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Communication

Communication is the activity of conveying information through the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior. It is the meaningful exchange of information between two or more living creatures.
Communication is “any act by which one person gives to or receives from person information about that person's needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge, or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or non-linguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes.”

Levels of Communication

There are mainly four types of communication which are used in various ways to convey the final message to the receiver.
Verbal communication includes sounds, words, language, and speech. Speaking is an effective way of communicating and helps in expressing our emotions in words. This form of communication is further classified into four types, which are:

1. Intrapersonal Communication
This form of communication is extremely private and restricted to ourselves. It includes the silent conversations we have with ourselves, wherein we juggle roles between the sender and receiver who are processing our thoughts and actions. This process of communication when analyzed can either be conveyed verbally to someone or stay confined as thoughts.

2. Interpersonal Communication
This form of communication takes place between two individuals and is thus a one-on-one conversation. Here, the two individuals involved will swap their roles of sender and receiver in order to communicate in a clearer manner.

3. Small Group Communication
This type of communication can take place only when there are more than two people involved. Here the number of people will be small enough to allow each participant to interact and converse with the rest. Press conferences, board meetings, and team meetings are examples of group communication. Unless a specific issue is being discussed, small group discussions can become chaotic and difficult to interpret by everybody. This lag in understanding information completely can result in miscommunication.

4. Public Communication
This type of communication takes place when one individual addresses a large gathering of people. Election campaigns and public speeches are example of this type of communication. In such cases, there is usually a single sender of information and several receivers who are being addressed.

Interactional Model of Communication

The interactional model of communication contains all of the concepts of the linear model and adds the concept of feedback. Feedback is a response from the receiver to the sender about the message. The addition of the concept of feedback makes the linear model become more circular.

FIGURE 1.2 INTERACTIONAL MODEL OF COMMUNICATION

Wilbur Schramm is one of the early theorists to demonstrate the model of communication as circular (see Figure 1.2). The decoding of a message by the receiver starts the person’s process of encoding—hence, the complete circle.

The roles of encoder and decoder are interchangeable. Thus, each person in the communication process is encoder and decoder. This circular model suggests the interesting notion that these functions can go on simultaneously. While you are talking, your listener is not only breaking your code and trying to make sense of it (decoding), but he or she also considering his or her next transmission (encoding). In the case of nonverbals, messages may already be encoded and on their way. For example, when someone is saying something with which you disagree, but you don’t want to interrupt him/her, you continue listening silently (decoding) while shaking your head back and forth in a “no” motion (encoding).

Schramm also suggests that the sender and receiver can perform their functions only in terms of their own field of experiences. Thus, both the receiver and sender are limited by their experience. Nevertheless, there must be some experience common to both in order for the communication to be useful and for the intended message to be conveyed.

We may sometimes have to build bridges or overlaps before we can have communication. Furthermore, for your messages to be more effective, they must somehow fall in the area of overlap. Two people from completely different cultures with different languages and no common experiences may find that communication becomes nearly impossible without help from a third party such as a translator. Even then, barriers are everywhere. The first priority would be to identify common ground. Common ground or mutual understanding is important in communication and essential for interpersonal communication.

Transactional Model of Communication

The transactional model of communication more accurately reflects a real-world model of interpersonal communication by illustrating that people communicating act simultaneously as the sender and receiver in a cooperative fashion. This cooperation makes the sender and the receiver responsible for the effectiveness of the communication. The transactional model displays communication interaction as ongoing negotiations of meaning. As mentioned earlier, it is very difficult for two people coming from completely different languages and no common experiences to take part in this negotiation of meaning. Individual come to a communication interaction with their own field of experiences. This includes things like personal culture, history, gender, social influences and past impacting experiences. Your field of experience is the frame of reference you bring to each situation you experience. At times, individuals’ fields of experiences overlap and they share things in common. Other times, individuals’ fields of experiences do not overlap; and because they share no common past experiences, it is difficult to negotiate meaning.