{"id":29,"date":"2020-08-27T22:09:51","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T22:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-publicspeaking\/?post_type=chapter&p=29"},"modified":"2022-07-26T16:21:51","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T16:21:51","slug":"what-is-communication","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-publicspeaking\/chapter\/what-is-communication\/","title":{"raw":"What Is Communication?","rendered":"What Is Communication?"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n

Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\nIdentify the various elements of the communication process.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nIf you've ever struggled to express a thought, you know that we experience, feel, and think about far more than we will ever be able to communicate. Our psyche is filled with abstract ideas and feelings. Since we cannot read each other\u2019s minds, in order to interact with others, we use symbols to represent the abstract realm in our own head. For example, by stating \u201ctable\u201d you are not actually making a table appear. Rather you are using a symbol\u2014a word\u2014to represent it. Similarly, a smile might represent the feeling of happiness, but it is not the actual feeling itself.\r\n\r\nCommunication<\/strong> (from Latin communicare<\/em>, meaning \"to share\") is the act of conveying meanings from one entity or group to another through the use of mutually understood signs, symbols, and semiotic rules. (Wikipedia<\/a>) Or, more concisely, \"the symbolic process of sharing meanings.\"\u00a0[footnote]Galvin, Kathleen M., and Charles A. Wilkinson. \u201cThe Communication Process: Impersonal and Interpersonal.\u201d Making Connections: Readings in Relational Communication<\/i>, by Kathleen M. Galvin, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 5.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nBecause communication\u2014even just saying what's on your mind\u2014is so complicated, several models of this process have been developed over the years.\r\n

The Linear Model of Communication<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nOne of the founding documents of modern information theory was\u00a0A Mathematical Theory of Communication,<\/i>\u00a0published in 1948 by the mathematician Claude Shannon. In this article, Shannon proposed a model of communication that moved linearly from the source to the destination via some form of transmission.\r\n\r\n\"The\r\n\r\nImportantly, Shannon's model wasn't concerned at all with the intended\u00a0meaning<\/em> of the message (what he called its \"semantic aspects\"). He was far more interested in whether the signal could get through at all. The fact that Shannon's article appeared in Bell Labs' Bell System Technical Journal<\/em> gives some indication of the engineering problem he was trying to solve: Shannon's model is concerned with the technologies of the telegraph, the telephone, and the radio. With signals traveling through crowded telegraph or telephone lines, or across the busy airwaves, a lot can go wrong. (You know this if you've ever picked up two overlapping radio stations while driving). This disruption of the transmitted signal is called\u00a0noise<\/em> in Shannon's model.\u00a0[footnote]Shannon, Claude. \"A Mathematical Theory of Communication.\"\u00a0The Bell System Technical Journal<\/em>, Vol. 27, pp. 379\u2013423, 623\u2013656, July, October, 1948. http:\/\/people.math.harvard.edu\/~ctm\/home\/text\/others\/shannon\/entropy\/entropy.pdf[\/footnote] As we'll see, Shannon's model had an enormous influence on later understandings of communication, from the distinction between sender, channel, noise, and receiver to the emphasis on the technological media of communication.\r\n\r\nShannon was interested in the technological processes that would allow a signal to get through despite the inevitable noise in the system. But what if the signal gets through, but isn't understood properly at the receiving end?\r\n

Miscommunication<\/h3>\r\nAlfred, Lord Tennyson's famous poem \"The Charge of the Light Brigade\" (1854) tells the story of a doomed charge by the British light cavalry during the Crimean war (1853\u20131856). In Tennyson's poem, we read that the light brigade had been told to \"Charge for the guns,\" and did so, with catastrophic results:\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_522\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"]\"Charge \"Someone had blundered.\" Charge of the Light Brigade<\/em> by Richard Caton Woodville Jr.,\u00a01894[\/caption]\r\n
Not though the soldier knew\r\nSomeone had blundered.\r\nTheirs not to make reply,\r\nTheirs not to reason why,\r\nTheirs but to do and die.\r\nInto the valley of Death\r\nRode the six hundred.<\/blockquote>\r\nWhat was the \"blunder\" the poet refers to here? The cavalry was attacking the wrong guns! When the messenger carrying the order was asked which guns they should attack, he evidently made a vague gesture, perhaps of uncertainty, sweeping his arm across the battlefield. Instead of the relatively minor side action intended by the order, the Light Brigade launched a courageous but disastrous frontal attack on well-entrenched Russian artillery.\r\n\r\nAs the story of the Light Brigade demonstrates, even a simple gesture holds the possibility of misinterpretation. How can we account for the fact that the intended meaning of a communication does not always match up to the way the message is interpreted?\r\n

Encoding and Decoding<\/h3>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_531\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"104\"]\"Stuart Stuart Hall (1932\u20132014)[\/caption]\r\n\r\nIn the case of miscommunication, we see a discrepancy between the process of\u00a0encoding,<\/strong> or producing a meaningful message for an audience, and\u00a0decoding,\u00a0<\/strong>the process of interpreting the message.\r\n\r\nStuart Hall, a Jamaican-born British cultural studies theorist, proposed a model of communication that explored the differences between the intended meaning and the interpreted meaning of a message. In his 1973 essay \"Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse,\" Hall describes the many\u00a0factors that influence the encoding and decoding process. Hall is particularly interested in the cultural, political, and economic environments within which messages are produced and received. Hall's essay reminds us that the messages encoded in a television show, a political advertisement, or the nightly news will be interpreted very differently depending on the viewer's background, circumstances, or beliefs. Where one viewer might see an affirmation of their worldview, another might reject the message as false or irrelevant. Hall's model reminds us that meaning is created not just in the moment of\u00a0encoding<\/em> a message, but also in the way that message is\u00a0decoded<\/em>.[footnote]Hall,\u00a0Stuart. \"Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse.\"\u00a0Essential Essays, Volume 1: Foundations of Cultural Studies<\/em>. Duke University Press, 2018.[\/footnote]\r\n

Transactional Model of Communication<\/h3>\r\nIn thinking about two-way communication, many contemporary communication theorists combine elements of the linear model (e.g., the distinctions between sender, channel, noise, and receiver) with accounts, like Hall's, of the way meaning is created at multiple sites within the communication process. One influential model of two-way communication is\u00a0Barnlund's\u00a0transactional model of communication<\/em> (1970),\u00a0<\/strong>where meaning is co-created simultaneously by both parties.[footnote]Barnlund,\u00a0Dean. \"A Transactional Model of Communication\" (1970).\u00a0Communication Theory<\/em>, edited by C. D. Mortensen, Routledge, 2017, pp. 47\u201358.[\/footnote]\r\n