Communication Skills

Communication 

Communication  is the act of developing meaning among entities or groups through the use of sufficiently mutually understood signs, symbols, and semiotic conventions.

The main steps inherent to all communication are:

The formation of communicative motivation or reason.

Message composition (further internal or technical elaboration on what exactly to express).

Message encoding (for example, into digital data, written text, speech, pictures, gestures and so on).

Transmission of the encoded message as a sequence of signals using a specific channel or medium.

Noise sources such as natural forces and in some cases human activity (both intentional and accidental) begin influencing the quality of signals propagating from the sender to one or more receivers.

Reception of signals and reassembling of the encoded message from a sequence of received signals.

Decoding of the reassembled encoded message.

Interpretation and making sense of the presumed original message.

Verbal communication

v Verbal communication is the spoken or written conveyance of a message. 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 large numbers 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 formalisms are not necessarily restricted to the properties shared by human languages.

 

v As previously mentioned, language can be characterized as symbolic. Charles Ogden and I.A Richards developed The Triangle of Meaning model to explain the symbol (the relationship between a word), the referent (the thing it describes), and the meaning (the thought associated with the word and the thing).

 

v The properties of language are governed by rules. Language follows phonological rules (sounds that appear in a language), syntactic rules (arrangement of words and punctuation in a sentence), semantic rules (the agreed upon meaning of words), and pragmatic rules .

 

v The meanings that are attached to words can be literal, or otherwise known as denotative; relating to the topic being discussed, or, the meanings take context and relationships into account, otherwise known as connotative; relating to the feelings, history, and power dynamics of the communicators.

 

v Contrary to popular belief, signed languages of the world (e.g., American Sign Language) are considered to be verbal communication because their sign vocabulary, grammar, and other linguistic structures abide by all the necessary classifications as spoken languages. There are however, nonverbal elements to signed languages, such as the speed, intensity, and size of signs that are made. A signer might sign "yes" in response to a question, or they might sign a sarcastic-large slow yes to convey a different nonverbal meaning. The sign yes is the verbal message while the other movements add nonverbal meaning to the message.

 Non-verbal communication

v Nonverbal communication explains the processes of conveying a type of information in a form of non-linguistic representations.

v Examples of nonverbal communication include haptic communication, chromic communication, gestures, body language, facial expressions, eye contact etc. Nonverbal communication also relates to the intent of a message.

v 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. It affects communication most at the subconscious level and establishes trust. Likewise, written texts include nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, the spatial arrangement of words and the use of emoticons to convey emotion.

 

v Nonverbal communication demonstrates one of Paul Watzlawick's laws: You cannot not communicate. Once proximity has formed awareness, living creatures begin interpreting any signals received .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.

v Nonverbal cues are heavily relied on to express communication and to interpret others' communication and can replace or substitute verbal messages. However, non-verbal communication is ambiguous. When verbal messages contradict non-verbal messages, observation of non-verbal behavior is relied on to judge another's attitudes and feelings, rather than assuming the truth of the verbal message alone.

             

v There are several reasons as to why non-verbal communication plays a vital role in communication:

v "Non-verbal communication is omnipresent." They are included in every single communication act. To have total communication, all non-verbal channels such as the body, face, voice, appearance, touch, distance, timing, and other environmental forces must be engaged during face-to-face interaction. Written communication can also have non-verbal attributes. E-mails, web chats, and the social media have options to change text font colors, stationary, add emoticons, capitalization, and pictures in order to capture non-verbal cues into a verbal medium.

 

v "Non-verbal behaviors are multifunctional." Many different non-verbal channels are engaged at the same time in communication acts and allow the chance for simultaneous messages to be sent and received.

 

v "Non-verbal behavior's may form a universal language system." Smiling, crying, pointing, caressing, and glaring are non-verbal behavior's that are used and understood by people regardless of nationality. Such non-verbal signals allow the most basic form of communication when verbal communication is not effective due to language barriers.

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