By Shristi Sharma ECE
COMMUNICATION
“COMMUNICATION” is the
activity of conveying information.
Communication has been derived from the Latin word "communis",
meaning to share. Communication requires a sender, a message, and
an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of
the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus
communication can occur across vast distances in time and space. Communication
requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative
commonality. The communication process is complete once the receiver has
understood the message of the sender. Feedback is critical to effective
communication between parties.
Barriers to
effective communication
Communication is the key factor in the success of any
organization. When it comes to effective communication, there are certain
barriers that every organization faces. People often feel that communication is
as easy and simple as it sounds. No doubt, but what makes it complex, difficult
and frustrating are the barriers that come in its way. Some of these barriers
are mentioned below.
Barriers to successful communication include message overload (when a person receives
too many messages at the same time), and message
complexity.
1.Physical barriers: Physical
barriers are often due to the nature of the environment. Thus, for example, the
natural barrier which exists, if staff are located in different buildings or on
different sites. Likewise, poor or outdated equipment, particularly the failure
of management to introduce new technology, may also cause problems. Staff
shortages are another factor which frequently causes communication difficulties
for an organization. Whilst distractions like background noise, poor lighting
or an environment which is too hot or cold can all affect people's morale and
concentration, which in turn interfere with effective communication.
a.System design: System
design faults refer to problems with the structures or systems in place in an
organization. Examples might include an organizational structure which is
unclear and therefore makes it confusing to know who to communicate with. Other
examples could be inefficient or inappropriate information systems, a lack of
supervision or training, and a lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities
which can
lead to staff being uncertain about what is expected of them.
2.Attitudinal barriers
Attitudinal barriers come about as a result of problems with
staff in an organization. These may be brought about, for example, by such
factors as poor management, lack of consultation with employees, personality
conflicts which can result in people delaying or refusing to communicate, the
personal attitudes of individual employees which may be due to lack of
motivation or dissatisfaction at work, brought about by insufficient training
to enable them to carry out particular tasks, or just resistance to change due
to entrenched attitudes and ideas.
3.Ambiguity of
Words/Phrases
Words sounding the
same but having different meaning can convey a different meaning altogether.
Hence the communicator must ensure that the receiver receives the same meaning.
It would be better if such words can be avoided by using alternatives.
4.Individual linguistic
ability
It is also important. The use of difficult or inappropriate
words in communication can prevent people from understanding the message.
Poorly explained or misunderstood messages can also result in confusion.
Interestingly, however, research in communication has shown that confusion can
lend legitimacy to research when persuasion fails.
5.Physiological barriers
It may result from individuals' personal discomfort,
caused—for example—by ill health, poor eyesight or hearing.
5.a.Presentation of
information
It is also important to aid understanding. Simply put, the
communicator must consider the audience before making the presentation itself
and in cases where it is not possible the presenter can at least trfy his/her
vocabulary so that majority can understand
Communication cycle:
Shannon and Weaver Model of Communication
Communication major dimensions scheme
Interactional Model of Communication
Berlo's Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of
Communication
Transactional Model of Communication
The first major model for communication came in 1949 by
Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver for Bell Laboratories[9] The
original model was designed to mirror the functioning of radio and telephone
technologies. Their initial model consisted of three primary parts: sender,
channel, and receiver. The sender was the part of a telephone a person spoke
into, the channel was the telephone itself, and the receiver was the part of
the phone where one could hear the other person. Shannon and interferes with
one listening to a telephone conversation, which they deemed noise.
.In 1960, David Berlo expanded on Shannon and Weaver’s
(1949) linear model of communication and created the SMCR Model of
Communication.[10] The
Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of communication separated the model into
clear parts and has been expanded upon by other scholars.
Communication is usually described along a few major
dimensions: Message (what type of things are communicated), source / emisor /
sender / encoder (by
whom), form (in which form), channel (through which medium),
destination / receiver / target / decoder (to
whom), and Receiver. Wilbur Schram (1954) also indicated that we should also
examine the impact that a message has (both desired and undesired) on the
target of the message.[11]
Between parties, communication includes acts that confer knowledge and
experiences, give advice and commands, and ask questions. These acts may take
many forms, in one of the various manners of communication. The form depends on
the abilities of the group communicating. Together, communication content and
form make messages that
are sent towards a destination. The target can be oneself, another person or
being, another entity (such as a corporation or group of beings).
