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[edit] DiscussionThe 90% of communication is nonverbal thing is very incorrect. "Professor Mehrabian was interviewed on BBC radio... and he was asked, "whether 93% of communication is nonverbal?" He answered, "absolutely not. And whenever I hear that misquote of my findings I cringe because it should be obvious to anybody who would use any amount of common sense that that's not a correct statement!" his personal website has the same information.
This page is definately improved and something really more can be done in order to make it a core articles. And the fact that its one of the most important article in wiki. I have done my contributions on this i would expect others to do the same Kalivd 11:25, 21 April 2007 (UTC)This is page is so poor an introduction to the subject area that to edit it would entail rewriting it completely. I recommend anyone approaching the topic to read "On Human Communication" by Colin Cherry.
Hmmm... I've done some incremental stuff - want to send me something offline and collaborate? Richard Pitt Nov. 16 I'd love to collaborate, but let's let others in on it too! Collaboration is Wikipedia's middle name. Er... don't ask me what its last name is... I've tried to work your current contributions into my sketchy notes. If anything got lost in the transition, be sure to pull it from the history and add it. -- Stephen Gilbert 19:55, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
My name is balamurali. I majored in Organizational Communication with an emphasis in Intercultural Communication. I would be happy to add my help in cleaning up this article. Would it first be possible to make this into a category? Of course this page would be something of a gateway to the rest of the communication articles. It would have links to the various disciplines in the study of communication. It could contain a brief definition of communication. maybe from different aspects or other disciplines. For example the opening definition is to technical. I feel it should be more basic. Wow as I read further into the article I realize this would not even qualify for any text book we used. It is wordy somewhat technical, and jumbled. I will work on that now. The sections in the article have no consistent progression. Nor do some of the sections seem to demonstrate the authors understanding of communication but rather a specific field if anything. The article must begin with an understandable definition that is not to technical. Where technical terms are needed it would be helpful to define them. Second there needs to be a some what brief though thorough history of communication beginning with something about hieroglyphics and cave paintings then on to the Greeks not the romans because they were the first rhetoricians. Then the romans because they did make significant contributions. Then on to the various periods of communication highlighting the significant points. Sub articles can be made for more lengthy discussions of various contributors and and the development of communication fields such as Mass, Oral, etc... One of my professors has a great diagram of the communication model. She used Fred and Wanda. Sender/Encoder Receiver/Decoder. This prompts a further discussion that we would need to have, what terminology to use. In my field we used sender receiver though I did come across encoder/decoder. I fucken fell last night and i know that sender receiver is less technical. Though I see no problem in includinthem both with a slash. This may pose problems in the wiki community though. Kyle.Mullaney 08:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC) important types: Do you realise that a Google search for communication gives this poorly written article as the first result? I think it is imperative we get a revised article up and running immediately (ASAP).129.123.104.5 19:00, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone think the second paragraph of the intro is important? I don't think it makes tons of sense and it doesn't seem to be saying much... Warlordwolf 01:03, 21 August 2007 (UTC) [edit] Overview
[edit] Purpose of communication
Also:
[edit] Examples of communication
[edit] Communication TheoryTo risk saying the obvious: There are so many theories of communication out there that it is probably fruitless to try and list them here. They even let quacks like me come up with new theories! It is not a particularly selective club. . . Perhaps it would be easier and more helpful to link to an article that features one theory or a group of theories. For example: Many of the "directional" sorts of theories (up/down, sender/receiver, cycles and spirals, information load, channels, noise/signal, interference all pretty much view human communication as the transmission of a message. This isn't necessarily bad, but it is fairly dated (there has been relatively little new work in these models for at least a decade) and often now considered somewhat limiting. i like to talk It's a great start to introduce some of the basics of some forms of communication in a quick way, which is why so many "Introduction to Human Communication" textbooks start there. But our discussion shouldn't end here. Some examples: If there are so many possible interpretations of words and ideas (and the "correspondent" or "representational" views have some real problems). This view of language would suggest that each word refers to or points to a corresponding idea so that when you think of a chair and you say the word, "chair" I hear the word "chair" and follow the pointer to the the correct idea "something to sit upon." So if where I end up is where you started then we have a successful communicative interaction. But there are some really big (read: so far unsolved) problems with some of these premises. For example, Who decides what is and is not an acceptable, or "true" idea? This perspective can't easily accommodate ambiguity: By definition if some word symbol doesn't point to an idea it is a nonsensical utterance--words without meaning. But with this model how can we deal with someone who intentionally picks a word symbol that might point me to the wrong idea? If you point to one meaning and I refer to another, are you (the speaker) always right? Is the hearer always wrong? How would an observing third party ever hope to figure out whether the communication was