COMMUNICATION SKILL

 COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Communication (from latin communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is "an apparent answer to the painful divisions between self and other, private and public, and inner thought and outer world." As this definition indicates, communication is difficult to define in a consistent manner, because it is commonly used to refer to a wide range of different behaviors (broadly: "the transfer of information"), or to limit what can be included in the category of communication (for example, requiring a "conscious intent" to persuade). John Peters argues the difficulty of defining communication emerges from the fact that communication is both a universal phenomenon (because everyone communicates) and a specific discipline of institutional academic study.

TYPES OF COMMUNICATION

Non-verbal communication

Nonverbal communication explains the processes that convey a type of information in a form of non-linguistic representations. Examples of nonverbal communication include haptic communication, chronemic communication, gestures, body language, facial expression, eye contact etc. Nonverbal communication also relates to the intent of a message. Examples of intent are voluntary, intentional movements like shaking a hand or winking, as well as involuntary, such as sweating. Speech also contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage e.g. rhythm, intonation, tempo, and stress. It affects communication most at the subconscious level and establishes trust. Likewise, written texts include nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, the spatial arrangement of words and the use of emoticons to convey emotion.
Nonverbal communication demonstrates one of Paul Watzlawick's laws: you cannot not communicate. Once proximity has formed awareness, living creatures begin interpreting any signals received.Some of the functions of nonverbal communication in humans are to complement and illustrate, to reinforce and emphasize, to replace and substitute, to control and regulate, and to contradict the denotative message.
Nonverbal cues are heavily relied on to express communication and to interpret others' communication and can replace or substitute verbal messages. However, non-verbal communication is ambiguous. When verbal messages contradict non-verbal messages, observation of non-verbal behaviour is relied on to judge another's attitudes and feelings, rather than assuming the truth of the verbal message alone.
There are several reasons as to why non-verbal communication plays a vital role in communication:
"Non-verbal communication is omnipresent." They are included in every single communication act. To have total communication, all non-verbal channels such as the body, face, voice, appearance, touch, distance, timing, and other environmental forces must be engaged during face-to-face interaction. Written communication can also have non-verbal attributes. E-mails, web chats, and the social media have options to change text font colours, stationery, add emoticons, capitalization, and pictures in order to capture non-verbal cues into a verbal medium.
"Non-verbal behaviours are multifunctional." Many different non-verbal channels are engaged at the same time in communication acts and allow the chance for simultaneous messages to be sent and received.
"Non-verbal behaviours may form a universal language system."Smiling, crying, pointing, caressing, and glaring are non-verbal behaviours that are used and understood by people regardless of nationality. Such non-verbal signals allow the most basic form of communication when verbal communication is not effective due to language barriers.

Verbal communication

Verbal communication is the spoken or written conveyance of a message. Human language can be defined as a system of symbols (sometimes known as lexemes) and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated. The word "language" also refers to common properties of languages. Language learning normally occurs most intensively during human childhood. Most of the large number of human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for symbols which enable communication with others around them. Languages tend to share certain properties, although there are exceptions. Constructed languages such as Esperanto, programming languages, and various mathematical formalisms are not necessarily restricted to the properties shared by human languages.
As previously mentioned, language can be characterized as symbolic. Charles Ogden and I.A Richards developed The Triangle of Meaning model to explain the symbol (the relationship between a word), the referent (the thing it describes), and the meaning (the thought associated with the word and the thing).
The properties of language are governed by rules. Language follows phonological rules (sounds that appear in a language), syntactic rules (arrangement of words and punctuation in a sentence), semantic rules (the agreed upon meaning of words), and pragmatic rules (meaning derived upon context).
The meanings that are attached to words can be literal, or otherwise known as denotative; relating to the topic being discussed, or, the meanings take context and relationships into account, otherwise known as connotative; relating to the feelings, history, and power dynamics of the communicators.
Contrary to popular belief, signed languages of the world (e.g., American Sign Language) are considered to be verbal communication because their sign vocabulary, grammar, and other linguistic structures abide by all the necessary classifications as spoken languages. There are however, nonverbal elements to signed languages, such as the speed, intensity, and size of signs that are made. A signer might sign "yes" in response to a question, or they might sign a sarcastic-large slow yes to convey a different nonverbal meaning. The sign yes is the verbal message while the other movements add nonverbal meaning to the message.

Written communication and its historical development

Over time the forms of and ideas about communication have evolved through the continuing progression of technology. Advances include communications psychology and media psychology, an emerging field of study.

