Communication Defined

It's nearly impossible to go through a day without the use of

communication. Communication is sending and receiving information between two or
more people. The person sending the message is referred to as the sender, while the
person receiving the information is called the receiver. The information conveyed can
include facts, ideas, concepts, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, instructions and even emotions.

Communication is the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions,

or information by speech, writing, or signs-American College
Dictionary.
The word communication has many ramifications. It is basically a
process of interaction with the people and their environment. Through
such interactions, two or more individuals influence the ideas, beliefs,
and attitudes of each other. Such interactions take place through the
exchange of information through words, gestures, signs, symbols, and
expressions. In organizations, communication is a continuous process
of giving and receiving information and to build social relationships.
The word communication is derived from the Latin word communism,
which means common, because commonness of understanding is an
essential component of all kinds of communications, more particularly
in organizational communication. Without common understanding,
communication in organizations creates more misunderstandings and
people may become directionless. Today, we talk about a shared vision
in organizations. To develop a shared vision, we need effective communication mechanisms.
Even for day-to-day operational issues, communication plays a great
role in clarifying doubts and in making the efforts of the people result
oriented. What is important for us is to understand that in our ancient

texts, we have enough reference of non-verbal communication between man, nature, and animals. Communication with nature and
animals was considered the best way to reinforce learning in the Indian
gurukul system of learning. Therefore, communication is as old as our
civilization. Even in pre-civilization days, non-verbal communication
was in existence between man, nature, and animals.
In organizations, however, language-based or verbal communication is
more important. With language, communication within and outside the
organizations became much more effective and global. With market
globalization, the English language has been accepted as a medium of
communication even by the countries such as China, Japan, Russia,
France, and Germany, whose considered policy was to communicate
while trading with the various countries of the worldin their own
languages, but that did not work well. Therefore, with language,
communication in organizations becomes much more simple and
meaningful.

Definition and Concepts:

An all-inclusive definition of communication is difficult to develop,
obviously because of its all-encompassing nature. Hence, to the extent
possible, we will restrict our efforts to define communication in the
organizational context. Denis Mcquail defined communication as a
process which increases commonality. Hovland, on the other hand,
defined it as a process by which an individual communicator transmits
to modify the behaviour of other individuals.

Warner Weaver, going one step further, considers communication as

the procedure by which one mind can affect another. According to the
American College Dictionary communication is the imparting or
interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or
signs. From the organizational point of view, therefore, communication
has the features of interaction, interchange, sharing, and
commonness.
From the above definition, we can identify the following elements
of communication:
1. Communication is a two way process. It involves a sender and a
receiver. The sender or receiver can be an individual or a group.
2. All communication carries a message. Message can be in the form
of information, a directive, an enquiry, a feeling, an opinion, an idea, or
in any other form.
3. Communication can occur only when there is commonness of
understanding between the sender and the receiver. The commonness
includes factors like common culture, common language, and common
environment. Words, phrases, idioms, proverbs, gestures, and expressions are deeply cultured and possess high communicative potential
for people from similar backgrounds.
4. Communication must be able to evoke a response from the receiver,
which would be evident in the form of some behavioural changes.
5. The method of communication can be verbal, that is, through words,
or non-verbal, that is, through signs, gestures, expressions, etc.

All these five elements can also be called the process of

communication, that is, sender, message, method, receiver, and
response of receiver.

Nature of Communication:
Communication can be divided broadly into two categories.
These are:
1. Verbal communication
2. Non-verbal communication
Verbal communication is the use of words and languages for
interaction between two or more individuals. It can be either oral or
written. Hence, speaking, listening, reading, or writing are all classified
under verbal communication. Since this type of communication elicits
immediate feedback, in organizations, we make extensive use of
verbal communication.
Non-verbal communication can occur without use of words. This type
of communication sensitizes our senses, and thereby evokes
responses, depending on the way we interpret a particular cue. It is
often referred to as body language, that is, any non-flexile or re-flexile
body movements of the communicator that carry some meaning.
Gestures, facial expressions, glancing, staring, smiling, and raising of
finger are some examples of body language that carry some meaning.
In organizations, non-verbal communication is very important for
interpersonal relations.

Based on organizational practices, communication can further be

divided into internal and external, formal and informal, downward and
upward, horizontal and diagonal, and grapevine. Flow of information
within the organization is known as internal communication, which may
be either formal or informal in nature.
External communication takes place between two organizations, that
is, between the organizations and others outside the organizations.
Formal communication is official communication, while informal
communication takes place between members within the formal
organization.
Communication that flows from superiors to subordinates is downward
communication, whereas communication that flows from subordinates
to superiors is upward communication. Horizontal communication
takes place between two equals, that is, between persons working at
the same level in organizations.
Diagonal communication cuts across the hierarchical barriers.
However, this is formal in nature. For example, direct communication
from a field sales person to the vice president (HR) is diagonal in
nature. We may notice that they are not only functionally apart but also
hierarchically different. These apart, for globally dispersed organizations, we have the system of network communication.

