Chapter 1: Introduction to Human Communication

Fundamentals of Human Communication

  • Etymology and Basic Definition

    • The term communication originates from the Latin root communico or communicare, translated as "to join or unite," "to connect," "to participate in," or "to share with all."
    • This root word shares origin with common, commune, communion, and community.
    • Communication is defined as a process by which individuals share ideas or information with other people.
    • Communication extends beyond speech to include characteristics of voice, eyes, facial expressions, hand gestures, body position, and movement.

  • Foundational Underpinnings and Contention

    • Arthur Bochner (1989) defined interpersonal communication as involving "at least two communicators; intentionally orienting toward each other; as both subject and object; whose actions embody each other's perspectives both toward self and toward other."
    • This definition is viewed by many scholars as simplistic because it lacks clear parameters beyond two interacting individuals.
    • Mark Knapp and John Daly (2011) identified four primary areas of contention in defining interpersonal communication:
      • Number of Communicators Involved: While standard consensus requires at least two communicators (a dyad), background influences (such as relational baggage from family, friends, co-workers, and associates) actively affect dyadic interactions.
      • Physical Proximity of Communicators: Early scholarship characterized interpersonal communication strictly as face-to-face interaction. In 21st-century contexts, mediated technologies (text messaging, social networking sites, email, telephone) facilitate interpersonal communication over distances.
      • Nature of Interaction Units: Debates exist over whether high "interpersonalness" requires interactions that allow individuals to understand and predict behavior (e.g., resolving a relational dispute over public flirting) versus minimal interactions (e.g., "liking" a stranger's social media post).
      • Degree of Formality and Structure: scholarship spans both informal/unstructured interactions (friendships, romantic partnerships, family) and formal/structured interactions (physician-patient, supervisor-employee).

Motivations and Needs for Studying Communication

  • Reasons to Study Communication

    • Gaining a New Perspective: Provides insight into everyday behaviors that are typically taken for granted. Similar to how studying anatomy reveals physiological functions, taking a communication course reveals how and why communication occurs.
    • Time Allocation: Communication occupies a major portion of daily human routines across face-to-face and electronic media channels (e.g., Gina Chen's 2011 findings on daily online activity and Twitter fulfillments of camaraderie).
    • Increasing Effectiveness: Enhances relational success and mitigates irreconcilable differences, anger, hostility, and potential violence caused by inadequate problem-solving skills.

  • Categories of Human Communication Needs

    • Physical Needs:
      • A direct link exists between mental and physical health; sharing negative experiences through communication improves overall health.
      • Communication relieves stress and prevents emotional distress caused by bottling up feelings.
      • Ronald Adler, Lawrence Rosenfeld, and Russell Proctor (2007) found that effective communication helps avoid or decrease:
        • Stress
        • Anxiety
        • Depression
        • Cancer
        • Coronary problems
        • The common cold
    • Identity Needs:
      • Self-concept and identity are formed from early childhood based on external feedback regarding physical appearance and personality.
      • Comments from others directly shape self-perception, behavior, and feelings (e.g., Sally refraining from going out without makeup after a negative comment from a friend).
      • Negative comments can also be leveraged constructively to build personal drive (e.g., Mark working harder to prove negative parental statements wrong).
    • Social Needs:
      • Communication is required to establish, maintain, and terminate relationships.
      • Joy Koesten (2004) demonstrated that individuals raised in high conversation-oriented families display higher communication competence and better relational outcomes than those raised in low conversation-oriented families.
    • Practical Needs:
      • Essential for accomplishing routine daily tasks (e.g., ordering coffee, consulting physicians, requesting assistance).
      • Katherine Kinnick and Sabrena Parton (2005) demonstrated that workplace persuasive skills are vital. Their findings indicated that females are evaluated more heavily on interpersonal skills, whereas males are evaluated more on leadership skills.
      • Relational maintenance behaviors are required in romantic and marital partnerships to establish relational stability (Canary, Stafford, & Semic, 2002; Stafford & Canary, 1991).

Core Principles of Human Communication

  • Symbolic Nature of Communication

    • Definition of Symbol: A mark, object, or sign representing something else by association, resemblance, or convention.
    • Letters and Language: Sequences of letters (such as "c-a-t") form visual symbols associated with specific concepts.
    • Visual and Gestural Symbols: Visual symbols include sign language (e.g., American Sign Language spelling of "l-o-v-e") and digital icons (e.g., Facebook's lowercase "f", Twitter's bird, Snapchat's ghost).
    • The Symbol is Not the Thing: Symbols represent ideas or objects but are not the items themselves (e.g., the word "dog" is not a physical canine; "g+" is a series of web code, not Google Plus itself).
    • Arbitrariness of Symbols: Symbol assignment is arbitrary. The word associated with an animal exists purely through historical convention.
    • Origins of Emoticons and Emojis:
      • In early September 1982, Scott E. Fahlman introduced the first emoticons on a Carnegie Mellon University electronic bulletin board during a debate on marking non-serious posts: :-) for jokes and :-( for non-jokes.
      • In 1963, graphic artist Harvey Ross Ball designed the universal yellow smiley face to raise employee morale at State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts.

