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The European Renaissance was a change in culture that occurred during the 14th to the 17th centuries. This renaissance (Italian for rebirth) changed the way many humans lived their lives. Religion, art and science were three ideas that were largely changed and further developed during the renaissance.
I would like to focus on the growth of intellect through the time of the European Renaissance. Books, art, politics, and science are some areas of shown interest during the social and cultural transition. It seemed that people were becoming more eager to learn and more eager to interact with each other. Curiosity could have played a factor, people became curious and decided to explore for themselves. Communication became a larger part in society, this is proven because books and arts are forms of communication. In my opinion communication could have been the driving factor that cause the slow but immense change in Europe.

Posted by Joshua Cox at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like language and sound have an obvious connection with verbal communication, symbols do with non-verbal. A stop sign is red with white trim. And has the word “stop” written on it. However in Europe a red circle with a white “X” is the symbolic representation of the stop sign. Road signs are great examples of how symbols can be used to simplify more complex ideas. Shapes and colors play a huge role in non-verbal communication. In the United State red usually means stop, warning or hot. Blue usually stands for cold or calm. Shapes are like colors and also hue contain symbol representation. An octagon, especially when red means stop! An upside down triangle tells traffic to beware and yield. Symbolism is an intricate part of communication. Stephan W. Littlejohn, the author of Theories of Human Communication, believes that people should not “ignore the complexities and ambiguities of the communication process,” (Littlejohn, 2005). Noise does not affect non-verbal communication like it does verbal. Even though noise still exists in the non-verbal realm, it has less of an impact. Fog for example could be considered noise in non-verbal communication. This brings me to a paramount point of nonverbal communication. Without sight non-verbal communication cannot exist. There are a few exceptions to this rule. First of the communicators, the sender and receiver cannot be in physical contact. A hug is a form of communication and yes it is still communication if you hug with your eyes closed as long as there is an interaction between two or more people, communication does exist. Sign language is a good example of non-verbal communication. There are, however, people in this world that cannot hear or see. They must communicate through touch. I have personally seen people use sign language to communicate with blind and deaf people. The impaired person will physically put his or her hand on top of the sanders hand and feel the signs giving. This is non-verbal sightless physical communication.
Body language is another form of non-verbal communication. Body language can also be called kinesics (Littlejohn, 1983). In a book title Kinesics and Context, the author Ray Birdwhistell lists seven assumptions on his ideas of body language. Here are few highlights from his list (Birdwhistell, 1970).
• All body movements have potential meaning in communicative contexts. Somebody can always assign meaning to any bodily activity.
• Although bodily activity has biological limitations, the use of bodily motion in interaction is considered to be part of the social systems.
• People are influenced by the visible bodily activity of others
• The ways in which bodily activity functions in communication can be investigated.
These four highlights, I believe, are four major theories behind body language. The body movement can always be classified into meaning and movements of people attract attention and can be studied. Last but not least about body language is the fact that the interaction at body language is part of a social system.
From pre-school to graduate school communication is affecting every word and bodily movement that we make. The interaction that takes place between sender and receiver in my opinion is the heart and soul of the term communication. Interaction is key. The basic model of Shannon-Weaver includes a reply form the receiver to the sender. In verbal communication a verbal reply or a simple head nod is interaction. Even non-verbal communication required interaction. When a car approaches a stop sign and begins to slow down to a stop, interaction exists. Perhaps with non-verbal communication the interaction is less apparent or intrusive but it still exists. As a student that will soon be a professional, I would like to conclude my essay with a quote from a professional about interaction and communication, “…information-sharing, interaction and recognition are required to induce the attitude change and horizontal communication necessary to faster wide spread involvement and commitment.”