successful? Surely we can't vote on it! How many of these unique ideas are there? Who gets to decide which are "real" and which are "false" ideas? If you have every possible false idea as a potential to be pointed to by some word or combination of words, the ratio of "bad words" to "good words" (that is, those words which correctly can be pointed to vs. those which cannot) is disturbingly high. Also, how can we deal with the various levels of abstraction? "Chair" can be very specific ("this chair, my favorite chair, and no other") or very general ("that line of hills with those clouds looks like a big overstuffed chair") and if I can't directly access your set of word pointers and you can't access mine, how can we ever know if we are talking about the same thing? Now how can we account for the matches (or mismatches) of meaning when there is one speaker and a thousand listening? Or a recorded radio program so that the multiple speakers and the multiple listeners are never present in the same place at the same time. These are not just important distinctions, they are vital. If communication is a process of transporting a meaning, we better be able to say just what is and what is not a meaning. Because of these problems and many others like them, most people who would be considered by their peers to be communication theorists, have moved on to different sorts of models that focus more on creating meaning than on pointing to pre-defined meanings. That said, let me be quick to point out that the types of communication theorists that are not dealing with "human communication" but with concepts such as "communication of a charge" among molecules the linear, mechanical transportation of meaning might be entirely useful. So it is certainly fine to list these sorts of communicative models as falling within the vast range of communication theories, but we probably would be doing our readers a disservice to suggest that these are the principal models used in human communication today. Roy 20:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC) [edit] Communication models{{Diagram needed}}
I've done this one Yupi666 09:56, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
also did another based on information on the article Yupi666 09:58, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Information & Communications Technologies (ICTs)
[edit] The study of communication
[edit] Communication Topics[edit] Importance of CommunicationCommunication as the process that builds Community. See Portal:Community, Social network, Sense of community, etc. -- CQ 10:34, 18 November 2005 (UTC) [edit] Communication in XX Century[edit] Communication in War[edit] Written Communications
[edit] eo: Information technologyThe eo: article is about information technology. I think the interwiki link should be removed. Andres 07:02, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC) [edit] InformationShouldn't communication come under information? Right now, the categories are the other way around. Brian Jason Drake 08:43, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Brian I am not so sure I understand why they would have to be combined in a hierarchy since communication is the process of sharing information and there can be no communciation with out information to share. While on the other hand with out communication information cannot be shared. My point is simply why join them together? Can they not exist on their own? Just a question. Kyle.Mullaney 08:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC) [edit] Maritime communication methodsJust wanted to add some methods of communication from the maritime area that are still in use but didn't get a mention, as yet. 1. Flashing Light (Morse code) 2. Flag signals (Nelson's famous 'England expects....' message) 3. Lighthouses (definately one way communications) Glenn Burton--203.213.8.11 07:39, 14 May 2006 (UTC) [edit] The tamperingSomeone tampered with some of the communication pages. I have begun the reconstruction process, but I will need assistance, from those who have half a brain at least. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.245.172.44 (talk • contribs) 23:47, 4 December 2006 (UTC). [edit] too linear, mechanicalYeah, communication *can* be seen as the transmission of information, but that's a fairly restrictive/reductionist view. It surely should not be cast in a way that implies this is the "overall principle" under which other discussions will sit. Communication is sometimes not related at all to information (at least in a non-tautologic "everything is information" sense). If that's all communication is, it probably does deserve no better than a list under "Information." Communication is culture, organization, metaphysics. Some postmodern theorists talk about the decentered self. Although developed in many different ways and apparently embedded with different teleological "genes", most of the presentations of decenteredness rely on communication as a basic process through which our identities are constantly being recreated. Much, perhaps all communication is negotiation, competition, coalition-building as various communities strive with each other to produce meaning. The whole linear thing just falls apart on so many levels. It is an exceptionally useful perspective--along with cybernetics, information science and systems models. [edit] Semiotics/SemanticsThis is one view of Semiotics for sure. There are other views: Sassure and Peirce gave us mutually incompatible frameworks. It would be nice to clarify this to make the article's statements a bit less modern-like in its sweeping and totalizing positions? [edit] The GauntletPerhaps that is too connotative of conflict for what I am looking at. I have taken the really bold step of trying to fashion an introduction that takes a pass at the huge amount of material falling within the "Communication" name. I probably do have at least some of the background useful to such a task, I do hold a Ph.D. in Communication, with additional concentrations in Semiotics and "Anthropological Linguistics" and "Philosophy and Communication". I've worked in Advertising, journalism, corporate purchasing, as an executive director for a non-profit organization, designed small business accounting systems, led board training, worked in radio (domestic and international), tutoring graduate students in statistics, publishing an academic