Written communication and its historical development
Over time the forms of and ideas about communication have
evolved through progression of technology. Advances include
communications psychology and media psychology; an emerging field
of study. Researchers divides the progression of written
communication into three revolutionary stages called "Information
Communication Revolutions" (Source needed).
During the 1st stage written communication first emerged through
the use of pictographs. The pictograms were made in stone, hence
written communication was not yet mobile.
During the 2nd stage writing began to appear on paper, papyrus,
clay, wax, etc. Common alphabets were introduced and allowed for
the uniformity of language across large distances. A leap in
technology occurred when the Gutenberg printing-press was invented
in the 15th century.
The 3rd stage is characterised by the transfer of information
through controlled waves and electronic signals.
Communication is thus a process by which meaning is assigned and
conveyed in an attempt to create shared understanding. This
process, which requires a vast repertoire of skills in
interpersonal processing, listening, observing, speaking,
questioning, analyzing, gestures, and evaluating enables
collaboration and cooperation.[5]
Misunderstandings can be anticipated and solved through
formulations, questions and answers, paraphrasing, examples, and
stories of strategic talk. Written communication can be clear by
planning follow-up talk on critical written communication as part
of the normal way of doing business. Minutes spent talking now will
save time later having to clear up misunderstandings later on.
Then, take what was heard and reiterate in your own words, and ask
them if that's what they meant.[6]
Awanishbvi===Barriers to Effective Human Communication===
Communication is the key factor in the success of any
organization. When it comes to effective communication, there are
certain barriers that every organization faces. People often feel
that communication is as easy and simple as it sounds. No doubt,
but what makes it complex, difficult and frustrating are the
barriers that come in its way. some of these barriers are mentioned
below.
Barriers to successful communication include message overload
(when a person receives too many messages at the same time), and
message complexity.[7]
Physical barriers: Physical Barriers are often due to the nature
of the environment.Thus, for example, the natural barrier which
exists, if staff are located in different buildings or on different
sites.Likewise, poor or outdated equipment, particularly the
failure of management to introduce new technology, may also cause
problems.Staff shortages are another factor which frequently causes
communication difficulties for an organization. Whilst distractions
like background noise, poor lighting or an environment which is too
hot or cold can all affect people's morale and concentration, which
in turn interfere with effective communication.
System design: System Design faults refer to problems with the
structures or systems in place in an organization. Examples might
include an organizational structure which is unclear and therefore
makes it confusing to know who to communicate with. Other examples
could be inefficient or inappropriate information systems, a lack
of supervision or training, and a lack of clarity in roles and
responsibilities which can lead to staff being uncertain about what
is expected of them.
Attitudinal barriers: Attitudinal Barriers come about as a
result of problems with staff in an organisation. These may be
brought about, for example, by such factors as poor management,
lack of consultation with employees, personality conflicts which
can result in people delaying or refusing to communicate, the
personal attitudes of individual employees which may be due to lack
of motivation or dissatisfaction at work, brought about by
insufficient training to enable them to carry out particular tasks,
or just resistance to change due to entrenched attitudes and
ideas.
Ambiguity of Words/Phrases: Words sounding same but having
different meaning can convey a different meaning altogether. Hence
the communicator must ensure that the receiver receives the same
meaning. It would be better if such words can be avoided by using
alternatives.
Individual linguistic ability; is also important. The use of
difficult or inappropriate words in communication can prevent
people from understanding the message.Poorly explained or
misunderstood messages can also result in confusion. We can all
think of situations where we have listened to something explained
which we just could not grasp.
Physiological barriers: may result from individuals' personal
discomfort, caused, for example, by ill health, poor eye sight or
hearing difficulties.
Presentation of information: is also important to aid
understanding. Simply put, the communicator must consider the
audience before making the presentation itself and in cases where
it is not possible the presenter can at least try to simplify
his/her vocabulary so that majority can understand.
Awanishbvi (talk) 16:24, 13 October 2011 (UTC)Noise in the
Environment:</ref> is any disturbance which occurs in the
transmission process.In face-to-face communication which is carried
by air vibration,the air may be disturbed by noise such as
traffic,factory work, or people talking.
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Nonhuman Communication
See also: Biocommunication (science) and Interspecies
communication
Every information exchange between living organisms - i.e.
transmission of signals that involve a living sender and receiver
can be considered a form of communication; and even primitive
creatures such as corals are competent to communicate. Nonhuman
communication also include cell signaling, cellular communication,
and chemical transmissions between primitive organisms like
bacteria and within the plant and fungal kingdoms.
