What is Communication?

COMMUNICATION –
(MEANING, IMPORTANCE, NEED, DEFINITIONS, PROCESS, NATURE, SCOPE, FUNCTIONS & EFFECTIVENESS)

WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?

Communication is derived from the Latin word ‘communis’, which means ‘common’. Communication is a social process and it is fundamental and vital to human survival.

Communication is a basic instinct of life just like hunger and thirst. It is a fact of life of not only human beings but also of animals and plants.

Communication is the name we give to the countless ways that humans have of keeping touch – not just words and music, pictures and print, nods and beck, postures and plumages; to every move that catches someone’s eye and every sound that resonates upon another’s ear.

Culturally, communication is a means of individual and community expression, and recreation.

Communication includes all methods of disseminating information, knowledge, thought, attitudes and beliefs through such media as modern mass media, traditional media such as a puppet show and interpersonal media.

Communication is the form of interaction that takes place through symbols. The symbols may be gestures, pictorial, plastic, verbal or any other which operate as stimuli to behavior.

Communication is a multifaceted activity. It encompasses all forms of expression of serving the purpose of mutual understanding.

IMPORTANCE & NEED OF COMMUNICATION

Communication enables a person to enter into meaningful relations with other persons and exchange experiences with them. Imagine a person stranded in a country where people speak an alien language. Take the case of people who cannot communicate for psychological reasons. The communication gap as experienced between the elders and youngsters is one such case. There are others who cannot tell what they feel, for fear of something or some one. Persons often develop themselves on the strength of the relationships they have with others. For the full development of a person communication is a basic necessity.

Human beings need as much to communicate with others to lead a normal and fulfilling life, as they need to eat, sleep and love. Communication involves interaction with our environment – physical, biological and social. To deprive a person of communication would be to inflict suffering on him. For example, a child is isolated as a punishment; putting in solitary cells punishes criminals, thus stopping them from communicating with others.

People who have been isolated for a period of time from human company are known to have experienced nightmarish hallucinations.

This basic need for communication can perhaps be traced to the process of man’s evolution from lower species. Animals, for instance, have to be in sensory communication with their physical and biological surroundings to find food, protect themselves and to reproduce their species. A loss of sensation – the inability to hear a predator, for example – can mean loss of life. Similarly, to be lost from primitive social communication – from the pack or herd or the tribe is to be condemned to death.

Sensory communication alone is not enough for human beings to survive. Hence the invention of symbolic communication called language - from non-verbal gestures, grunts and grimaces to the verbal, and then to the written and printed word and to the present day digital communication. The acts have grown out of the same fundamental desire to express ones owns self and to reach out to others. But the human need to communicate has remained the same. Only the forms of communication have changed.

DEFINITIONS

Experts depending on the discipline they belonged to have defined communication in several ways. Some of the following definitions give a broad understanding of the word ‘communication’

Communication is a social interaction through messages.

Communication is transmission of information, ideas, attitudes or emotion from one person or group to another primarily through symbols.

Communication is the process by which information, decisions and directions pass through a social system and the ways in which knowledge; opinions and attitudes are formed or modified.

All educational and action programs in agriculture are communication

Communication is the force by which an individual communicator transmits stimuli to modify the behavior of other individuals.

Communication is all the procedures by which one mind can affect another.

When social interaction involves the transmission of meanings through the usage of symbols it is known as communication

Communication is anything that conveys meaning, that carries a message from one person to another

Communication is a discriminatory response of an organism to a stimulus.

Communication is the mutual interchange of ideas by any effective means.

Communication is the control of behavior through descriptive and reinforcing stimuli.

Communication is a process affecting an interchange of understanding between two or more people.

Communication is a purposeful process, which involves sources, messages, channels and receivers.

Communication is the imparting or interchanging of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing or signs.

Therefore it can be concluded that communication is broadly a process of inevitable social interaction.

COMMUNICATION PROCESS

The most important tool of public relations is communication. In human society the process of communication seems spontaneous and is a simple everyday phenomenon. But when we refer to communication as a tool of public relations we conceive of communications as a purposeful and organized system intended to achieve certain objectives.

