Human Communication Efforts - Essay Example

Running Head: Human Communication Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code and Name: Institution: Date Submitted: Human Communication Introduction Human communication is an interesting by complex area of study. People communicate on a daily basis in order to deal with life’s everyday challenges and problems. On the other hand, human communication is also about expressing feelings, attitudes and identity. Language is a key tool for human communication. Today, there are many channels through which communication can take place. The electronic age provides us with almost limitless platforms of meeting our communication needs. Whereas the medium through which human communication takes place may change, the principles that underlie efficiency in communication do not. This assignment will consider the four main points, which included why communication between people does work and does not work, the positive impact of electronic age on communication and my opinion on what its like to communicate full time in English. Heath & Bryant (2000) define human communication as ‘a field of study that is dedicated to the understanding of how people communicate’. Heath & Bryant add that communication begins when a sender encodes a message. Then he passes it through some channel to an intended receiver who decodes. There are many aspects of human communication. These aspects include intrapersonal communication, body expression, interpersonal communication, group dynamics, organizational communication and cross-cultural communication. Today, communication processes have remarkably improved thanks to the benefit of the electronic age. All the communication efforts that people make at human communication can succeed or fail; it all depends on many factors, some of which are contributed to by the participants, others which are contributed to by third parties or the environment. Why communication can break down Whenever communication breaks down, it means that there are some barriers that are interfering with the process of encoding and decoding messages. When some form of disturbance blocks any step in the communication process, the message gets destroyed. When the message gets destroyed or distorted, communication breakdown is said to have taken place. Whenever there is a misunderstanding about culture, human communication can break down. Perceptual and language differences can cause breakdown of human communication (Ruesch, 2008). Perception entails the manner in which every individual interprets his environment or the world around him. Everyone wants to receive messages that are of significance to them. Messages that are perceived to go against their (cultural) values are rejected. A same event can be interpreted differently by two individuals, depending on its significance to each of them and the way they understand it. Whenever there are differences in the understanding of a message, communication breaks down. Linguistic differences can also contribute to breakdown of communication. For instance, the same word can be interpreted as having a different meaning to different people. Additionally, words whose meaning the participants understand may even be used either connotatively or denotatively (Heath & Bryant, 2000). People also tend to attach new meanings to familiar to convey special messages based on unique experiences shared by the participants. In such contexts, one of the participants may fail to encode or decode the information in the right way, leading to breakdown of communication. Moreover, misunderstandings about a language or accent can also cause a communication breakdown. People who are not conversant with the local accent may misunderstand it. Likewise, when people do not understand the vocabulary of a language well, they become inefficient communicators. Different varieties of a language may attach different meaning to the same lexical items. This may create problems for people who want to communicate using the different varieties of the language. At certain times, noise and distraction can cause human communication breakdown. The source of noise or distraction may be the participants themselves or the environment. Physical distractions in a meeting may be in the form uncomfortable sitting or standing, poor lighting or very loud speakers. In a telephone conversation, poor voice quality, background noise and inaudible voice, all constitute different forms of noise/distraction that interrupts the communication process. Other causes of communication breakdown include information overload, inattention, time pressures and poor retention. Whenever someone is surrounded with a pool of crucial information, he has to devise a way of controlling the manner in which it flows (Kim, 2002). Proper control giving every bit of information the attention and emphasis that it deserves. Whenever such a form of control is not there, some information can easily be misinterpreted, forgotten or overlooked. When this happens, the resulting effectiveness becomes injurious to the communication process. Inattention is one of the most dramatic ways through which communication breaks down. The environment is always full of stimuli. All human beings need to do is pay attention to the intended impulse in order to decipher the right meaning. When people refuse to listen to a speaker during a meeting, no communication can take place. Additionally, when a manager is so engrossed in his paperwork that he does not listen to an employee, the employee may be very disappointed since his message cannot be decoded in such an environment. Time pressures constitute a very significant cause of information breakdown. When people have so many things to achieve within a short time, they may not pay enough attention to every instance of communication. Some important bits of information may be decoded wrongly while others may go unnoticed. Yet others may be ignored and emphasis put on only those that are of short-term significance. How communication succeeds There are many things that people can do in order to facilitate success in communication. it is important for both the speaker and the listener to acquire some listening skills. The world is full of opportunities for people to improve their listening skills. For example, it is important for one to learn to listen attentively to people who talk in the TV or in a meeting. One should try as much as possible to pay attention to theme of the TV or meeting speech. Human communication succeeds mainly because of presence of mutual awareness. When both participants are aware of the context of communication, it is highly unlikely that the information will be misinterpreted. Mutual awareness may mean the understanding of all the events preceding and following after the communication. It may also entail knowledge of the impact of the message in the participants’ job performance, relationship, or success in life (Gudykunst & Nishida, 2001). Mutual awareness requires that all the participants understand the potential distractions that may break down the communication process. Meanwhile, understanding the threat of noise and distraction is not enough; both participants must express a willingness to avoid these distractions. Failure to show interest in eliminating distractions by either may be construed by the other party as a way of bringing about failure in the communication process. Additionally, sensory modalities should be properly understood. While all senses play a crucial