[edit]
Animal Communication
The broad field of animal communication encompasses most of the
issues in ethology. Animal communication can be defined as any
behavior of one animal that affects the current or future behavior
of another animal. The study of animal communication, called
zoosemiotics' (distinguishable from anthroposemiotics, the study of
human communication) has played an important part in the
development of ethology, sociobiology, and the study of animal
cognition. Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of
the animal world in general, is a rapidly growing field, and even
in the 21st century so far, many prior understandings related to
diverse fields such as personal symbolic name use, animal emotions,
animal culture and learning, and even sexual conduct, long thought
to be well erstood, have been revolutionized.
[edit]
Plants and Fungi (phapondi)
Communication is observed within the plant organism, i.e. within
plant cells and between plant cells, between plants of the same or
related species, and between plants and non-plant organisms,
especially in the root zone. Plant roots communicate in parallel
with rhizome bacteria, with fungi and with insects in the soil.
These parallel sign-mediated interactions are governed by
syntactic, pragmatic and semantic rules, and are possible because
of the decentralized "nervous system" of plants. The original
meaning of the word "neuron" in Greek is "vegetable fiber" and
recent research has shown that most of the intraorganismic plant
communication processes are neuronal-like.[8] Plants also
communicate via volatiles when exposed to herbivory attack behavior
to warn neighboring plants. In parallel they produce other
volatiles to attract parasites which attack these herbivores. In
stress situations plants can overwrite the genetic code they
inherited from their parents and revert to that of their grand- or
great-grandparents.
Fungi communicate to coordinate and organize their growth and
development such as the formation of mycelia and fruiting bodies.
Fungi communicate with same and related species as well as with
nonfungal organisms in a great variety of symbiotic interactions,
especially with bacteria, unicellular eukaryotes, plants and
insects through semiochemicals of biotic origin. The semiochemicals
trigger the fungal organism to react in a specific manner, while if
the same chemical molecules are not part of biotic messages, they
do not trigger the fungal organism to react. This implies that
fungal organisms can differ between molecules taking part in biotic
messages and similar molecules being irrelevant in the situation.
So far five different primary signalling molecules are known to
coordinate different behavioral patterns such as filamentation,
mating, growth, and pathogenicity. Behavioral coordination and
production of signalling substances is achieved through
interpretation processes that enables the organism to differ
between self or non-self, abiotic indicator, biotic message from
similar, related, or non-related species, and even filter out
"noise", i.e. similar molecules without biotic content.
[edit]
Bacterial Communication (Quorum sensing)
Communication is not a tool used only by humans, plants and
animals, but it is also used by microorganisms like bacteria. The
process is called quorum sensing. Through quorum sensing, bacteria
are able to sense the density of cells, and regulate gene
expression accordingly. This can be seen in both gram positive and
gram negative bacteria. This was first observed by Fuqua et al. in
marine microorganisms like V.harveyi and V.fischeri.[9]
[edit]
Communication cycle
Shannon and Weaver Model of Communication
Communication major dimensions scheme
Communication code scheme
Linear Communication Model
Interactional Model of Communication
Berlo's Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of
Communication
Transactional Model of Communication
The first major model for communication came in 1949 by Claude
Shannon and Warren Weaver for Bell Laboratories[10] The original
model was designed to mirror the functioning of radio and telephone
technologies. Their initial model consisted of three primary parts:
sender, channel, and receiver. The sender was the part of a
telephone a person spoke into, the channel was the telephone
itself, and the receiver was the part of the phone where one could
hear the other person. Shannon and Weaver also recognized that
often there is static that interferes with one listening to a
telephone conversation, which they deemed noise.
In a simple model, often referred to as the transmission model
or standard view of communication, information or content (e.g. a
message in natural language) is sent in some form (as spoken
language) from an emisor/ sender/ encoder to a destination/
receiver/ decoder. This common conception of communication simply
views communication as a means of sending and receiving
information. The strengths of this model are simplicity,
generality, and quantifiability. Social scientists Claude Shannon
and Warren Weaver structured this model based on the following
elements:
An information source, which produces a message.
A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals
A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission
A receiver, which 'decodes' (reconstructs) the message from the
signal.
A destination, where the message arrives.
Shannon and Weaver argued that there were three levels of
problems for communication within this theory.
The technical problem: how accurately can the message be
transmitted?
The semantic problem: how precisely is the meaning
'conveyed'?
The effectiveness problem: how effectively does the received
meaning affect behavior?
Daniel Chandler critiques the transmission model by stating:
It assumes communicators are isolated individuals.
No allowance for differing purposes.
No allowance for differing interpretations.
No allowance for unequal power relations.
No allowance for situational contexts.
In 1960, David Berlo expanded on Shannon and Weaver's (1949)
linear model of communication and created the SMCR Model of
Communication.[11] The Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of
communication separated the model into clear parts and has been
expanded upon by other scholars.