communication journal, review, analysis, purchase, installation and support of computer systems, information management, database design and implementation, public and private higher education (including stints in MBA programs)and one especially sorry stint delivering telephone books! My current research interests involve collaborating with my wife (a research psychologist) on a postmodern model of the decentered self--drawing heavily on the marketplace metaphor. Given the mess the whole "communication thing" is in, this probably does more to disqualify me than anything. . .I'm probably a walking example of some of the problems! This is my hope: The topic is much, much too broad for any particular definition of communication to cover everything and it seems like an unnecessary waste of effort for us to replicate here the debates that (perhaps) our wiser ancestors simply handled by ignoring one another. A common response I get to my "organizational communication" focus is "so you design telephone systems for big corporations?" Well actually I have a couple of friends who do design, program and install such systems and they call what they do "Corporate Communications." Perhaps instructively the things we have in common have nothing to do with any of our education or professional responsibilities. [edit] A bit of a plan?So with this (hopefully) broad enough introduction I hope that many others who happen on this page will "write their own section." I would encourage folks to stay away from chopping up sections with which you have little direct experience or knowledge. It would be wonderful, however, if some of those civil disagreements and requests for more information come here for a full hearing that would be great! One more suggestion. Because of the immenseness (immensity?)of the topic it would probably be most helpful for us all to devote a good hunk of our available energy, time and brain power to developing the ton of other smaller (in scope, not necessarily size) pages that this page will point. I am being really bold here. I'm doing it with some care, however. What I see so far is an article that is one of Wikipedia's most important (in terms of breadth) but that lacks any single organization. It reads as though various people jumped in and wrote awhile until they became overwhelmed (or ran into something *else* to do with a few hours of their lives!) and someone else started in somewhere and went a different direction. [edit] I'm not volunteering! Just suggestingPlease don't get me wrong. I am *not* going to take any sort of further responsibility for this page, I am *not* going to assign anything or mediate any scuffles and I am highly unlikely to write any more big blocks. So my humility in the opening here is sincere. I just don't have the breadth to even comprehend most of what is called "communication" (my eyes spin in weird ways when I hear Quantum and high-energy physicists talk about how some atomic particles communicate with other atomic particles a long way away. Something about the uncertainty principle and tied in with dark matter (by some). I really get lost quickly in this sort of discussion--but it is critical that we include it and a hundred like it. Please take a careful look at what I've written. Revise, edit, delete--whatever makes the article better. Do you agree with the general outline I'm suggesting? If not, change it whether you think it needs some fine tuning or properly should be sent in its entirety to the digital Valhalla (where all valiant bytes fallen in battle end up--Ok, not really, but it sort of sounded good for a minute.) In this topic especially--due to the breadth and complexity of all the subparts--I would hope that we could all be bold and continue to ruthlessly revise. (I forgot to list Bonsai as communication. . .) Thanks. Roy 19:47, 26 January 2007 (UTC) [edit] Suggestions/Possibilities for structure?This is a bit of a follow-up note to my diatribe of a few days ago. What do you think about this possibility? [edit] (1) Introduction:Way too big to deal with, so we are doing just that (grin). Strategy: focus on breadth of topic to disarm any testostrone-based lifeforms that might want to come in swinging about how his (almost always "hes") experience with communication is the only real one. By painting the canvas broadly, we set it up for a quick separation of "threads" based on some sort of criteria. That is, after highlighting the breadth of the topic, the reader will be expecting some sort of division. It also allows us the luxury of simply adding in a word or phrase if someone else steps up and says "what about . . .?" We can make any number of those additions without much pain. Another "come clean" time: Another part of my research interest has to do with classification. In my dissertation I make the argument that classification should not be random, that there are defensible groupings, and that these groupings are user/utility based rather than given in the items themselves. In short, we are presented disparate sense data, based on our experience and constrained by the limits of our sensory capabilities, we "create" things by chunking together this sensory information (e.g., the sound of the hawk, the visual quick form in my peripheral vision and the observations of lots of voles scurrying around my feet in the field all contribute to me "deciding" or "thingifying" a hawk. There is nothing that requires me to group my sensory data this way, and different groupings would not have any greater or lesser ontological status. (e.g., I might be a painter looking for a nice place to paint, in which case these sensory data I previously mentioned would tend to be bumped down my "relevance" list while colors and shadows occupy the places at the top.) This is to lead up to a defense of my proposed schema. Because it is likely that the majority of people coming to a "communication" entry in Wikipedia will be looking for a particular sort of communication--one specific frame in which communication means some specific and definite things (otherwise they wouldn't have included "communication" as the starting place of their search). Instead of trying to agree upon "what really belongs together" in a global categorization of communication (and thus setting up our little entry as a place of lots of intellectual violence and rhetorical scalping) we could take the utilitarian