role, the most salient modalities or completing our understanding of human communication include visual, kinesthetic and auditory. Some people are better at using one modality instead of many. In this case, such people may be better at picking auditory rather than visual cues. Yet others are multi-modal, in that they exhibit strength in more many modalities. In other words, all human being do not have a uniform level of ability to encode and decode information. This understanding is part of what it means for participants to have a shared awareness. Reception of stimuli such as sound, heat, light, or cold triggers the communication. However, the stimuli have to be coded in order to be of significance to the communication process. Coding refers to one-to-one correspondence between a certain part of the physical stimuli and some aspect of the human nervous system. For purposes of elaborating the human communication in a nontechnical way, only the evidence of encoding is worth discussing. The evidence of encoding is the one that determines whether one perceives illusions or a phenomenon that really exists. In order to overcome illusions, one should take time to understand the message objectively. However, there are many factors to be considered during the interpretation process of this message. For instance, the importance that is attached to the message determines the amount of time that a manager assigns it. In situations where there is information overload, the best way out is to create a continuum of priorities, where the messages are ordered according to relevance, timeliness, and complexity. The ability to in organizing such messages in the best manner is what differentiates the best managers from the rest. In order to communicate effectively, people must also learn to approach the human communication process from an artistic point of view. The sender of the message should know how best to attract the attention of the receiver. He must also know how to manage all those distractions that cannot be completely eliminated. In other words, the level of mutual awareness should be artistically improved as much as possible. Impact of the electronic age on communication The electronic age has provided man with many ways of sharing information. Information technology developments make it possible for information to be shared in many forms: audio, visual, audio-visual, symbolic and animated form. Additionally, the dimension of speed and convenience is also significant; people can exchange large amounts of information through real-time virtual systems that are highly efficient. However, availability of information per se does not make human beings better communicators; it merely creates opportunities for communication across all horizons. According to Kwana (2007) the electronic age has changed the way in which people communicate. This is evident in the way many people have become reliant on email, mobile phone, instant messaging other technology-dependent forms of communication. Technology has brought about new platforms through which human beings can communicate. For instance, a CEO of a Japan-based construction company can communicate ‘face-to-face’ with his employees even when he is on a business trip to the United States, using video conferencing technology. This is one of the ways in which today’s technology improves communication across geographical boundaries (Hiltz, 2006). Internet technology makes people feel as if they are in a global village. Although the electronic age comes with many prospects for efficiency in communication, it also brings new challenges, barriers and complexities. People who use the Internet to communicate have a very short attention span. They may therefore miss some important cues communicated through chat messages, emails or animations. In order to maintain the fast pace of information reception, processing, and transmission, Internet cues tend to be transient and fast-changing. Words are shortened, letters are chosen to represent words in chat messages, and verbal cues are transformed into written signs. Moreover, many new techniques of communication continue to be generated in order to keep pace with the speed of online communication. The problem with this type of communication is that it is very easy to pay a lot of time to unnecessary communication. Today, many people spend many hours sorting mails, chatting with friends, watching videos sent by friends and sharing last weekend’s experiences with old friends. The sheer convenience that is given to communication in the electronic age turns out to be a source of new challenges. How communicating in English makes me feel Whenever I am communicating with people with whom I share a dialect, social background, status, experiences and aspirations, I always find it easy to encode the message. I also find it difficult to overcome various barriers to communication. This is largely because they tend to understand the environment in which I am and the efforts that I am making in order to make the communication process a successful one. Sometimes my English dialect may be perceived negatively by people who speak other dialects of the language. They may claim that my dialect lacks status, and this disappoints me especially if I was in the middle of explaining something important. According to Haugen (1966) many ambiguities exist with regard to the definition of the terms ‘language’ and ‘dialect’. Haugen adds that the relationship between the two may be either linguistic or social. Since language is the most fundamental tool of human communication, it becomes difficult to divorce any communication process from a certain social context. For me, the social context in which I speak English provides an environment that largely determines the way in which my messages are decoded. In conclusion, it is important for the concept human communication to be properly understood in order for people to become good communicators. Every individual encodes and decodes messages according to his unique circumstances as defined by his environment. Both the sender and receiver of human messages should understand each other’s circumstances in order to create mutual awareness. In today’s electronic age, people need to understand how to differentiate between necessary and unnecessary communication. This will lead to efficient use of technology in building communication networks in different social settings. References Gudykunst, W. & Nishida,T. (2001) Anxiety, uncertainty, and perceived effectiveness of communication across relationships and cultures, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 25(1), 55-71 Haugen, E. (1966) Dialect, Language, Nation, American Anthropologist, New Series, 68(4) 922-935 Heath, R. & Bryant, J. (2000) Human Communication Theory and Research: Concepts, Contexts, and Challenges, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hiltz, S. (2006) Experiments in Group Decision Making Communication Process and Outcome in Face-to-Face Versus Computerized Conferences, Human Communication Research, 13(2) 225 – 252. Kim, M. (2002) Non-western perspectives on human communication: implications for theory and practice, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Kwana, M. (2007) Mobile Communications, Social Networks, and Urban Travel: Hypertext as a New Metaphor for Conceptualizing Spatial Interaction, The Professional Geographer, 59(4), 434 – 446. Ruesch, J. (2008) Principles of Human Communication, Dialectica, 11(1-2), 154 – 166. Read More