Communication is usually described along a few major dimensions:
Message (what type of things are communicated), source / emisor /
sender / encoder (by whom), form (in which form), channel (through
which medium), destination / receiver / target / decoder (to whom),
and Receiver. Wilbur Schram (1954) also indicated that we should
also examine the impact that a message has (both desired and
undesired) on the target of the message.[12] Between parties,
communication includes acts that confer knowledge and experiences,
give advice and commands, and ask questions. These acts may take
many forms, in one of the various manners of communication. The
form depends on the abilities of the group communicating. Together,
communication content and form make messages that are sent towards
a destination. The target can be oneself, another person or being,
another entity (such as a corporation or group of beings).
Communication can be seen as processes of information
transmission governed by three levels of semiotic rules:
Syntactic (formal properties of signs and symbols),
Pragmatic (concerned with the relations between
signs/expressions and their users) and
Semantic (study of relationships between signs and symbols and
what they represent).
Therefore, communication is social interaction where at least
two interacting agents share a common set of signs and a common set
of semiotic rules. This commonly held rules in some sense ignores
autocommunication, including intrapersonal communication via
diaries or self-talk, both secondary phenomena that followed the
primary acquisition of communicative competences within social
interactions.
In light of these weaknesses, Barnlund (2008) proposed a
transactional model of communication.[13] The basic premise of the
transactional model of communication is that individuals are
simultaneously engaging in the sending and receiving of
messages.
In a slightly more complex form a sender and a receiver are
linked reciprocally. This second attitude of communication,
referred to as the constitutive model or constructionist view,
focuses on how an individual communicates as the determining factor
of the way the message will be interpreted. Communication is viewed
as a conduit; a passage in which information travels from one
individual to another and this information becomes separate from
the communication itself. A particular instance of communication is
called a speech act. The sender's personal filters and the
receiver's personal filters may vary depending upon different
regional traditions, cultures, or gender; which may alter the
intended meaning of message contents. In the presence of
"communication noise" on the transmission channel (air, in this
case), reception and decoding of content may be faulty, and thus
the speech act may not achieve the desired effect. One problem with
this encode-transmit-receive-decode model is that the processes of
encoding and decoding imply that the sender and receiver each
possess something that functions as a codebook, and that these two
code books are, at the very least, similar if not identical.
Although something like code books is implied by the model, they
are nowhere represented in the model, which creates many conceptual
difficulties.
Theories of coregulation describe communication as a creative
and dynamic continuous process, rather than a discrete exchange of
information. Canadian media scholar Harold Innis had the theory
that people use different types of media to communicate and which
one they choose to use will offer different possibilities for the
shape and durability of society (Wark, McKenzie 1997). His famous
example of this is using ancient Egypt and looking at the ways they
built themselves out of media with very different properties stone
and papyrus. Papyrus is what he called 'Space Binding'. it made
possible the transmission of written orders across space, empires
and enables the waging of distant military campaigns and colonial
administration. The other is stone and 'Time Binding', through the
construction of temples and the pyramids can sustain their
authority generation to generation, through this media they can
change and shape communication in their society (Wark, McKenzie
1997).
Bernard Luskin, UCLA, 1970, advanced computer assisted
instruction and began to connect media and psychology into what is
now the field of media psychology. In 1998, the American
Association of Psychology, Media Psychology Division 46 Task Force
report on psychology and new technologies combined media and
communication as pictures, graphics and sound increasingly dominate
modern communication.
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Communication noise
In any communication model, noise is interference with the
decoding of messages sent over a channel by an encoder. There are
many examples of noise:
Environmental Noise: Noise that physically disrupts
communication, such as standing next to loud speakers at a party,
or the noise from a construction site next to a classroom making it
difficult to hear the professor.
Physiological-Impairment Noise: Physical maladies that prevent
effective communication, such as actual deafness or blindness
preventing messages from being received as they were intended.
Semantic Noise: Different interpretations of the meanings of
certain words. For example, the word "weed" can be interpreted as
an undesirable plant in your yard, or as a euphemism for
marijuana.
Syntactical Noise: Mistakes in grammar can disrupt
communication, such as abrupt changes in verb tense during a
sentence.
Organizational Noise: Poorly structured communication can
prevent the receiver from accurate interpretation. For example,
unclear and badly stated directions can make the receiver even more
lost.
Cultural Noise: Stereotypical assumptions can cause
misunderstandings, such as unintentionally offending a
non-Christian person by wishing them a "Merry Christmas".
Psychological Noise: Certain attitudes can also make
communication difficult. For instance, great anger or sadness may
cause someone to lose focus on the present moment. Disorders such
as Autism may also severely hamper effective communication