A Process of Communication

People sometimes forget that communication is a process—a series of ongoing events. Instead, communication is often thought of as a thing. A book, an encyclopedia, a phonograph record, and a magazine are indeed things. But each of these things is, by itself, not communication. It is, rather, a message that is but one part of the whole communication process. This process begins when a person feels a need to communicate. For example, a student may feel that his or her hair looks messy after gym class. To check it out, the student encodes, or places into sound patterns, a message: “Does my hair look messy?” Person two hears the sounds and decodes, or assigns meanings to, the message: “Chris is worrying about messy hair again.” The friend then encodes a response into sound patterns: “Your hair looks great, Chris. Stop worrying.” Chris hears the sounds and decodes their meaning: “Oh, great. Pat thinks my hair doesn't look messy.” This illustration shows how the communication process works for one person-to-person exchange involving a single idea or feeling. In ordinary conversation the communication process is unlikely to stop with a single exchange. In the preceding illustration the communication process was interactive—person one and person two directly exchanged ideas. However, this is not always the case. For example, this article was written by a person whom the reader will never meet. To the degree that the editors alter the message, it is partly theirs. In some respects, the encyclopedia's business managers, a secretary or two, and others are also sources of the message. It is also unlikely that the reader will try to send a message to the author. So, in this case communication is a one-way process. Similarly, radio and television programs, newspapers, films, and magazines are usually one-way messages created by teams of people. In all of these cases, a great deal of communication has taken place between people as they planned for, encoded, revised, and edited the message that is read, seen, or heard. The ideas included in a one-way message seldom remain only in the head of the receiver. Students use information from encyclopedias to create their own oral and written messages. People often encode messages about other messages as they talk with or write to others about things they have seen or read or heard. Consequently, a single communication process is often linked with other communication processes. In schools separate time slots are sometimes set aside for reading, writing, and oral communication instruction. When this is true, language instruction is organized around the modes, or ways, of communicating—reading, writing, listening, and speaking. When people communicate in real life, however, they seldom use the language modes in isolation. As people write, they talk to other people about their ideas, read printed materials to get additional information, and listen to helpful explanations or reactions. In fact, communication usually begins with a purpose rather than a mode.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14