Study sheet: Communication Principles and Processes

📋 Course Outline

1. Nature and Importance of Communication
2. Elements of the Communication Process
3. Principles and Characteristics
4. Verbal and Nonverbal Language
5. Nonverbal Communication Categories
6. Communication Flows in the Workplace

📖 1. Nature and Importance of Communication

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Communication : the mutual exchange of information, ideas, and understanding through effective verbal or nonverbal means

★ Must-know

• Communication enables people to express thoughts, feelings, aspirations, doubts, questions, and fears and serves as an instrument for human interaction.

Further detail

• The word communication is derived from the Latin words “common,” meaning “belonging to many,” and “communico,” meaning “to confer with others.”

• Communication can connect people across distances through cellular phones, videos, computers, and fax machines.

💡 Memory Hook

Human social needs → communication enables interaction and shared understanding.

📖 2. Elements of the Communication Process

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Sender/Encoder : conceptualizes the message, chooses what to communicate and the most effective form, and considers the receiver
• Receiver : extracts and interprets meaning from a message and provides feedback to the sender
• Feedback : indicates whether the receiver grasped the intended meaning and whether communication was successful
• Noise : any internal or external factor that inhibits a message from being accurately received, interpreted, or answered
• Context : the surrounding environment of a communication act, including the place, time, event, and attitudes of the sender and receiver

📝 Essential Points

📌 The medium is the immediate form a message takes, such as a letter, email, or face-to-face speech, whereas the channel delivers that chosen form through systems such as the post office, internet, television, or radio.

• The communication process is dynamic, continuous, irreversible, and contextual, and no element can function independently of the others.

💡 Memory Hook

Sender → medium → channel → receiver → feedback, within context and noise.

📖 3. Principles and Characteristics

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Schemata-driven Communication : begins with knowledge already stored in the communicator’s mind, which helps make transmitted messages meaningful

★ Must-know

📌 Communication is an interpretative act because the receiver infers or guesses the message’s meaning, while the sender has the fullest knowledge of the ideas created and transmitted.

📌 Communication is ethical when it follows the rules, moral values, and beliefs agreed upon by members of the relevant societal or cultural group.

• Communication is active and powerful because it engages participants in giving and receiving information and can produce different meanings or reactions.

• Communication is symbolic because letters, words, sentences, graphs, pictures, concrete objects, gestures, eye movements, posture, facial expressions, voice quality, space, and time can represent ideas.

Further detail

• Communication is irreversible because once something is uttered, it remains subject to different interpretations or meanings.

• Communication is developmental because communicative competence develops through stages of language learning from birth through elementary school, high school, and college.

• Examples of modern communication media and devices include:

  • email
  • cellphones
  • webcams
  • the internet
  • computer-run devices

💡 Memory Hook

S-I-A-S-R-I-C-D-P-E-M: schemata, interpretative, active, symbolic, results, irreversible, contextual, developmental, process, ethical, media.

📖 4. Verbal and Nonverbal Language

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Verbal Language : uses letters, words, and other marks governed by language or grammar rules to organize and express ideas

★ Must-know

• Nonverbal communication norms vary among countries, cultures within a country, and individuals within a cultural group.

Further detail

• Spoken verbal language becomes written language when marks or prints representing ideas are placed on paper or another surface.

• The eyebrow flash of recognition and the open-hand, palm-up gesture requesting something or help are described as universal nonverbal signals.

• Smiling is a universal nonverbal behavior, but the cultural triggers that lead a person to smile vary.

💡 Memory Hook

Verbal language uses words and grammar, whereas nonverbal language uses bodily, vocal, spatial, temporal, and environmental signs.

📖 5. Nonverbal Communication Categories

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Body Movements : communicate meaning through gestures, facial expressions, posture, and eye behavior, and kinesics is the study of these movements
• Paralanguage : consists of extra vocal sounds and qualities accompanying spoken words, including pitch, volume, duration, intonation, voice quality, vocalization, and pauses or boosters
• Chronemics : the study of the effects of time on behavior, including willingness or hesitation to wait and the way time reflects patience, impatience, or relationship value
• Proxemics : the study of how space, distance, physical closeness, and contact communicate preferences, intimacy, and relationship meanings
• Haptics : the study of the effects of touch on people

📝 Essential Points

• Physical appearance and object language include:
  • dressing styles
  • body types and shapes
  • architectural structures
  • art objects
  • graphic materials
  • lighting effects
  • aromatic or smelly objects
  • other environmental factors

💡 Memory Hook

B-P-T-P-A: body movements, paralanguage, time, proxemics, appearance and objects.

📖 6. Communication Flows in the Workplace

★ Must-know

• Anna’s usual schedule was an 8-hour shift for 4 days with 3 consecutive days off, while her requested schedule was 16-hour shifts for 2 days with 5 consecutive days off.

• Because the schedule changes were not discussed with everyone else, Anna, Barbara, and Charles were all off from Monday to Friday and all began work on Saturday, leaving Dan as the only nurse working meanwhile.

Further detail

• In the workplace case, Sara approved Anna’s requested schedule change and planned to tell Lisa Davis, while Rick Walters independently approved Barbara’s change and Dr. Goodman arranged Charles’s change through other staff.

• The workplace communication chain moved from Sara to Lisa Davis, from Barbara to Rick Walters, from Charles to Dr. Goodman, and from Dr. Goodman to Susan Stevens for schedule entry.

💡 Memory Hook

Uncoordinated schedule messages → overlapping staff absences and only Dan remaining on duty.

📊 Synthesis Tables

Communication Elements

Element	Main role	Example or effect
Sender/encoder	Conceptualizes and encodes the message	Chooses words, signs, or pictures
Medium	Takes the immediate form of the message	Letter, email, or speech
Channel	Delivers the chosen message form	Internet, television, or radio
Receiver/decoder	Interprets the message and responds	Provides feedback
Context	Surrounds the communication act	Place, time, event, and attitudes
Noise	Inhibits accurate transmission	Internal worry or external rain