What is communication? Many people do not even suspect what a significant role the communication process plays in their lives. Two friends chat on the phone, agreeing on a club to go to in the evening. Grandmother tells her grandson a fairy tale. Two people in business suits exchange arguments in the cool, air-conditioned office. All these are examples of communication.
You cannot avoid talking with classmates and a teacher, especially if you have to provide him or her with a completed assignment.
Nevertheless, despite the apparent simplicity, this process is not as easy as ABC. To properly conduct a conversation without offending the interlocutor and causing troubles, without losing ground and a profitable deal that can bring a big benefit, you need to be able to distinguish the types of your opponents and to set out ideas simply and clearly. Finally, you just need to be able to listen to the interlocutor.
Therefore, we will talk about some simple tricks that facilitate the process of communication between people, make it more predictable, help distinguish psychological portraits of interlocutors, although the topic itself is so vast that it cannot be fully disclosed by even a dozen books. If you are interested in this topic, you can continue research and even use it to write a coursework.
Let Us Start
Communication is a multidimensional process of establishing and developing contacts between people, generated by need for information exchange and joint activities.
This process is characteristic of all higher living beings. But at the human level it acquires perfect forms, becoming conscious and mediated by speech. Communication identifies the following aspects:
- Content;
- Purpose;
- Means.
Content is information that is transmitted from one living being in interindividual contacts. One person can pass on information about his or her needs, counting on the potential participation in their satisfaction. Through communication from one living being to another, data about their emotional states (contentment, joy, anger, sadness, suffering, etc.) can be transmitted and oriented to adjust the other living entity to contacts in a certain way.
The same information is transmitted from person to person and serves as a means of interpersonal adjustment. For example, we behave differently towards an angry or afflicted human and towards a well-disposed and joyful person.
The content of communication can be information about the world, life-long experience, knowledge, abilities, skills, etc. It is multi-disciplinary. It is the most diverse in its internal content.
Its purpose is determined by a given kind of activity that arises as its result. The number of goals increases when it is communication between human. These goals consist of transfer and acquisition of objective knowledge about the world, education and training, harmonization of reasonable actions of people in their joint activities, establishment and clarification of personal and business relationships. They are the means of meeting many diverse needs: social, cultural, cognitive, creative, aesthetic, needs for intellectual growth, moral development, and a number of others.
Communication means can be defined as ways of encoding, transferring, processing and deciphering information transmitted from one person to another.
Coding information is a way of transferring it from one person to another. For example, information can be transmitted by direct physical contact: that is by touching the body, hands, etc.
Information can be transmitted and perceived by people at a distance and through the sense organs. In addition to all these data on nature of information transfer methods, people use many other ones that were invented and improved by them.
This is a language and other sign systems, writing in its various forms (texts, diagrams, drawings), technical means of recording, transmitting and storing information (radio and video equipment, mechanical, magnetic, laser and other forms of records).
As you can see, the topic is not so complicated, but it requires work and careful study. You can always order an essay on similar topics on coolessay.net.
One of the Variants of Classification
Depending on the content, goals and means, communication can be divided into several types. By content, it can be considered as material (exchange of objects and products of activity), cognitive (knowledge sharing), conditioned (exchange of mental or physiological states), motivational (exchange of motives, goals, interests, motives, and needs), active (exchange of activities, operations, and skills).
By purpose it is divided into biological and social in accordance with the needs it serves.
Biological communication is necessary for the support, preservation and development of the organism. It is associated with satisfaction of basic organic needs.
Social communication pursues the goal of expanding and strengthening interpersonal contacts, establishing and developing relations, individual’s personal growth. There are as many private goals as subtypes of biological and social needs.
By means communication can be direct and indirect. Direct communication is carried out with the help of natural human organs: hands, head, body, vocal cords, etc. Indirect communication is associated with the use of special tools. These are either natural objects (a stick, a stone, a footprint on the ground, etc.) or cultural (sign systems, character recordings in various media like print, radio, television, etc.).
Direct communication involves personal contacts and interlocutors’ direct perception of each other. For example, physical contact, conversations with each other in those cases when people see each other and react directly to each other's actions.
Indirect communication is carried out through mediums (for example, negotiations between the conflicting parties at the interstate, interethnic, group, or family level).
A human differs from an animal in having a special vital need for communication, and also because he or she spends most of the time with other people.
We can also identify business, personal, instrumental, and target communication. Business communication is usually included in any joint productive activity of people and serves as a means of improving quality of this activity. Its content is what people produce, not the problems that affect their inner world.
In contrast, personal communication is focused mainly on psychological problems of internal nature, those interests and needs that deeply and intimately affect a personality: search for the meaning of life, definition of one's attitude to another person, to what is happening around, resolution of any internal conflict, etc.
Communication can be called instrumental when it is not a purpose in itself, when it is not stimulated by independent need, but pursues some other goal, except for obtaining satisfaction.
Target communication serves as a means of satisfying a specific need. In human life it does not exist as a separate process or an independent form of activity. It is included in individual or group practice that can neither arise nor be realized without intensive and versatile communication.
There are differences between activity and communication. The result of activity is usually any material product or mental concept, idea.
The result of communication is mutual influence of people on each other. Activity is a form of intelligence development. But activity can also be a part of personal transformation, therefore, it should also be considered as an interrelated aspect of social activity.
The most important types of communication are verbal and non-verbal. Non-verbal communication does not involve the use of sound speech and natural language. It is exercised through facial expressions, gestures, pantomimic, direct sensory or physical contacts. These are tactile, visual, auditory, olfactory, and other sensations and images, coming from another person. Most forms and means of non-verbal communication are innate and allow to interact and achieve mutual understanding at the emotional and behavioral levels.
Verbal communication is inherent only to a human and involves the use of a language as a compulsory condition. In terms of communicative capabilities it is much richer than all other forms of communication, although in reality it cannot completely replace them. And the very development of verbal communication initially relies on non-verbal one.
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