Chapter 1: Why We Study Communication

• The better we understand communication, the more we know about the decisions we make, whether they be subconscious or conscious.

• Communication is a basic process, but that does not mean it is easily understood or controlled.

• Competence in communication requires “uncommon” sense, which helps us understand underlying factors and leads us to assessing communication situations more carefully.

• Communication is vital for analyzing, understanding, developing, receiving, presenting, advocating, listening, and collaborating in the workplace.

• Communication is ranked highly in skills employers want for their employees to succeed.

• Historical Overview: Sophistic tradition, Plato and Aristotle, Saint Augustine, mass communication, psychological (intrapersonal), interpersonal, context specialization

• A higher education does not ensure communication competence. For example, nonverbal communication is not taught as much in school as verbal communication, even though nonverbal communication holds high power.

• Personal theories are theories based on everyday experience, are taken for granted, private, and stable.

• Scholarly theories are based on systematic observation and testing, are questioned, public, and are subject to modification.

• Personal theories can help define scholarly theories.

• The definition of communication can be very broad. Some view it as only intentionally created messages, others view it as everything we do (intentional or unintentional).

• Communication is inescapable, irreversible, contextual, and complicated.

• Communication can be thought through a producer or a receiver point of view.

• Communication is a process, which has separate but interrelated steps that occur over time.

• Communication is essential for individuals, relationships, groups, organizations, and societies.

• Communication involves responding to and creating messages through verbal and nonverbal behavior.

• Communication involves adapting to people and the environment because dynamics can change based on our position.

• Communication: the process through which individuals in relationships, groups, organizations, and societies create and respond to messages in order to relate to the environment and one another

• There are at least 6 “interpretations” of how a conversation is conducted: Who you think you are, who you think the other person is, who you think the other person thinks you are, who the other person thinks she is, who the other person thinks you are, who the other person thinks you think she is.

• Simple communication systems/model: Source, message, channel, receiver, feedback, noise

Chapter 2: Communication Past and Present

• Greece began talking about rhetoric in speech, particularly using emotion within speech to persuade. There was a view that communication was critical to all aspects of human life.

• Aristotle saw communication as how citizens participate in democracy, primarily a verbal activity used to persuade (a one-way process from the speaker to the receiver)

  • Speaker — Argument — Speech —> Listener(s)

• In the 17th century, communication was used for practical purposes like speech making and writing

• In the 18th and 19th century, emphasis was placed on written argument and literature. One professor wrote rhetor had four purposes: to enlighten, to please the imagination, to move the passions, to influence the will.

• Journalism also contributed significantly to communication study, as they were forms of public communication that aimed to inform and influence audiences.

• In the early 20th century, speech branched off as its own discipline (speech phonetics, phonology, physiology, pathology). The radio and the television also expanded the view of journalism and the impact it could have.

• In the 1940s-1960s, an interdisciplinary type of study was pursued to study communication through different lenses: behavioral sciences, psychology, anthropology.

• Laswell’s view of communication emphasized the elements of speaker, message, and audience. It also defined a channel, which included mass media AND speech. It also provided a more generalized view of a “goal” when communicating.

  • Who — What — Channel — Whom = Effect

• Shannon and Weaver described communication as “all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another”, which is a fancy way of saying all communication, even when intentional.

  • Information source —> Transmitter —Signal—> Channel (noise source) —Received Signal—> Destination

  • Noise: any distortion that interferes with the transmission of a signal from the source to the destination

• Katz and Lazarsfeld’s model introduced the idea that opinion leaders may have more influence on the outcome of a message than the original source. They linked interpersonal dynamics to mass communication (for example, married people are more influenced by their spouses than a complete stranger).

  • Source — Message —> Mass Media —> Opinion Leaders —> Public

• Westley and Maclean developed a model that suggested the communication process begins with receiving messages rather than sending them, more from a series of signals than potential messages (referred to as Xs). The first person (A) receives this set of signals, interprets them, and creates a new X to pass on which is a culmination of all the previous signals.

• In the 1960s to 1970s, the interest in communication bloomed.

• From the 1990s to the present period, digital media and the “information age” is redefining how communication is interpreted. Information is now a commodity which is present in all forms of technology. Converging media is also occurring (internet, DVDs, video games, cable systems, streaming displays).

• Communication is now being studied through an interdisciplinary lens.

Chapter 3: Communication As A Basic Life Process

• A multiplicity of factors affects even the most basic communication situation and results in a communication process that is multidimensional, multidirectional, and extremely complex, involving both intentional and unintentional messages.

• Animals and people are open systems, who participate in continuous transactions with the environment.

• Basic life functions of communication include courtship, mating, reproduction, parent-offspring relations, navigation, self-defense, and territoriality.

• The communication iceberg represents the contrast between observable and largely unobservable communication tactics. Invisible aspects of communication include meaning, learning, subjectivity, negotiation, culture, interacting contexts and levels, self-reference, self-reflexivity, ethics, and inevitability. People, symbols, and technology are all visible aspects of communication.

Chapter 6: Perception and Information Processing

• Perception has an active process consisting of selection, interpretation, and retention.

• Selection consists of what we choose to attend to within our environment. Selective attention, for example, consists of tuning into certain conversations within a large party environment. A modified filter model helps explain the complexity of the attention and selection process.

• Interpretation occurs when we assign meaning or significance to a cue or message in our environment.

• Retention occurs when we use our memory to store information.

• Short term memory is available for a relatively restricted period of time, while long term memory is further processed and elaborated. Recall is relatively slow retrievals that require conscious processing, recognition are relatively fast retrievals thar require no conscious processing.

• Needs are one of the most crucial factors that affect our information processing. Attitudes, believes, values, goals, capabilities, use, communication style, experience, and habit follow this.

• Message and information influences include origin, mode, physical character, organization, and novelty.

• Source influences include proximity, attractiveness, similarity, credibility, authoritativeness, motivation, intent, delivery, status, power, authority, peer pressure.

• Technological and environmental influences also occur.

Chapter 8: The Individual, Identity and The Self

• We react, take action, and face interactions. We use messages to which we describe, classify, and evaluate the things around us, creating messages and completing the information use sequence.

• In observing an object such as a chair, based on past experiences we infer what we cannot see.

• Cognitive development includes learning (creating theories). We also develop characteristics of personal representatives, along as undergoing self-development. By this, self-expression also changes (how we make statements).