approach and ask ourselves "are there broad categories of nouns clustered around the word symbol "communication" and do these specific clusterings tend to themselves cluster around particular mindsets or expectations that are responsible for bringing seekers to us? So instead of immediately going into either a massive listing of communication-like terms drawn from any conceivable discipline, or of smuggling in a certain bias in what "the most important classifications" might look like, we could offer a few paragraphs each for the broadly conceived "disciplines" or "contexts" which are likely to be guiding a specific reader's search. Another way of putting it would be to say "If you are looking for this sort of thing when you think 'communication' then head here ("here" being a specific daughter-page which handles the communication construct in a relatively consistent way. For example, "wires", "satellites", "treaties", "signal jamming", "internet" might all share a certain sensibility invoked when uttering the word "communication" and even though there might not be a razor-sharp dividing line between two disciplines (surprise! academic disciplines aren't identical to outside-world usages!) I think we could reasonably start with an assumption that a reader might recognize this sort of word set as "in the right ballpark" of why that reader ended up here. We don't have to begin by deciding "satellite communication belongs to mass communication in the human communication discipline. Mass com will likely talk about satellites and communication but their "satellite" will be pointing to a different place than the person looking into international treaties and the distribution of wavespace. As long as we don't start with Mass Communication, International Communication Treaties and "Worldwide Communication Technology" as discrete topics we will be comfortably situated among people meaning similar things when they each say "communication". I don't have to fight to keep "satellite" in the mass com subtopic. This also allows us, through the liberal use of internal links, to spare the reader coming here with a specific form of communication in mind the task of reading through the entire article in order to get to the "links" section at the end. If readers are interested only in a very specific phenomenon that is called "communication" (e.g., dropped here by using "communication" in the key words of their search) we can send them on their merry way without forcing them to listen to a lecture about the various theories of how we create and accept symbols as placeholders for certain groups of meanings. [edit] (2) General topics:Those with a larger goal--perhaps all of "human communication" or "computer communication technology" can perhaps best be served with this sort of grand title for a section. Each of these sections will be further divided, of course, but each will start with a few links/redirects to other more specific articles elsewhere in Wikipedia. If someone is coming here with a specific purpose in mind (e.g., ethics of communication ala' Habermas' "Ideal Speech Situation") it seems they would be well served by quickly scanning a section titled something like "Communication in Philosophy and Ethics" from which they might want to explore several different threads--including, of course, Habermas. I'm thinking here of broad swaths of related things/ being careful to group the subtopics that would likely be grouped together in a reference book or college course. We won't have to waste too much energy deciding which subtopics belong where because there is no requirement that our entries be mutually exclusive. By that I mean that if "dyadic communication" ends up being a term used in several fields, we don't have to choose just one place to put the term. We might easily have a "dyadic" under com theory, human communication, rhetoric/public speaking/forensics, and perhaps robotic control theory (I'm still making this up as we go!). The term "dyadic" might point to different places when it is used in different sections. more to come. . . Vagabundus 06:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC) the word communication is how people respond to each other and how people and animals understand each other [edit] Electronic CommunicationI remember there is a special term for communicating with electronics, anyone know what that term is?68.161.21.39 22:41, 19 March 2007 (UTC)JLiu [edit] You speak German, don't you."You speak German, don't you" is a phrase used in reprimand, in the German-speaking areas of the world, to remind others that they can simply communicate their questions and other difficulties to others, if they need. I learned this from a Swiss colleague. --Ancheta Wis 11:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC) [edit] Real-time vs. DelayedI came to this article hoping to refresh my memory on the proper terms for real-time and delayed communication and was surprised to not see any discussion of this dimension (unless I just missed it). For example, in-person and telephone and chat rooms (mostly) are real-time communication, while mail and printed materials and online message boards and recorded tv/movies are "delayed" (published? less temporal?). Just a suggestion for those more familiar with the article and topic. : ) --Hebisddave 12:49, 25 July 2007 (UTC) [edit] First paragraphThe first paragraph of this article currently states:
and goes on to talk exclusively about communication between living things, mainly humans. This leaves out the very important subject of communication between machines, most of which happens in order to allow humans to communicate more easily. I haven't read the *whole* talk page, but it seems like this issue was raised but then cast aside. I can understand if the consensus is that the article should focus on human communication, but I think there should at least be some mention of non-human communication (even if it is just 'for non-human communication, go [[here]]). --carelesshx talk 16:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC) [edit] Cleanup & overhaul begunHaving just spent the last two hours cleaning out a whole lot of frankly sophomoric drivel (as well as doing a bit of reorganizing), I thought a short comment was in order. I've done a good deal of this sort of "salvaging" on a wide variety of articles, but it was truly dismaying to encounter such a