internal noise) or the sounds of heavy rain on a galvanized roof may inhibit the reading of a storybook to second graders (external noise).
The communication process is dynamic, continuous, irreversible, and contextual. It is not possible to participate in any element of the process without acknowledging the existence and functioning of the other elements.

Effects

Communication always has an effect which may be cognitive, affective or psycho-motor or a combination.

1. Intellectual (or cognitive) effects are changes in your thinking.
2. Affective effects are changes in your attitude, values, beliefs and emotions. 
3. Psychomotor effects are changes in behaviour.

Principle of human communication

Communication is purposeful 

Communication may serve a variety of purposes, for example, to learn, to relate, to help, to influence, to play. Use your purposes to guide your verbal and non verbal messages. Identify the purposes in the messages of others.

Communication is transactional

The elements in communication are always changing, interdependent, communication messages depends on the individual for their meaning and effect and each person is both speaker and listener. Recognize that messages are influenced by a variety of factors and to understand a person's messages, you need to know the person to some extend. And for others to understand, they need to know you.

Communication is a package of signals

Verbal and non verbal messages work together in 'packages', usually to communicate the same meaning but at other times, different or even opposite meanings. Look for both verbal and non verbal messages for a clearer and more complete understanding of another's meaning. 

Communication is a process of adjustment 

Communication can take place only to the extent that the communicators use the same system of signals. Adjust your verbal and non-verbal messages to the situation and the other individuals. 

Communication involves content and relationship dimensions

Messages may refer to the real world, to something external to both speaker and listener and to the relationships between the parties. Distinguish between content and relationship messages and deal with relationship issues as relationship issues.

Communication is ambiguous

All messages and all relationships are potentially ambiguous. Use clear and specific terms, ask if you're being understood, and paraphrase complex ideas. 

Communication is punctuated

Communication events are continuous transactions, punctuated into causes and effects for convenience. See alternative punctuations when trying to understand another's point of view.

Communication is inevitable, irreversible and unrepeatable 

Messages are (almost) always being sent, cant be communicated and are always unique, one time occurrences. Be careful of what you say; you wont be able to take it back.

The competent communicator

• Communication competence is knowledge of the elements and rules of communication, which vary from one culture to another.
• The competent communicator is defined as one who thinks critically and mindfully, understands the role of power, is culturally sensitive, is ethical, and is an effective listener.