Human Communication

• Communication is the process by which individuals exchange information, ideas, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, opinions, or knowledge through verbal and nonverbal means.
• Benefits of studying communication:

  • Improves how you perceive yourself
  • Improves the way others see you
  • Improves your relationships with others
  • Teaches important life skills
  • Helps recognize how communication affects the community, nation, and world
  • Polarization occurs when people divide into groups with little common ground
  • Helps to be professionally successful
  • Allows navigating and exploring a diverse world
• Definition of communication:

  • The process of using messages to generate meanings
  • Process involves activities, exchanges, or behaviors that occur over time
  • Messages include verbal, nonverbal symbols, signs, and behaviors
  • Meaning is the understanding of the message
• Components of communication:

  • People (Source/Receiver): involved in human communication process as sources and receivers of messages
  • Channel: means by which a message moves from the source to the receiver
  • Code: systematic arrangement of symbols used to create meanings
  • Encode/Decode: encoding is translating an idea into a code, decoding is assigning meaning to that idea
• Principles of communication:

  • Begins with the self
  • Involves others
  • Content and relational dimensions
  • Involves choice
  • Message is the verbal and nonverbal form of the idea, thought, or feeling
  • Feedback is the receiver's response to the source's message
  • Noise is any interference that reduces the clarity of a message
  • Situation is the location where communication takes place
• Principles of communication (cont'd):

  • Quantity does not increase quality
  • Communication is pervasive
  • Cannot be reversed once said
  • Contexts of communication:
  • Intrapersonal: communication within your own mind
  • Interpersonal: communication between at least two people
  • Public Communication: communication from one person to many people
• Goals of studying communication:

  • Communication competence: ability to effectively exchange meaning through symbols or behavior
  • Ethical communication: based on moral principles of openness, honesty, and reason
  • Understanding communication theory and research
• Perception is the process of using senses to acquire information about the surrounding environment or situation
• Active perception involves the mind selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensed information
• Subjective perception is the uniquely constructed meaning attributed to sensed stimuli
• Differences in perception can be influenced by identity factors such as gender, ability/disability, and ethnicity
• Temporal conditions, present feelings, and circumstances can also affect perception
• Current societal and political atmosphere, as well as past experiences and roles, play a role in perception
• Perceptual constancy is the idea that past experiences shape how we see the world, leading to persistent initial perceptions
• Roles can change in different contexts, influencing perception
• The perceptual process involves:

  <|>Selection:

  • Selective exposure: tendency to expose oneself to information that reinforces beliefs
  • Selective attention: focusing on certain cues and ignoring others
  • Selective perception: seeing, hearing, and believing only what one wants to
  • Selective retention: better remembering information that reinforces beliefs
• Organization:

  • Figure and ground: focal point of attention against the background
  • Closure: filling in missing information to complete a figure or statement
  • Proximity: objects physically close perceived as a unit or group
  • Similarity: elements grouped together due to shared attributes like size, color, or shape
• Interpretation:

  • Assigning meaning to perceived information based on internal views, feelings, expectations, external input, and context
• Errors in perception include:

  <|>Stereotyping:

  • Unfavorable predispositions about individuals based on membership in a stereotyped group
• First impressions: initial opinions about people upon meeting them
• Perceptual errors can be reduced through perception checking by describing observations, feelings, suggesting other interpretations, and seeking clarification
• Self-perception involves:

  <|>Personal identity: perception of what makes an individual unique in terms of personality characteristics, interests, and values
• Symbolic interactionism: self develops through messages and feedback received from others
• Self-awareness leads to future plans and learning more about oneself
• Presenting our best selves involves self-presentation and impression management through manner, appearance, and setting
• Semantics: Using language to express meaning to others
• Syntax: Rules for how we form phrases & sentences
• Pragmatics: How language is used in different social contexts
• Culture: The socially transmitted behavior patterns, beliefs, attitudes, and values of a particular period, class, community, or population
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:

  • Theory that our perception of reality is determined by our thought processes
  • Our thought processes are limited by our language
  • Language shapes our reality and behaviors
• Organizes & Classifies: Helps us make sense of our reality

  • Ex: all four-legged pieces of furniture with seats and backs are called “chairs”
• Arbitrary: Words are arbitrary, they have no inherent meanings; they have only the meanings people give them
• Denotative vs. Connotative:

  • Denotative meaning: The agreed-upon meaning or dictionary meaning of a word
  • Connotative meaning: An individualized or personalized meaning of a word, which may be emotionally weighed
• Relational:

  • In a romantic relationship, partners may have nicknames for each other
• Personal: Language and its meaning are personal. Each person talks, listens, and thinks in a unique language, which contains slight variations of its agreed-upon meanings and which may change each minute
• Ladder of Abstraction: Words are on a sequence from concrete to abstract

  • S. I. Hayakawa introduced the “ladder of abstraction”
• Language to Avoid When Speaking:

  • Grammatical errors
  • Slang
  • Clichés
  • Euphemisms
• Jargon: Language particular to a specific profession, work group, or culture and is not meant to be understood by outsiders
• Regionalisms: Words and phrases specific to a particular region or part of the country
• Ageist language: Language that denigrates people for being young or old