display of garbled writing and woefully deficient communication skills in this, of all articles. What an embarassment for Wikipedia. I wish I could stick around and finish the job I've begun, but I'm afraid this just isn't my main area of interest -- so I hope other knowledgable editors will pick up where I left off. Cgingold (talk) 18:32, 29 December 2007 (UTC) [edit] Ignoring of this pageThis page has been ignored and since it has been constantly edited and improved I think the tag should be removed. Confederatemarine95 (Confederatemarine95) 1900 Monday, March 31, 2008 Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Communication From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (September 2008) For other uses, see Communication (disambiguation). Communication is the process of conveying information from a sender to a receiver with the use of a medium in which the communicated information is understood the same way by both sender and receiver. It is a process that allows organisms to exchange information by several methods. Communication requires that all parties understand a common language that is exchanged, There are auditory means, such as speaking, singing and sometimes tone of voice, and nonverbal, physical means, such as body language, sign language, paralanguage, touch, eye contact, or the use of writing. Communication is defined as a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding. This process requires a vast repertoire of skills in intrapersonal and interpersonal processing, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing, and evaluating. Use of these processes is developmental and transfers to all areas of life: home, school, community, work, and beyond. It is through communication that collaboration and cooperation occur.[1] Communication is the articulation of sending a message, through different media [2] whether it be verbal or nonverbal, so long as a being transmits a thought provoking idea, gesture, action, etc. Communication happens at many levels (even for one single action), in many different ways, and for most beings, as well as certain machines. Several, if not all, fields of study dedicate a portion of attention to communication, so when speaking about communication it is very important to be sure about what aspects of communication one is speaking about. Definitions of communication range widely, some recognizing that animals can communicate with each other as well as human beings, and some are more narrow, only including human beings within the parameters of human symbolic interaction. Nonetheless, communication is usually described along a few major dimensions: Content (what type of things are communicated), source, emisor, sender or encoder (by whom), form (in which form), channel (through which medium), destination, receiver, target or decoder (to whom), and the purpose or pragmatic aspect. 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 rule in some sense ignores autocommunication, including intrapersonal communication via diaries or self-talk. In a simple model, 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. In a slightly more complex form a sender and a receiver are linked reciprocally. A particular instance of communication is called a speech act. 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 code book, 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. Contents [hide] 1 Types of communication 1.1 Language 1.1.1 Dialogue 1.1.2 Nonverbal communication 1.2 Non-human living organisms 1.2.1 Animals 1.2.2 Plants and fungi 2 Sources 3 See also 4 External links [edit] Types of communication There are 3 major parts in any communication which is body language, voice ,tonality and words. According to the research (Mehrabian and Ferris,'Inference of Attitude from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels' in The Journal of Counselling Psychology Vol.31, 1967,pp.248-52), 55% of impact is determined by body language--postures, gestures, and eye contact, 38% by the tone of voice, and 7% by the content or the words used in the communication process. Although the exact % of influence may differ from variables such as the listener and the speaker, communication as a whole strives for the same goal and thus, in some cases, can be universal.
Human spoken and written languages can be described as a system of symbols (sometimes known as lexemes) and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated. The word "language" is also used to refer to common properties of languages. Language learning is normal in human childhood. Most human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for symbols which enable communication with others around them. There are thousands of human languages, and these seem to share certain properties, even though many shared properties have exceptions. There is no defined line between a language and a dialect, but the linguist Max Weinreich is credited as saying that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy". Constructed languages such as Esperanto, programming languages, and various mathematical formalisms are not necessarily restricted to the properties shared by human languages.
Fungi communicate to coordinate and organize their own growth and development such as the formation of mycelia and fruiting bodies. Additionally 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. The used semiochemicals are of biotic origin and they trigger the fungal organism to react in a specific manner, in difference while to even the same chemical molecules are not being a part of biotic messages doesn’t trigger to react the fungal organism. It means, fungal organisms are competent to identify the difference of the same molecules being part of biotic messages or lack of these features. So far five different primary signalling molecules are known that serve to coordinate very different behavioral patterns such as filamentation, mating, growth, pathogenicity. Behavioral coordination and the production of such substances can only be achieved through interpretation processes: self or non-self, abiotic indicator, biotic message from similar, related, or non-related species, or even “noise”, i.e., similar molecules without biotic content-[4]
4) Witzany, G. (2007 ). Applied Biosemiotics: Fungal Communication. In: Witzany, G. (Ed.) Biosemiotics in Transdisciplinary Contexts. Helsinki. Umweb, pp 295-301.