Definition And Importance Of

Communication English
Language Essay
Published: 23, March 2015

Communication is like a bridge between people, the way in which it happens

depending very much on the art of communication, the creativity of the
human beings, the message of the communication and on the context in
which it takes place. Because of its complexity, communication has been
defined in many ways, some definitions being "broad and inclusive, others
restrictive" (Littlejohn, Foss, 2008:3): "The process that links discontinuous
parts of the living world to one another" (Ruesch, 1957:462), "A system for
communicating information and order" (Webster's Third New International
Dictionary, 1986:460), "A participative, two-way sharing of understanding,
commitment and purpose, leading to appropriate action" (Robbins et al,
2000:633).
Communication is an interdisciplinary concept as it is approached from
different fields such as linguistics, psychology, ecology, mathematics, etc.,
enabling us to transmit and share facts, ideas, data, feelings, attitudes. It
plays a key role in all the fields of activity, therefore it should be effective so
as to be an element of success for every relationship, organization, meeting,
research, etc. Still, there are many barriers to effective communication (e.g.
language, inappropriate choice of words/channel, different cultural
backgrounds, difference in attitudes and values, etc.) which lead to
misunderstandings and failure in interaction. Communication is not based
just on a simple verbal interaction between people, but also on the body
language and the facial expression which are also means of communicating
a message. More than that, communication and technology have developed
so much lately that we can even speak of forms of communication that move
from the traditional human forms toward impersonal communication with
entities to which we cannot transmit feelings or experiences, e.g. banking
networks, computers, phones, etc. and we can also speak not only of human
or impersonal communication but also of animal communication.

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However, if we are to consider a simple model of communication which

states that it is a process of information transfer from a sender to a receiver
via a medium, the process starting from an inner state of the sender which
produces the transfer of the signal and ending with an inner state of the
receiver when the signal is delivered (Shannon&Weaver, 1949), we can ask
ourselves if this simple model is suitable for communication in general, be it
human, impersonal or animal.
In their book "Animal Signals" Maynard Smith and Harper (2003:3) defined
the signal as: "any act or structure which alters the behaviour of other
organisms, which evolved because of that effect, and which is effective
because the receiver's response has also evolved". Here, the signal is
understood as having a corresponding response, a modification of
behaviour. Still, it may fail sometimes, for example because of poor design
or noise. On the contrary, communication means a successful
accomplishment of the signalling act, so there is no such concept as failed
communication. Thus, it is this possible failure that makes the clear
distinction between signalling and communication. In the previous definition,
there is no reference to the notion of "information" but this does not mean
that signalling does not use it. If we think of both impersonal and animal
signalling, the idea that the signal carries information is implicit, even
Maynard Smith and Harper (1995:305) stated that: "it is not evolutionarily
stable for the receiver to alter its behaviour unless, on average, the signal
carries information of value to it". Hence, information is carried but the
relevance of the signal is important as the receiver may ignore the signalling
behaviour if the signal is of no use to him and has nothing to gain from it. An
important difference between human communication and animal signals
(maybe we could even think of this difference when referring to impersonal
devices signalling) is the presence of language. People are able to
communicate with the help of language, having the power of combining and
creating different messages by using symbols, words and their creativity.
More than that, people have thoughts, desires, beliefs being able to show
and recognize their intentions to communicate, they may use different stimuli
to attract the receiver's attention and to engage in activities with similar goals
and objectives. Animals, on the other hand, have no intentional system
(Davidson, 1982) and none of the above mentioned human traits. The

speech acts mark also a difference between human communication and

animal/impersonal signals. The communicative acts help us not only to
communicate but also to influence each other in various ways.

In conclusion, if we take into consideration the particularities of human

communication and the limitations of animal/impersonal signalling, we can
notice that there are similarities but also differences, thus it would be difficult
to say that a simple model would cover all cases. The general terms of
human communication being established, we turn to examine other
important aspects/models of successful and effective (human)
communication.

Communication is simply the act of transferring

information from one place to another.
Although this is a simple definition, when we think about
how we may communicate the subject becomes a lot more
complex. There are various categories of communication
and more than one may occur at any time.
The different categories of communication include:

Spoken or Verbal Communication: face-to-face, telephone, radio or

television and other media.

Non-Verbal Communication: body language, gestures, how we

dress or act - even our scent.

Written Communication: letters, e-mails, books, magazines, the

Internet or via other media.

Visualizations: graphs and charts, maps, logos and other

visualizations can communicate messages.