Communication Defined

In its simplest form communication is the transmission of a message from a source to a receiver. For many years, this view of communication has been influenced with the writing of political scientist Harold Lasswell (1948). He said that a convenient way to describe communication is to answer these questions: Who? Says what? Through which Channel? To whom? With what effect? [slide] Expressed in terms of the basic elements of the communication process, communication occurs when: A source sends a message through a medium to a receiver producing some effect.

This communication model is convenient, yet straightforward enough. What, for example, if the source is a professor who insists on speaking in a technical language far beyond the receiving students’ level of skill? Does communication occur? Unlike mere message sending, communication requires the response of others. Therefore, there must be a sharing of meaning for communication to take place. Another problem with this simple model is that it suggests that the receiver passively accepts the source’s message. However, if our imaginary students do not comprehend the professor’s words, they respond with “Huh?” or look confused, or yawn. This response, or feedback, is also a message. The receiver (the students) now become a source, sending their own message to the source (the offending professor), who is now a receiver. Hence, communication is a reciprocal and ongoing process with all involved parties more or less engaged in creating shared meaning. [slide] Communication, then, is better defined as the process of interaction, or the involvement of the parties in the reciprocal activity of creating shared meaning taking place in a certain social and cultural situation.

Ways to communicate an idea seem to be beyond any enumeration. The famous filmmaker Jacques Tati “plays” with the variety of communication types in his comic masterpiece “Play Time”. I’d like to screen a short scene from this film and ask you to observe and take some notes of different ways of interaction exploited by the director. [screening a scene from Jacques Tati’s “Playtime” 5:23-14:28]

[Question: What are the ways of communication you could notice? Reaction] [slides, shots. Descriptions: 1) timetables, microphones; 2) signs, paper and box transfer, clothes; 3) newspapers, photos; 4) body language and crying; 5) notes, an article; 6) dropping an umbrella; 7) checking the list; 8) patting the bag; 9) the bus window; 10) the mirror; 11) road marking; 12) bus inscriptions, bus station sign; 13) a note; 14) gestures; 15) a machine] [Screening “Playtime” 31:27]

The examples of communication, we’ve just discussed, range from the relatively simple (waving and saying “Hey!”) to the relatively complicated (issuing an article in a newspaper). However, these illustrations share certain elements common to all cases of communication. [Question: What elements do they share? Reaction] You’re right and the elements you’ve mentioned make up a communicative situation, in figurative terms a “skeleton” or a “frame” of any communication manifestation.

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