  • Shared Meaning and Interpretation

    • Meanings exist in people, not in words.
    • Cultural differences alter symbolic meaning (e.g., "time for tea" in the United States signifies boiling water/tea leaves, whereas in the United Kingdom it signifies the main evening meal, also termed "high tea" or "meat tea").
    • Denotative Definitions: The explicit, dictionary-type definitions of a symbol (e.g., "love" defined as intense regard/liking, deeply intimate relationship, or romantic/sexual attachment).
    • Connotative Definitions: The individualized emotions, memories, or associations evoked by exposure to a symbol (e.g., varying emotional responses to the word "dog" or "clown" based on past experiences).

  • Key Dimensions and Factors of Communication

    • Intentionality: Focuses on whether a sender intentionally communicates a message. The perspective that "one cannot not communicate" posits that bodies continuously transmit nonverbal messages (posture, spatial usage, facial expressions) regardless of explicit intent.
    • Relational Dimension: Expresses how the speaker feels about the receiver (e.g., friendship, love, hostility). Dictates how a message is interpreted (e.g., evaluating the statement "You are crazy!" or "I want to see you now!" differently based on whether it is uttered by a supervisor or a romantic partner).
    • Content Dimension: The explicit information transmitted through exact words.
    • Process Orientation: David K. Berlo (1960) established communication as an ongoing, dynamic, and evolving process that changes over time (e.g., development of relational shorthand and inside jokes).
    • Cultural Determination: Culture is defined as a group of people who through a learning process share world perceptions that influence beliefs, values, norms, rules, and behaviors.
      • Beliefs: Religious traditions shape views on life, death, and the afterlife (e.g., Heaven, Hell, or Samsara—the process of reincarnation and karmic action).
      • Values: Frameworks shape values regarding nature (e.g., Cherokee emphasis on earth balance vs. Judaic interpretations of Adam subduing the earth).
      • Norms: Guidelines dictate acceptable behavior (e.g., religious modest dress requirements vs. Raëlianism pro-sex feminist stances celebrating nudity).
      • Rules: Religious laws enshrined into societal conduct (e.g., Ten Commandments, Vedas).
      • Language Constraints: Illustrating the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the term "backyard" does not exist in Japanese due to geographical space limitations.
    • Contextual Dependence: Meaning is governed by circumstances, environments, settings, or situations (e.g., interpreting "out in left field" as a baseball idiom for unusual behavior versus a literal farming location).
    • Purposefulness: Communication is conducted to fulfill internal or external objectives, such as persuading, expressing affection, or gaining affinity.

Communication Competence

  • Defining Competence

    • Brian Spitzberg (2000) defined communication competence as the dual presence of social appropriateness and personal effectiveness.
    • Social Appropriateness: Utilizing communication behaviors considered acceptable within a given social context.
    • Personal Effectiveness: Communication that successfully achieves desired personal outcomes.
    • Competence requires both elements; effective communication without appropriateness can be hostile or offensive, while appropriate communication without effectiveness fails to accomplish goals.

  • Principles of Communication Competence

    • No single ideal communication style works across all individuals or scenarios.
    • Competence varies across different settings (e.g., a teacher thriving with kindergarten students but experiencing anxiety presenting to college students).
    • Communication competence is a learnable skill set.

  • Six Characteristics of Competent Communicators

    • Skillful: Employs situational cues to select suitable communication tactics (e.g., a car salesperson adapting questions, greetings, and compliments to match customer cues).
    • Adaptable: Capable of revising communication under constraints, equipment failures, or shifting audience interest.
    • Involved: Engages and connects with the audience to stir interest, awareness, or action (e.g., motivational speakers, politicians).
    • Understands Audience: Demonstrates empathy and tailors approach to sensitive situations (e.g., offering genuine empathy to someone experiencing a miscarriage rather than dismissive advice like "just try again").
    • Cognitive Complexity: The ability to frame and express a single message or concept in multiple distinct ways (e.g., an instructor explaining a problem using Methods A, B, and C).
    • Self-Monitoring: The process of observing personal behavior and adjusting it to fit the situation.
      • High Self-Monitors: Pay close attention to posture, eye movement, gestures, and breathing.
      • Low Self-Monitors: Communicate with minimal self-scrutiny ("what you see is what you get").
      • Competent communicators maintain a balance between high and low self-monitoring.