[edit] External links A brief history of communication across ages Communicating for change and impact How Human Communication Fails (Tampere University of Technology) The Transmission Model of Communication (Daniel Chandler) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication" Categories: Communication Hidden categories: Cleanup from September 2008 | All pages needing cleanup ViewsArticle Discussion Edit this page History Personal toolsLog in / create account Navigation Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Search Interaction About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia Donate to Wikipedia Help Toolbox What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Printable version Permanent link Cite this page Languages العربية Aragonés Bosanski Brezhoneg Български Català Česky Dansk Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Furlan Gaelg Galego 한국어 Hrvatski Bahasa Indonesia Interlingua Íslenska Italiano עברית Basa Jawa ქართული Latviešu Lëtzebuergesch Lietuvių Limburgs Magyar Македонски Bahasa Melayu Nederlands 日本語 Norsk (bokmål) Norsk (nynorsk) Occitan Polski Português Română Rumantsch Русский Саха тыла Shqip Sicilianu Simple English Slovenščina Српски / Srpski Basa Sunda Suomi Svenska Tagalog தமிழ் ไทย Türkçe Українська Vèneto ייִדיש Žemaitėška 中文 This page was last modified on 28 September 2008, at 15:12. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.132.5 (talk) 11:10, 29 September 2008 (UTC) [edit] "Global Communication for Businesses" section removedI removed the following section from the article:
This seems like not more then an advertisment for that book to me. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 13:58, 26 February 2009 (UTC) [edit] Cultural Approach to CommunicationI Removed the following section from the article:
I removed it for the following reasons:
-- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 14:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC) [edit] What is communication - Starting anewWHAT IS COMMUNICATION? by Ania Lian (PhD), Canberra, Australia Ania Lian (talk) 08:23, 14 June 2009 (UTC)§§§§АНЯ 1. Definition Communication begins with perception of ambiguity (or conflict), or its potential. In this sense, a simple act of greeting is an example of a strategy employed in order to prevent being perceived as impolite or strange. Communication therefore is oriented toward reducing or preventing ambiguity. We can define communication as engaging in strategies directed at reducing or preventing ambiguity. Commonly this process is referred to as “clarification”. When constructing strategies to resolve or reduce ambiguity, interlocutors proceed by exploring (or questioning) the confronting power of their beliefs. This power will determine their capacity to challenge their interlocutors’ assumptions which generated ambiguity in the first place (or which have the potential to do so). Ambiguity is reduced (or prevented) only, when the understandings which generated it (or which can generate it) seem no longer valid. It follows that at the heart of communication is our capacity to challenge our own belief systems sufficiently for our confrontations to have a desired effect. The challenges that ensue stimulate re-examination and restructuring of our initial beliefs. As a result, we change. Herein lies the paradox of the power of communication: as we engage in confronting and affecting others, we confront and affect ourselves. It is this transforming capacity of communication that makes it such a valuable tool of progress. Some aspects of communication that the above definition implies are: (a) communication is goal oriented; (b) communication is about managing complex value systems; (c) communication facilitates learning to manipulate those value systems; (d) communication takes place in a complex world of values, not between the encoder and decoder. The ideas below expand this definition of communication, respond to each point in the definition, and are embedded in the literature of poststructural criticism (e.g. Bourdieu, Calhoun, Bakhtin). 2. Communication and its traditional definition Typically, communication continues to be described as a process where: Man A sends words, assembled grammatically by certain rules, through the air in little balloons into the ear of Man B, who runs them through his mental machinery and sends the response sentences in little balloons into the ear of A and so on. (Birdwhistell 1970: 67) In this “cybernetic” view, as Birdwhistell calls it, the assumption is that the brain is a naturally good producer of logical thoughts composed of words with precise meanings which it emits under proper stimulation (Birdwhistell 1970: 66). That is, [...] good, clean, logical, rational, denotative, semantically correct utterances are emitted out of the head if the membrane between mind and the body efficiently separates this area of the body from that which produces the bad, dirty, illogical, irrational, connotative, and semantically confusing adulterants. Good communication thus takes place if the unadulterated message enters the ear of the receiver and goes through a clean pipe into an aseptic brain. (Birdwhistell, op. cit.: 66) In this perspective, communication is about transferring, reception and matching, and these are the words that appear in the conventional definitions of communication. 