Posted by Joshua Cox at 01:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the most rudimentary form, I believe human communication exist when two people have an interaction. An interaction between at least two people; not necessarily verbal or audible, but also non-verbal or physical signals can also be an interaction and considered communication. Within this essay I will explore the communication interaction in a basic model of communication and both verbal and non-verbal communications.
A basic model of communication is represented by a man talking to a woman. The man is verbally communicating with the woman. For communication to take place there basic aspects must exist; a source, channel, and receiver. In this case the man would be the source of communication, and the woman would be the receiver. The channel in this situation is air. The man speaks, his words are then transferred to the woman by means of vibrating air waves. The Shannon-Weaver Model (Jones, 2003) is a similar example. However the Shannon-Weaver model includes one major addition that I believe is paramount in communication, a reply. The reply is a reaction that takes place that creates communication. Without the reply a signal (spoken words may b sent out but communication is born when the “signal” is heard and reacted upon. D. Lawrence Kincaid sums up the complexity of the signal exchange by stating, “The process of communication involves more than transmitting signals; to communicate with others is to engage in a social interaction.” Kincaid is fully aware of the importance of the communication interaction.
The two type of communication, verbal and non-verbal are the base of all communication. Michelle Seidman theorizes, “Sending and receiving messages by either using verbal or non-verbal cues is also part of what human communication is all about.” I agree with Sideman’s point hat communication is largely driven by which type of communication is used.
Verbal communication consists of spoken and written forms of communication. For example two children interacting back and forth through speech and a man reading a book to himself are both considered verbal communication. Spoken communication shared a problem with all communication but is affected more by the concept of noise. Aaron Harrison states, “Noise is anything that hinders the receiver from properly decoding the message,” Noise affects spoken communication more easily because is more susceptible to interference due to its channel, air. Written communication is transmitted through sight or light waves. This makes written text less likely to be affected by noise. Without noise the interaction between source and receiver can take place more easily. Noise is not the only problem with verbal communication. For example two people are in a room speaking to each other. If you were unable to hear them and just see them you would assume on interaction was taking place. Perhaps the two people were not fluent in the same language? One person only spoke German and the other Chinease. This would not be communication the source and receiver do not share a common bond that is necessary for an interaction to take place or an understand if you will. A common bond is just as important as the message itself. Without the common bond or understanding the sent message would be useless.

Posted by Joshua Cox at 12:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Three weeks ago I became totally connected to the rest of the world, or that is at least how I feel. I like technology and being on the cutting edge of gizmos and gadgets. The only thing that usually slows my consumption of tech toys is of course the lack of money (I am a college student). So with money being the main hold back from me purchasing the newest, best and possibly the most innovative device ever I received a phone call from my mom. She, knowing that I love technology, tells me that a guy she works with just bought two iPhones (www.apple.com/iphone). She continues to tell me all about the phones and how great they are (things I of course already knew but acted like I was very interested). Then by the grace of God it happened. She asked if I wanted to go halves on an iPhone since she knew I couldn’t afford it on my own.
That was probably the best day of the year. Well enough on how I got the phone now on to how it has changed the way I communicate. It is a phone. I do make and receive calls on it all the time. This feature, the phone feature, is just like my old phone but the iPhone has a new interface that gives you more bells and whistles while using the phone feature. The WiFi feature is probably one of my favorites. I love the fact that if I am around a wireless signal I can use it to access the Internet at a higher speed than if I was using the EDGE (wireless data through cell towers) network from AT&T. However, the EDGE network is not really that bad, or not as bad as I thought it was going to be. A story I like to tell people is that I was playing golf one Saturday with some friends and my iPhone makes a noise. I take a look and I have two missed calls, three emails and two text messages. I have never felt more connected than I did right then. I didn’t call anyone back, but I did check my emails just to make sure it was nothing too important and then I had to use the Internet to solve an disagreement about a movie quote between myself and a friend.
The iPhone has literally changed the way I communicate. I find myself not using a computer during the day as much, since I can check my email on my phone. I can use it to access the Internet at anytime (as long as I have a signal) and the phone features really are fantastic.

Posted by Joshua Cox at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)