Levels and Types of Human Communication

  • Intrapersonal Communication

    • Communication occurring within an individual's self or mind (e.g., internal self-talk, mental grocery lists, diary writing, weighing pros and cons of academic majors).
    • Samuel Riccillo (1994) framed intrapersonal communication biologically (phylogenesis), focusing on neurological and physiological structures that govern human communicative abilities.

  • Interpersonal Communication

    • The exchange of messages between two people (a dyad).
    • Includes dyadic relationships such as romantic partners, friends, co-workers, doctor-patient, and parent-child.
    • Operates through verbal channels (spoken words), nonverbal channels (facial expressions, eye-rolling, posture, vocalics), and mediated channels.

  • Small Group Communication

    • Interaction among at least three to approximately fifteen individuals working toward a common goal.
    • Requires that every group member maintain the ability to interact interpersonally with all other group members.
    • Includes families, playgroups, peer groups, and professional work teams.

  • Public Communication

    • A one-to-many communication model where an individual or group delivers a specific message to an audience.
    • Feedback processing differs by audience size:
      • Small Audiences (e.g., 10 people): The speaker can monitor members individually and adapt the message in real time based on feedback.
      • Massive Audiences (e.g., 10,000+ people): Real-time individualized feedback monitoring is impossible, requiring a formal, pre-planned delivery structure.

  • Mediated Communication

    • The use of technology to link senders and receivers for information exchange.
    • Encompasses channels such as cable/satellite TV, websites, streaming services, social media, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP: Skype, Google Hangouts), email, text messaging, and phone calls.

Mindful Communication Practices

  • Definitions of Mindfulness

    • Grossman (2011): Social practice leading to ethically minded awareness situated in the present moment.
    • Langer & Moldoveanu (2000): Flexible state of mind actively engaged in the present, noticing new things, and sensitive to context with an open, nonjudgmental orientation.
    • Segal, Williams, & Teasdale (2002): Deliberate, open-minded awareness of moment-to-moment experience requiring systematic practice, sustained by kindness, tolerance, patience, and courage.
    • Baer, Smith, & Allen (2004): Focusing attention nonjudgmentally on present-moment experience, contrasted with preoccupation with past memories, fantasies, or future worries.
    • Ellen Langer (1989): The process of drawing novel distinctions leading to environmental sensitivity, openness to new information, creation of new perceptual categories, and multiple perspectives in problem-solving.
    • Jon Kabat-Zinn (2005): Paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.
    • Gordon (2018): Returning to being centered in the living moment without judgment.
    • American Psychological Association (APA): Awareness of internal states and surroundings to avoid destructive or automatic habit responses.
    • Nilsson & Kazemi (2016): A multifaceted construct involving present-moment attention, labeling experiences, acting with awareness, and bringing openness, acceptance, curiosity, and friendliness.

  • Model of Mindful Awareness and Practice

    • Shauna Shapiro and Linda Carlson (2017) separated mindfulness into two distinct categories:
      • Mindful Awareness: An abiding presence or conscious observation of physical presence, cognitive processes, and emotional states without judgment.
      • Mindful Practice: The conscious development of attention skills, reduced reactivity, and enhanced discernment. Shapiro, Carlson, Astin, and Freedman (2006) proposed a three-component model:
        1. Attention: Directing focus to internal thoughts/feelings and external physical environments in the present moment, countering "monkey mind" wandering, which occurs approximately 47%47\% of the time (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010).
        2. Intention: Maintaining conscious awareness of the exact purpose, aim, or vision behind an action.
        3. Attitude: The mental disposition brought to paying attention.
          • COAL Acronym (Siegel, 2007): Curiosity, Openness, Acceptance, Love.
          • Seven Mindfulness Attitudes (Kabat-Zinn, 1990): Nonjudging, Patience, Beginner's-Mind, Trust, Non-striving, Acceptance, Letting Go.

  • The Five Facets of Mindfulness

    • Developed by Ruth Baer (2006) through the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire:
      1. Observing: Attending to internal or external stimuli (bodily sensations, cognitions, emotions, sounds).
      2. Describing: Labeling and expressing observed internal experiences, thoughts, and emotions using detailed vocabulary.
      3. Acting with Awareness: Engaging fully in present activities rather than running on automatic pilot (e.g., maintaining full awareness during routine showering rituals).
      4. Nonjudging of Inner Experience: Observing internal thoughts, feelings, and attitudes without evaluating them as good/bad or positive/negative.
      5. Nonreactivity to Inner Experience: Assessing distressing thoughts or mental images logically without executing immediate, automatic reactions. Helps overcome psychological issues such as imposter syndrome (perceived intellectual phoniness; Clance & Imes, 1978).