3. Critique of the conventional models of communication Communication as history. The critique of conventional models targets the absence of the historical aspect of communication in those models. Thus, for example, the idea of communication as a process enacting history is captured in Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (Bourdieu, 1995: 54). He defines habitus as an active presence of past experiences, a network of individual and collective practices, deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action, thus guaranteeing the ‘correctness’ of practices and their constancy over time, more reliably than all formal rules and explicit norms (Bourdieu, ibid.). We can think of habitus as “dispositions to think and act in certain ways rooted in our discursive histories" (Lantolf & Pavlenko 1995: 116-117). This makes the act of understanding always individual, but shaped by the practices of society in interaction with us (Lian, 2004): Language [...] lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes “one’s own” only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language […], but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own. (Bakhtin, op. cit.: 294) It would follow that to understand, and therefore be able to function, requires an understanding of complex value systems. Communication, in this sense, cannot be seen or be treated as a “closed world” (Bourdieu 1991: 67). To do so, Bourdieu argues, would be to forget that interactions never truly happen merely between two people, e.g. between an employer and an employee, between a French speaker and an Arabic speaker. Rather, it is entire histories of institutions, values and individuals which are played out in each interaction and which give meaning to these interactions (Bourdieu, op. cit.: 67). Bourdieu illustrates this process by describing communication as involving the interlocutors in reacting to conditions which are not objective in absolute terms. Their objectivity, and hence reality, is socio-historically constructed (Bourdieu 1995: 97). Thus, in the process of meaning-making, history functions as a constraining mechanism which, nevertheless, brings with it an element of unpredictability. This is because of its discursive nature, and, to paraphrase Bakhtin, because of words being no more than individuals’ own intention, with their own accent, adapted and, consequently, always transformed. These transformation and adaptation aspects reflect a very important feature of communication. They tell us that communication is a context where at stake are the very dispositions by which we think and act. In this sense, communication may not, in fact, facilitate a better understanding of the world in which we live; but it certainly puts at risk the very world as we know it. The above picture of communication is very different from the idea that sees communication as a more or less peaceful process, involving transferring, receiving and matching meanings, which takes place between specific (often two, as in the diagrams) individuals. Also, communication is often referred to as negotiation which it may be. However, the fact that communication puts to question our frames of reference suggests that, as such, it involves a process of confrontation, where histories clash and where change is brought about as a result. We describe this process better below by focusing on the three main aspects of communication: (a) Communication is historically situated. This means, interlocutors act upon and enact discursive frames of reference. (b) Communication is directed at resolving ambiguity. Communication is a result of a perceived (existing or potential) clash or ambiguity in those frames of reference. (c) Communication is strategic. Communication is about engaging in strategies which help to reduce (prevent) ambiguity. This process involves interlocutors in questioning the confronting power of their beliefs. This power will determine their capacity to challenge their interlocutors’ assumptions which generated ambiguity in the first place (or which have the potential to do so). Ambiguity is reduced (or prevented) only, when the understandings which generated it (or which can generate it) seem no longer valid. (d) Communication brings about change. This act of questioning one’s own frames of references stimulates their re-examination, restructuring and, as a result, change in those understandings. Thus the paradox of communication is that, whether it is generated to understand or to change others (systems, values, people), in fact, one’s very own involvement in communication brings about change in the structures of that person’s frames of reference. This transforming power of communication, or dialogue (we make no distinction), was also identified by Calhoun in his discussion of research methods: “We should not conceptualize the dialogue […] a means of sharing that which is already known, but as one of the actual bases for knowledge” (Calhoun 1995: 175). The transforming aspect of communication shows it as a context where interlocutors act to affect each other and, in the process, also become affected. The interlocutors’ strategies directed at resolving or preventing ambiguity impact upon their own individual histories, generating change in those histories, thus contributing to their expansion. These changes will inform subsequent interactions which together will shape, what is considered to be acceptable forms of interpretation (i.e. “meanings”). 4. Future: What communication is not about? Our discussion sought to illustrate that interlocutors do not “convey meanings” in order to “create shared understandings”, as suggested in Wikipedia . This is because meanings are not independent (absolute) entities, whose qualifying features belong to no one and therefore to everyone. We have shown this by referring to Bourdieu and Bakhtin. The historical nature of the discursive frames of reference by which we act and think lends them impossible for “meaning sharing”. Furthermore, it would be very difficult to apply the idea of “needing to share meanings” in contexts where stimulating communication would be the goal. However, when we have stakes in making things happen, we do engage in communication, be it by reading, listening, talking to people, etc. Thus, in our model, it is not the need for “sharing meanings” that stimulates communication. Instead, the need for communication arises, when