Communication and Human Relationships

Communication a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior (Websters New Collegiate Dictionary, 1976) a process of transferring information from one entity to another process are sign-mediated interactions between at least two agents which share a repertoire of signs and semiotic rules.

There are four types of communication: 1. verbal communication 2. behavior as communication 3. policies and procedures as communication 4. discovery as communication I. Verbal communication makes possible the identification of purposes, the development of strategies and behaviors for achieving purposes, and the processes of complex and precise thinking and learning. * Through the use of words as in speaking on radio or television, addressing an audience, or writing a directive, a statement or procedure, a notice, a letter, or a newsletter. * There is one area of communications with which educational administrators should be concerned, and this pertains to meanings or semantics. * Communication difficulties often result from failures to take semantic problems into account. For example: * curriculum may mean curriculum guides or courses of study to one person whereas to another, it may mean the learners total school experiences. Communication can be seen as processes of information transmission governed by three levels of semiotic rules. 1. Syntactic (formal properties of signs and symbols) 2. Pragmatic (concerned with the relations between signs/expressions and their users) 3. Semantic (study of relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent)

*Therefore, communication is social interaction where at least two interacting agents share a common set of signs and a common set of semiotic rules. *This commonly held rules in some sense ignores autocommunication, including intrapersonal communication via diaries or self-talk, both secondary phenomena that followed the primary acquisition of communicative competences within social interactions.

Social scientist 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 receiver, which decodes (reconstructs) the message from the signal 5. A destination, where the message arrives Shannon and Weaver argued that there were three levels of problems for communication within this theory. 1. The technical problem: how accurately can the message be transmitted? 2. The semantic problem: how precisely is the meaning conveyed? 3. The effectiveness problem: how effectively does the received meaning affect behavior? Daniel Chandler critiques the transmission model by stating - it assumes communicators are isolated individuals - no allowance for differing purposes - no allowance for differing interpretation - no allowance for unequal power relations - no allowance for situational contexts II. Nonverbal communication - pertains to messages that are sent by various actions or behaviors of a person - His posture, tone of voice, doodling, wriggling of feet, and putting the head down on a desk are some examples. - indication of feeling and motives. * Like verbal communication, it can be used to mislead another person * Non verbal communication has both advantages and disadvantage

Two disadvantages are: 1. That it may be ignored 2. Misinterpreted * It has been pointed that some administrators have little or no understanding of human behavior and thus fail to learn from the vast amount of potential communication which surrounds them all of the time. * Other administrators who understand human behavior fail to see the implications of this knowledge for improving communication. *Administrators must ask themselves what messages lie in the behavior which they observe.

III. Organizational policies and procedures are more or less the organizations stated norms of behavior, and inferences will be drawn by some individuals concerning the meaning of this behavior. - it provide implicit communication which goes beyond the immediate purposes of the written statements and indicates important value judgments.

IV. Discovery as Communication means that one person, through communication, can affect another person by providing experiences which enable the other to discover information or meanings independently. - Such communication is indirect but may make a strong impression because the individual is learning through experience. - which is an indirect approach to communication - it not only time consuming, it is also open to abuse by those who want to manipulate others.