The progression of written communication can be divided into three "information communication revolutions":

1. Written communication first emerged through the use of pictographs. The pictograms were made in stone, hence written communication was not yet mobile. Pictograms began to develop standardized and simplified forms.
2. The next step occurred when writing began to appear on paper, papyrus, clay, wax, and other media with commonly shared writing systems, leading to adaptable alphabets. Communication became mobile.
3. The final stage is characterized by the transfer of information through controlled waves of electromagnetic radiation (i.e., radio, microwave, infrared) and other electronic signals.

Communication is thus a process by which meaning is assigned and conveyed in an attempt to create shared understanding. Gregory Bateson called it "the replication of tautologies in the universe. This process, which requires a vast repertoire of skills in interpersonal processing, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing, gestures, and evaluating enables collaboration and cooperation.

COMMUNICATION MODEL

The first major model for communication was introduced by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver for Bell Laboratories in 1949 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 emitter (emisor in the picture)/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. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver structured this model based on the following elements:

1. An information source, which produces a message.
2. A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals.
3. A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission.
4. A noise source, which distorts the signal while it propagates through the channel.
5. A receiver, which 'decodes' (reconstructs) the message from the signal.
6. A destination, where the message arrives.

BARRIERS OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

Barriers to effective communication can retard or distort the message or intention of the message being conveyed. This may result in failure of the communication process or cause an effect that is undesirable. These include filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotions, language, silence, communication apprehension, gender differences and political correctness.

This also includes a lack of expressing "knowledge-appropriate" communication, which occurs when a person uses ambiguous or complex legal words, medical jargon, or descriptions of a situation or environment that is not understood by the recipient.

• Physical barriers – Physical barriers are often due to the nature of the environment. An example of this is the natural barrier which exists when workers 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.
• 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 whom 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 organization. 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 simply resistance to change due to entrenched attitudes and ideas.
  
• Ambiguity of words/phrases – Words sounding the same but having different meaning can convey a different meaning altogether. Hence the communicator must ensure that the receiver receives the same meaning. It is better if such words are avoided by using alternatives whenever possible.
• Individual linguistic ability – The use of jargon, difficult or inappropriate words in communication can prevent the recipients from understanding the message. Poorly explained or misunderstood messages can also result in confusion. However, research in communication has shown that confusion can lend legitimacy to research when persuasion fails.
• Physiological barriers – These may result from individuals' personal discomfort, caused—for example—by ill health, poor eyesight or hearing difficulties.
• Bypassing – This happens when the communicators (the sender and the receiver) do not attach the same symbolic meanings to their words. It is when the sender is expressing a thought or a word but the receiver gives it a different meaning. For example- ASAP, Rest room.
• Technological multi-tasking and absorbency – With a rapid increase in technologically-driven communication in the past several decades, individuals are increasingly faced with condensed communication in the form of e-mail, text, and social updates. This has, in turn, led to a notable change in the way younger generations communicate and perceive their own self-efficacy to communicate and connect with others. With the ever-constant presence of another "world" in one's pocket, individuals are multi-tasking both physically and cognitively as constant reminders of something else happening somewhere else bombard them. Though perhaps too new an advancement to yet see long-term effects, this is a notion currently explored by such figures as Sherry Turkle.
• Fear of being criticized – This is a major factor that prevents good communication. If we exercise simple practices to improve our communication skill, we can become effective communicators. For example, read an article from the newspaper or collect some news from the television and present it in front of the mirror. This will not only boost your confidence but also improve your language and vocabulary.
• Gender barriers – Most communicators whether aware or not, often have a set agenda. This is very notable among the different genders. For example, many women are found to be more critical when addressing conflict. It's also been noted that men are more likely than women to withdraw from conflict.

Noise

In any communication model, noise is interference with the decoding of messages sent over the 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 a 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.

To face communication noise, redundancy and acknowledgement must often be used. Acknowledgements are messages from the addressee informing the originator that his/her communication has been received and is understood. Message repetition and feedback about message received are necessary in the presence of noise to reduce the probability of misunderstanding. The act of disambiguation regards the attempt of reducing noise and wrong interpretations, when the semantic value or meaning of a sign can be subject to noise, or in presence of multiple meanings, which makes the sense-making difficult. Disambiguation attempts to decrease the likelihood of misunderstanding. This is also a fundamental skill in communication processes activated by counselors, psychotherapists, interpreters, and in coaching sessions based on colloquium. In Information Technology, the disambiguation process and the automatic disambiguation of meanings of words and sentences has also been an interest and concern since the earliest days of computer treatment of language.

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