the need for resolving or preventing ambiguity emerges. This engages interlocutors in very specific strategies, oriented toward practical (ambiguity reduction or prevention) goal. Any attempts to “clarify meanings”, in fact, imply a complex process. For details, see Lian, A.B. 2006 (Chapter 3). In short, the process involves interlocutors in questioning their own assumptions sufficiently in order to formulate best strategies to generate the same questioning process in their interlocutors. As said earlier, ambiguity is reduced (or prevented) only, when the assumptions on which they are based seem no longer valid. APPLICATIONS Lian, Ania (2008). ‘Making our learning environments interactive: A critique of the concept of interaction in Second Language Acquisition studies’, in Manteiro, M. (ed.). ISLS Readings in Language Studies, Volume 1. USA. ABSTRACT - Second language research and Teaching: Our critique of Second Language Acquisition studies has helped us to develop the concept of interaction as a context where interlocutors contribute to each other by affecting each other's criteria of judgment. This reciprocity condition allowed us to propose a framework for pedagogic research which helps us to discriminate between interactive (dialogic) and non-interactive (hierarchical) learning conditions. REFERENCES Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Michael Holquist (ed.), (Trans. C. Emerson & M. Holquist). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Birdwhistell, R. (1970). Kinesics and context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bourdieu, P. (1995). The logic of practice. (Trans. R. Nice). Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lantolf, J. P. & Pavlenko, A. (1995). Sociocultural theory and second language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 15 (1), 108-124. Lian, A.-P. (2004a). Technology-enhanced language-learning environments: A rhizomatic approach. In J-B. Son (ed.), Computer-Assisted Language Learning: Concepts, contexts and practices. APACALL Series 1 (pp. 1-20). New York: iUniverse. Retrieved June 14, 2009 from http://www.andrewlian.com/andrewlian/prowww/apacall_2004/apacall_lian_ap_tell_rhizomatic.pdf. Lian, A. B. (2006). A dialogic model of inquiry in second language teaching: Toward the concept of a critical approach to pedagogic research, PhD thesis, Brisbane: University of Queensland. [edit] Plant communication/Witzany citationsIs anyone else perturbed by the fact that the only citations for the entire section on plant & fungi communication cites 4 papers by one "G Witzany," all without links, all from the last 4 years? The only information I've found on Witzany is on the German Wikipedia, which describes him primarily as a philosopher (!) -- translation And this book from 2000, Life, the Communicative Structure: A New Philosophy of Biology. Link is just an excerpt but reading it suggests that all these ideas are theory, not fact, and there does not seem to be any experimental evidence. I'm very interested in the veracity of this research and these are raising serious red flags for me. The article's language presents Witzany's work as fact. --Jamiew (talk) 13:43, 29 June 2009 (UTC)dick [edit] Copy-paste registrationIn this edit a section is copy/paste from the visual communication article. -- Mdd (talk) 20:54, 27 October 2009 (UTC) [edit] General communication.Communication is a form of interaction. In physical interaction two units change energy of contact into motivsation. This changes the interacting units as directed by the laws of nature. In communication physical interction is reduced to that between senses and electromagnetism. Senses transport organised motivating energy of electromagnetism to the brain where selected cells create electromagnetic field which acts as a 'symbol'. The symbol connects the material world with the immaterial world. Every graviton of the space occupied by the symbol rotates differently as the expression of the organisation of the symbol. The rotation is the same in both the material and the immaterial space times because immaterial gravitons are inside the material gravitons. Interaction of the reflection of the symbol in the immaterial space time with the 'self', which consists of the limit of 'I' in the 'now', creates emotion which motivates the limit of 'I', which then observes the description of the symbolised truth. Description is a plurality of truths defining the truth which is being observed. The synthesis of the description is 'meaning' of the 'symbol'. The 'self' does not observe description of the symbol itself; Every truth, whether material or immaterial, is the dulity of a 'body and soul'. Body of a truth is static, spatial and it is observed in the 'now'. The soul of the truth is that which is in the immaterial world. The immaterial space time contains logical and illogical laws. The illogical law allows substitution of a 'symbol' in place of the 'synthesis' of the description of the observed truth. Every truth can act as a symbol, irrespective of whether it is material or immaterial. The 'self' is conscious of itself and of the 'synthesis' of the description of that which is symbolised. There is no direct contacvt between the 'self' and the material world. Observations can be limited to within the immaterial space time only. KK (92.27.147.93 (talk) 22:51, 13 March 2010 (UTC)) Categories: C-Class Media articles | Unknown-importance Media articles | WikiProject Media articles | C-Class sociology articles | High-importance sociology articles | C-Class Technology articles | C-Class core topic articles | C-Class Version 0.5 articles | Social sciences and society Version 0.5 articles | C-Class Version 0.7 articles | Social sciences and society Version 0.7 articles | Selected anniversaries (July 2004) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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