  • Mindful Exercises and Empirical Research

    • Mindful Coloring: Spending 5 to 15 minutes coloring structured designs (such as mandalas) decreases test anxiety, lowers heart rate and blood pressure, reduces stress, and improves overall mood (DeLue, 1999; Flett et al., 2017; van der Vennet & Serice, 2012; Mantzios & Giannou, 2018; Gençdoğan et al., 2018; Ashdown et al., 2018; Shapiro, 2016).
    • Seated Breath Meditation Protocol (Thousand Waves Martial Arts & Self Defense Center):
      1. Find a quiet space; set a timer for 5 to 15 minutes.
      2. Sit upright in a chair with feet flat on the floor, or sit comfortably on the floor. Align spine with shoulders over hips.
      3. Rest hands in lap, on thighs (palms up), or press palms together at heart center. Maintain an upright, rooted posture.
      4. Close eyes or keep soft focus; close mouth with tongue relaxed.
      5. Center attention on the sensation of air entering and exiting nostrils.
      6. Count breaths sequentially. Whenever a thought intrudes, notice it without judgment, let it go, and reset breath count to 1.

  • Interpersonal Communication and Mindfulness Integration

    • Judee Burgoon, Charles Berger, and Vincent Waldron (2000) conceptualized mindful communication as planful, effortfully processed, creative, strategic, flexible, and reason-based interaction (contrasted with mindless communication that is reactive, rigid, superficial, and emotional).
    • Mindfulness must be paired with operational communication skills; mindful awareness without communication skills will not produce successful interpersonal interactions.
    • Mindful Communication Definition: The process of interacting with others while engaging in mindful awareness and mindful practice.

Chapter Assessment and Key Vocabulary

  • Key Vocabulary Terms

    • Acting with Awareness: Engaging fully in current actions rather than operating on automatic pilot.
    • Attitude: The open, curious, and nonjudgmental orientation brought to mindfulness.
    • Attention: Focus directed toward present-moment internal and external experiences.
    • Cognitive Complexity: The ability to frame and convey messages using multiple perspectives or methods.
    • Communication: The process of sharing information, ideas, and meaning via symbolic channels.
    • Communication Competence: The combination of social appropriateness and personal effectiveness in interaction.
    • Connotative Definitions: Personalized emotional or experiential meanings attached to symbols.
    • Denotative Definitions: Explicit, standardized dictionary definitions of words.
    • Describing: Putting internal observations and perceptions into explicit descriptive words.
    • Effective Communication: Interactions that successfully achieve desired personal outcomes.
    • Group Communication: Dynamics occurring among three or more people sharing a common goal.
    • Intention: Conscious clarity regarding the underlying purpose or goal of an interaction.
    • Interpersonal Communication: The exchange of messages between two people (dyad).
    • Intrapersonal Communication: Communicative and biological processing occurring within an individual's self or mind.
    • Mediated Communication: Message transmission facilitated through technological tools.
    • Mindful Awareness: Present observation of cognitive, emotional, and physical states without judgment.
    • Mindful Communication: Interacting with others while executing mindful awareness and practice.
    • Mindful Practice: The systematic application of attention, intention, and attitude to shape consciousness.
    • Nonjudging of Inner Experience: Observing internal thoughts and feelings neutrally without evaluation.
    • Nonreactivity to Inner Experience: Evaluating inner distress logically without executing automatic behavioral responses.
    • Observing: Attending to internal bodily sensations, thoughts, and external environmental stimuli.
    • Public Communication: One-to-many message transmission from a single speaker to a large audience.
    • Self-Monitoring: Observing and regulating personal communicative behavior during interactions.
    • Symbol: An arbitrary mark, sign, or object representing an idea, concept, or thing.

  • Assessment Questions and Correct Answers

    1. Question: Which of the following are reasons for studying communication?
      • Options: (a) gives us a new perspective, (b) because we spend so much time doing it, (c) to increase our effectiveness, (d) a and b, (e) all of the above.
      • Correct Answer: (e) all of the above.
    2. Question: My mother told me that I would succeed at anything I put my mind to and that I could achieve anything. Which type of need is this example?
      • Options: (a) physical, (b) practical, (c) identity, (d) social, (e) affectionate.
      • Correct Answer: (c) identity.
    3. Question: Communication is all the following except:
      • Options: (a) purposeful, (b) contains a relationship dimension, (c) contains a content dimension, (d) culturally determined, (e) assumed.
      • Correct Answer: (e) assumed.
    4. Question: An individual at a concert flashes a friend the "peace sign" using her index and middle finger to form the letter "v." This is an example of what?
      • Options: (a) a sign, (b) a word, (c) mediated communication, (d) an emoji, (e) a symbol.
      • Correct Answer: (e) a symbol.
    5. Question: Which type of communication involves the exchange of messages between two people?
      • Options: (a) intrapersonal, (b) interpersonal, (c) small group, (d) public, (e) mass.
      • Correct Answer: (b) interpersonal.