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Foundations of Human Communication

• 1. Communication is the act, by one or more persons, of sending and receiving messages that are distorted by noise, occur within a context, have some effect (and some ethical dimension), and provide some opportunity for feedback.
• 2. Communication is transactional. It is a process of interrelated parts in which a change in one element produces changes in other elements.

Communication Models and Concepts

• 3. The essentials of communication—the elements present in every communication act—are sources–receivers; messages (feedforward, feedback, and metamessages); context (physical, cultural, social–psychological, and temporal); channel; noise (physical, physiological, psychological, and semantic); and effects.

Principles of Communication

• 4. Communication is purposeful. Through communication, you learn, relate, help, influence, and play.
• 5. Communication involves choices and those choices will determine effectiveness or ineffectiveness.
• 6. Communication and relationships are always—in part—ambiguous.
• 7. Communication involves both content and relationship dimensions.
• 8. Communication and relationships invariably involve issues of power.
• 9. Communication sequences are punctuated for processing. Individuals divide the communication sequence into stimuli and responses in different ways.
• 10. In any interactional situation, communication is inevitable (you cannot not communicate, nor can you not respond to communication), irreversible (you cannot take back messages), and unrepeatable (you cannot exactly repeat messages).

Culture and Human Communication

• 11. Culture permeates all forms of communication, and intercultural communication is becoming more and more frequent as the United States becomes home to a variety of cultures and does business around the world.
• 12. Significant dimensions along which cultures may differ are uncertainty avoidance, masculinity–femininity, power distance, individualism–collectivism, and high and low context.
• 13. Ethnocentrism, existing on a continuum, is the tendency to evaluate the beliefs, attitudes, and values of our own culture positively and those of other cultures negatively.

Communication Competence

• 14. Communication competence refers to your knowledge of how communication works and your ability to use communication effectively. Communication competence includes, for example, thinking critically and mindfully, being culturally sensitive, communicating ethically and listening effectively.

Several important communication skills emphasized in this chapter are presented here in summary form (as they are in every chapter). These skill checklists don’t include all the skills covered in the chapter but rather are representative of the most important skills. Place a check mark next to those skills that you feel you need to work on most.

• _____ 1. I’m sensitive to contexts of communication. I recognize that changes in physical, cultural, social– psychological, and temporal contexts will alter meaning.
• _____ 2. I assess my channel options and evaluate whether my message will be more effective if delivered face-to-face, through e-mail, or by some third party, for example.
• _____ 3. I look for meaning not only in words but also in nonverbal behaviors.
• _____ 4. I am sensitive to the feedback and feedforward that I give to others and that others give to me.
• _____ 5. I combat the effects of the various types of physical, psychological, and semantic noise that distort messages.
• _____ 6. I listen not only to the more obvious content messages but also to the relational messages that I (and others) send, and I respond to the relational messages of others to increase meaningful interaction.
• _____ 7. Instead of looking only at the punctuation patterns, I also look at the patterns that others might be using in order to understand better the meanings communicated.
• _____ 8. Because communication is transactional, I recognize that all elements influence every other element in the communication process and that each person communicating is simultaneously a speaker/listener.
• _____ 9. Because communication is purposeful, I look carefully at both the speaker’s and the listener’s purposes.
• _____ 10. Because communication is inevitable, irreversible, and unrepeatable, I look carefully for hidden meanings, am cautious in communicating messages that I may later wish to withdraw, and am aware that any communication act occurs but once.
• _____ 11. I am sensitive to cultural variation and differences, and I see my own culture’s teachings and those of other cultures without undue bias.

The Essentials of Human Communication

Match the terms about human communication with their definitions. Record the number of the definition next to the appropriate term.

• _____ a. intrapersonal communication (3)
• _____ b. metamessages (6)
• _____ c. encoding (5)
• _____ d. communication competence (4)
• _____ e. computer-mediated communication (4)
• _____ f. feedback (6)
• _____ g. power (13)
• _____ h. transactional view of communication (5)
• _____ i. ethnocentrism (18)
• _____ j. ethnic identity (18)

• 1. Communication between two or more people through some electronic means
• 2. Knowledge of communication and the ability to apply that knowledge for effective communication
• 3. The view of communication that sees each person as taking both speaker and listener roles simultaneously
• 4. Communication with yourself
• 5. Commitment to the beliefs and values of your culture
• 6. The process of putting ideas into a code; for example, thinking of an idea and then describing it in words
• 7. The tendency to see others and their behaviors through your own cultural filters
• 8. The messages you get back from your own messages and from the responses of others to what you communicate
• 9. Messages that refer to other messages
• 10. The ability to influence the behaviors of others

These ten terms and additional terms used in this chapter can be found in the glossary.

Answers:

a. 4 b. 9 c. 6 d. 2 e. 1 f. 8 g. 10 h. 3 i. 7 j. 5

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