What is Communications ? Communication is an inevitable part of our lives. We are born with communications, we live with commu and we die with communication. When a baby is born, he/she cries out. Through this crying the baby gives us the massage of his/her arrival on this world. When we die, we say some dos and don’t to the members of our family and other well wisher. In between these two times we grow up with communication and we lead our lives with communication. At every step of our lives whether as child, adolescent, young, adult and old. We are involved in communication; sometimes personal communication, sometimes in business communication, sometimes in social communication. We communicate with others explicitly using language and implicitly using some non-language symbols.
Simply stated communication is sending and receiving a massage. But communication is so all pervasive in our life that it is really difficult to give a universal definition. Different scholars defined communication in different ways. “Communication is the process of transmitting meaning, ideas and understanding of a person or a group to another person or group”. “Communication is a dynamic, ever changing, unending process by which people transmit information and feelings to others.
Nature of Communication ?
The term ‘communication’ stems from the Latin word ‘communis’ which means common. However, communication includes in addition to commonalty, the concepts of transmission, meaning and information. When all these features are combined, communication takes a precise shape in the form of transmission of commonly meaningful information. This transmission involves a process. Thus communication is a process, a process of sending and receiving a message. Rather it is a multifaceted process is neither mechanical not technical, rather it is a human activity.
Process:
Communication process is a complicated, because it varies with the people, positions and situations. It involves the following sequence of events:
- Ideation
- Encoding
- Transmission through a channel
- Receiving
- Decoding
- Understanding
- Feedback
Communication does not occur unless; a person transmits a piece of information, another person receives the piece of information and the received information is meaningful to the receiver.
Factors Affecting Communication ?
The transmission of the appropriate message by the sender and the understanding of the same by the receiver are influenced by the following factors:
- Functional Relationship: If functional relationship between the sender and receiver of the message is good, communication will be more effective.
- Understanding Ability: Understanding the attitude of the sender or the contents of the message depends on the educational qualification of the receiver.
- Experience: Success of communication also depends on experiences regarding relationship between the sender of the message and receiver of the message. If there exists better experience between them, communication would be better, while bad experience creates a communication gap.
- Positional Relationship: Communication is normally effective when the message is sent by the boss to the subordinates. This is because the boss is superior to subordinates in term of knowledge, experience and position. Naturally, subordinates are most likely to respect the message of their superior.
- Interest and Acceptance: Without the support of the colleagues (receiver) no communication will be fruitful. For this reason the receiver must have the curiosity and mentality to accept the subject matter of communication.
- Differences in Heredity: Difference in heredity and prior environment between the sender and the receiver of the message also create obstacles in the communication process.
- Mutual Trust: Mutual trust between the parties involved in communication is an important factor to influence communication.
- Geographical Distance: Languages norms, values and cultural issues are not the same for the people living at different geographical locations and belonging to different cultures. These factors affect in communication.
The Communication Situation:
The communication situation is a state of condition which leads to establish a relationship between a communicator and communicatee. A communication situation is therefore said to exist where there is:
- A person desirous of sending a message
- A receiver to receive the message
- A message understandable to the receiver
- Feedback
For a communication situation to exist all these four components must be there.