The process of communication involves the conception and sending of a message. It requires an instrument for the conveying of the message, which may be the human voice or some other written, printed, visual or audiovisual media. It presupposes also the existence of a receiver of the message. The process can only be said to be complete when the receiver of the message has comprehended the meaning of the message sent. It is therefore necessary that the language and the medium of the message should be capable of being understood by the person who receives the message. Unless, therefore, this whole process of conceiving, sending, receiving and apprehending a message is completed, effective communication cannot be said to have taken place.

In early human society, communication was entirely direct, face-to-face and the medium of communication was the human voice. Supplementing the human voice, of course, were gestures, facial expressions, the look of the eyes, postures and so on. This nonverbal means of communication can be quite expressive sometimes even without the help of the words.

As human society grew more complex and the need for communicating to wider and far-flung audiences arose, the media of communication began to develop. Gradually the media have grown more and more sophisticated. Their reach has become more and more extensive until a stage has been reached when obsession with the media has become noticeable. As Marshal macluhan has put it “the medium is the message”

The human mind is never a clean slate. Every individual or group in society is conditioned by the socioeconomic environment and has therefore certain fixed ideas; inclinations, prejudices, beliefs, convictions and what have you. The individual or group may be receptive to certain ideas and may be inclined to resist certain other types of ideas. Thus, the pre-conceived notions, ideas and beliefs of individuals and groups represent certain in-built barriers of communication. These need to be taken note of when formulating and sending the message.

It is not enough to be able to speak in a common language. Even in the case of two individuals speaking a common language and communicating directly with each other, the inability to grasp each other’s mental attitudes may make communication ineffective. This happens for instance when a person from an urban environment tries to communicate with a person from a remote rural environment. Even with a common language they are unable to make each other’s ideas understandable. Herein lies the importance of studying your audience, understanding their minds and devising and formulating your message in a manner that would be understandable to that particular audience.

Even though communication seems a simple enough phenomenon, there are in reality many complex factors involved. Because of these factors, even when the physical process of communication has taken place, effective communication may not be achieved. In ensuring effective communication, certain basic points have to be kept in mind.

The first is that there is a greater chance of message being accepted if the communicator is able to establish his creditability.

The second point is that a message must be based on facts and should be truthful and must also appear to be truthful.

The third point to note is that people tend to receive a message in accordance with their pre-dispositions, desires, wishes, needs and expectations.

By this it is said that communication is a “multi-faceted vertical and horizontal process”

SCOPE & FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is of two kinds: Verbal and Non-verbal. Research has shown that a person, on an average spends 70% of his time on communication verbally – listening, speaking, reading and writing. Non-verbal communication would include the gestures, facial expressions, movements etc.

Communication is studied and used in several disciplines of life – Management, Administration, Industry, Trade, Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Agriculture, Entertainment so on and so forth. It plays a major role in public relations, which is a specialized, and strategic management function.

The foremost function of communication is to establish, maintain, explicit or alter the relationship of a person with another.

The other functions of communication are (1) Information function (2) Command or instruction function (3) Influence or persuasion function and finally (4) Integrative function.

HOW EFFECTIVELY YOU COMMUNICATE?

Failure to communicate successfully has bothered many well-intentioned people. Communication can be hampered by several factors thus defeating the purpose of attempting to communicate. It is because of various communication barriers like Social, Economical, Cultural, Linguistic, Religious, Regional, Physical and Psychological. In any situation attempt should be made to minimize these communication barriers to make communication easy and purposeful.

These communication barriers act adversely on communication and may result in distortion of communication or mis-perception of communication.

To overcome these problems, there are Ten Commandments always a communicator has to bear in mind. They are –

Think before you speak

Define the purpose of your speaking

Know your audience

Use right method of communication for the right occasion

Get the facts straight

Show interest in the development of audience

Be sure to follow up your communication

Follow up communication with action

Ensure you communication for today and for tomorrow

Listen to your audience