Words

By Lee Crews

Learn essential skills needed to communicate effectively and gain understanding. Discover causes of communication failure, and learn who, what, when, where, and how connected to relationship breakdown. Discover how to develop, and maintain relationships. Examples in the form of scenarios depict day-to-day occurrences in face-to-face interaction including illustrations defining the communication process. Determine meaning in utterances, and body language. Generate and increase self-awareness guided by self-evaluation, and coming to terms with truth about oneself to culminate in self-improvement. Grasp understanding and usage of Feedback. What can be done when someone’s behavior is displeasing and/or unacceptable to you. WORDS will reveal to the reader how all that can be done.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781683488033

Book preview

Chapter

1

The Communication Process

The characteristics of the communication process:

Sender: is the origin of the message.

Channel: is how the message travel-vocally; electronic media, in writing, or use of body language.

Source → Channel → Message is information → Receiver

← Barriers →

Fig. 1 Basic Communication Flow

Source—the source is the sender

Channel—the method by which the message travel

Message—information the sender sends to the receiver

Receiver—The receiver is the recipient of the message from the sender

Barriers—hindrances that interfere with the message sent to the receiver

Verbal communication involves a classification of four types:

Intrapersonal Communication

Intrapersonal communication is communicating with oneself in the form of thoughts. It includes silent conversations with oneself, wherein, role of sender and receiver alternate when processing thoughts.

Intrapersonal communications involve transposing silent thoughts into messages sent to a receiver, or simply remain as thoughts.

Interpersonal Communication

This form of communication occurs between two individuals, face to face, two-way, source to receiver, receiver to source. The two individuals change roles of source and receiver during interaction.

Small Group Communication

This form of communication occurs when there are more than two people involved. The number of people will be small enough to allow each participant to interact. Press conferences, board meetings, and team meetings are examples of group communication. Small group discussions can become chaotic, and difficult to interpret by group participants.

Public Communication

This form of communication involves the sender communicating to the general public.

Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication is identified by the use of body language including facial expressions of communication identified in the form of body language.

Body language is a form of nonverbal communication involving posture, facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, and touch. Much will be expounded upon on body language later on.

Nonverbal communication disseminated by the sender and receiver is in a conscious or unconscious state of mind. That is to say, one may be very aware of the displayed body language, facial expressions or one may not be aware.

Models of Communication

A model of communication is a concept or simplification of reality. A model identifies the key elements, and reveals levels of relationships. The purpose of a model is to offer a visual representation of a concept and aid in the understanding of it. Models of communication assist in better understanding of the communication process between people.

General Communication System

Claude Elwood Shannon, a research mathematician, is the founding father of electronic communications. His major focus pertained to problems within the communications industry with concentration on discovering the most efficient means of transmitting signals from one location to another. Shannon joined Bell Telephones Laboratories, in New Jersey in 1941 and remained at Bell Laboratories until 1972.

Shannon created the first general communication model explaining the communication of information and the problem of resourcefully transmitting information in his work, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, found in the Bell System Technical Journal volume 27, 1948. Shannon referenced papers authored by Harry Nyquist and R. V. L. Hartley, both engineers at Bell about the subject of a general theory of communication.

Shannon raised the bar by the inclusion of new factors particularly the effect of noise in the channel and the possible savings that might be had, stemming from the statistical structure of the original message due to the nature of the final destination of information contained in the message. A system is a collection of interconnecting parts relating to the environment that surround the system.

Fig. 2 General Communication System

Shannon made a claim that a communication system consists of six parts:

Information Source—an information source for the most part is that which produces a message or sequence of messages.

Channel—the medium used to transmit the message sent by information source to the receiving terminal. The message is a signal or multiple signals that serve as a stimulus for a receiver.

Transmitter—telephone system contain a transmitter that operates on the message in some way to produce a signal suitable for transmission over the channel.

Signal—consist of electronic signals, radio waves, or words, and pictures.

Receiver—ordinarily performs the inverse operation of that done by the transmitter, reconstructing the message from the signal. Receiver is the final destination of the message.

Noise Source—Identification of interferences or distortions in transmission of the message.

The Mathematical Theory of Communication introduced the word bit for the very first time. Shannon showed that adding extra bits to a signal allowed transmission errors. Such errors must undergo repair to become correct. Shannon noted that teletype and telegraphy are two simple examples of a discrete channel for transmitting information and that an information source which produces a message or sequence of messages are communicated to the receiving terminal. Shannon’s work led the way to development of communication