Summary : Preliminaries to Human Communication

This chapter explained the forms, benefits, and purposes of human communication; the major elements of the human communication process, and several functional principles that explain how human communication works.

1.1 Forms, Benefits, and Myths of Human Communication

1. Communication is the act, by one or more persons, of sending and receiving messages that occur within a context, are distorted by noise, have some effect (and some ethical dimension), and provide some opportunity for feedback.
2. The major types of human communication are intrapersonal, interpersonal, small group, organizational, public, computer-mediated, and mass communication.
3. Communication study will enable you to improve your presentation skills, relationship skills, interaction skills, thinking skills, and leadership skills.
4. Among the major myths about communication are that more communication is necessarily better communication and that fear of public speaking is necessarily detrimental.

1.2 Elements of Human Communication

1. The communication context has at least four dimensions: physical, social–psychological, temporal, and cultural.
2. Sources–receivers are the individuals communicating, sending, and receiving messages.
3. Messages may be of varied forms and may be sent and received through any combination of sensory organs. The communication channel is the medium through which the messages are sent. 
4. Metamessages are messages about messages; feedback messages are those messages that are sent back to the source and may come from the source itself or from the receiver; and feedforward messages are those that preface other messages and may be used to open the channels of communication.
5. The communication channel is the medium through which the messages are sent.+
6. Noise is anything that distorts a message; it’s present to some degree in every communication transaction and may be physical, physiological, psychological, or semantic in origin.
7. Communication always has an effect that may be cognitive, affective, or psychomotor or a combination.

1.3 Principles of Human Communication

1. Communication is multi-purposeful; we use communication to discover, to relate, to help, to persuade, and to play.
2. Communication is a transactional process in which each person simultaneously sends and receives messages.
3. Communication is normally a package of signals, each reinforcing the other. Opposing communication signals from the same source result in contradictory messages.
4. Communication is a process of adjustment and takes place only to the extent that the communicators use the same system of signals.
5. Communication involves both content dimensions and relationship dimensions.
6. Communication is ambiguous; messages can often be interpreted in different ways.
7. Communication is punctuated; different people divide up the communication sequence into stimuli and responses differently.
8. Communication is inevitable, irreversible, and unrepeatable: (1) In any interaction situation, communication is inevitable; you can’t avoid communication, nor can you not respond to communication; (2) You can’t uncommunicate; and (3) You can’t duplicate a previous communication act.

1.4 The Competent Communicator

1. Communication competence is knowledge of the elements and rules of communication, which vary from one culture to another.
2. The competent communicator is defined as one who makes effective choices, thinks critically and mindfully, understands the role of power, is culturally sensitive, is ethical, is an effective listener, and is media literate.