Communication can be seen as processes of information
transmission governed by three levels of semiotic rules:
Therefore, communication is social
interaction where at least two interacting agents share a common set of
signs and a common set of semiotic rules.
This commonly held rule in some sense ignores autocommunication,
including intrapersonal
communication via diaries or
self-talk, both secondary phenomena that followed the primary acquisition of
communicative competences within social interactions.
In light of these weaknesses, Barnlund (2008) proposed a
transactional model of communication.[12] The
basic premise of the transactional model of communication is that individuals
are simultaneously engaging in the sending and receiving of messages.
In a slightly more complex form a sender and a receiver are
linked reciprocally. This
second attitude of communication, referred to as the constitutive model or
constructionist view, focuses on how an individual communicates as the
determining factor of the way the message will be interpreted. Communication is
viewed as a conduit; a passage in which information travels from one individual
to another and this information becomes separate from the communication itself.
A particular instance of communication is called a speech act. The
sender's personal filters and the receiver's personal filters may vary
depending upon different regional traditions, cultures, or gender; which may
alter the intended meaning of message contents. In the presence of "communication noise"
on the transmission channel (air, in this case), reception and decoding of
content may be faulty, and thus the speech act may not achieve the desired
effect. One problem with this encode-transmit-receive-decode model is that the
processes of encoding and decoding imply that the sender and receiver each
possess something that functions as a codebook, and
that these two code books are, at the very least, similar if not identical.
Although something like code books is implied by the model, they are nowhere
represented in the model, which creates many conceptual difficulties.
Theories of coregulation
describe communication as a creative and dynamic continuous process, rather
than a discrete exchange of information. Canadian media scholar Harold Innis had
the theory that people use different types of media to communicate and which
one they choose to use will offer different possibilities for the shape and
durability of society (Wark, McKenzie 1997). His famous example of this is
using ancient Egypt and
looking at the ways they built themselves out of media with very different
properties stone and papyrus. Papyrus is what he called 'Space Binding'. it made possible the transmission of written orders
across space, empires and enables the waging of distant military campaigns and
colonial administration. The other is stone and 'Time Binding', through the construction of temples and the pyramids
can sustain their authority generation to generation, through this media they
can change and shape communication in their society (Wark, McKenzie 1997).
Bernard Luskin, UCLA, 1970, advanced computer assisted
instruction and began to connect media and psychology into what is now the
field of media psychology. In 1998, the American Association of Psychology,
Media Psychology Division 46 Task Force report on psychology and new
technologies combined media and communication as pictures, graphics and sound
increasingly dominate modern communication.
.Semantics is related to
meanings of words. To be more exact, it is related to connotative and
denotative meanings of words and its study. Every word has a direct meaning
called the denotative meaning. In addition to its exact or lexical meaning,
words also acquire implied meanings called connotative meanings. Connotations
are understood based only on an individual’s experience. If the encoder and
decoder do not share the some connotative meaning for a word, miscommunication
occurs.
Psychological Barriers in Communication
The
prolific writer and renaissance man Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe once said
"No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands
others." Goethe had it right that communication often fails to achieve its
intended goal. Psychological barriers account for an overwhelming number of
communication problems and are caused by someone's state of mind interrupting
her speaking or listening skills.,
Individual Barriers to Communication
Effective
communication in the workplace is one of the foundations of efficient teamwork
and accurate results. However, there are a number of barriers to communication
that employees experience on an individual level, whether it has to do with
perceptions of their own skills and abilities or a reaction to the
personalities and values of those around them.
Organizational Barriers to Communication
The success or
failure of an organization often depends on its ability to communicate with its
members, according to The Communications Department at California State
University. New technologies, mixed with culturally diverse audiences, have
increased the importance of organizational communications, but have also made
the field more complex. Understanding some of the common barriers can improve
an organization's ability to communicate.
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