Rajeev Karki

Today, email is a part of life for so many people. It is hard to believe that not even 15 years ago, the general public had little to no knowledge of email. When I graduated from high school in Nepal , and came to the US in 1995 to attend college, I was given my first opportunity to interact with email. Email wasn’t just new to me as an international student. It was new to most of my US educated classmates as well. My wife remembers going to a meeting her freshman year of college (in 1994) advertised by flyers posted all over campus saying, “What is this email thing?” and “How do I use it?” Now, email is an important part of not only college life but life for people of all ages. My grandfather who has spent most of his life in a tiny village in Nepal even knows how to log on to Yahoo.com, compose a message and send it. He learned while visiting my parents in Toronto , where he would send out messages to family across the globe and then check several times a day to see if he had any responses!!

Emailing has become a method of communication that simplifies so many things. Do you want to pass along information to someone but it is too late at night to call? Use email!! Do you want to be able to relay the same message to multiple people at once? Try email!! Do you need to get a long distance message to someone without having to pay high long distance phone call costs? Email is your answer!! Do you want to be able to have a record of exactly what you told someone? Email will do it for you!! Do you want to be able to plan out exactly what you want to tell someone, without having to worry about the wrong words coming out in the heat of the moment? Just send an email!!

With all of these benefits, it is no wonder that email is so widely used and so popular. Yet sometimes problems arise in using email. One of the big problems that I have seen arises from the fact that because you can’t hear inflection or tone of voice in an email, there can often be miscommunications. You can’t always tell if someone is joking around or being sarcastic when you read an email. Sometimes things come across sounding very harsh or blunt because you can’t use your tone of voice to soften the message.

So, should we stop using email altogether to avoid these problems? Definitely not. Instead, it is important that we remember to be extra sensitive to how things sound to the person reading the email. As we’re composing it, we should try to think of how they might interpret what we’ve written. If we are joking around, we need to be sure that it is clear that we are doing so. If we feel like the subject is a very sensitive one, we may even want to consider talking to the person face to face and saving email for more casual and less touchy subjects. That way the person we’re talking to can read our body language and tone of voice and receive the message that we’re trying to send rather than an unintended one.

Posted by Rajeev Karki at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Human communication is an extremely complex process. It encompasses more than just the science of how sound waves are generated through our vocal chords and travels through the medium of air as waves to the receiver who decodes it. Human communication unlike signal communication is affected by emotions, culture, learned behavior that cannot be easily charted into tables and graphs. It is also close to impossible to transmit the same message again and expect the exact same feedback. Studying and practicing good human communication is just as much art as it is science. An information and communication scientist needs to study the social, cultural, biological, and environmental variables in order to truly understand what human communication is, and how to use it most effectively. This paper is a discourse on what is my own theory of human communication.

To understand communication, it is helpful to study the entomology of the word communication. The word communication comes from the Latin Communicare, which means to impart, share, or to make common. It was introduced to the English language in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Peters, 1999). From just studying the definition of the word, we get a feeling that both the communicator and the receiver needs to have shared some knowledge in order for communication to have taken place. But, this is just one definition. I tend to agree with Littlejohn when he says that "scholars have made many attempts to define communication, but establishing a single definition has proved impossible and may not be very fruitful (Littlejohn, 2001, p. 6). No single definition can grasp all the aspects of human communication. Human brains are very complex. Even the lack of formal communication between two people tends to communicate some kind of feeling to each person. For example, if two people are sitting quietly next to each other on a long flight, one person might think that the other person is shy or an introvert. Even though no formal verbal or nonverbal communication took place, there was a message conveyed. which was received by the observer. Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson in their first axiom about communication say that "one cannot not communicate". So, as human beings "we are always affecting others' perceptions, whether we want to or not." (Littlejohn, 2001, p. 225)

There are a few models that try to explain what constitutes human communication. A classic example is the Shannon Weaver model which is a mainstream physical science approach. The Shannon-Weaver model explains communication in terms of source, encoder, channel, decoder and receiver. Other than noise that may interfere with the signal transfer, this model does not come even close to how humans communicate. This theory explains how digital and analog devices work but it falls short when it comes to explaining human communication. A better approach consists of three models of human communication

(i) Sender - receiver model
(ii) Receiver model
(iii) Communication behavior model

The sender-receiver model is the strictest of the three and claims that communication has to be intentional, and the receiver must receive the information. The Receiver model accepts any form of communication as valid, whether intentional or not, as long as the receiver receives the information and understands it. There is a chance for misinterpretation of information, but it is still communication. The Communication behavior model is the least strict in its definition, and accepts all forms of communication even if the receiver does not perceive the intended message (Littlejohn, 2001, p. 6-9).

"All theories are abstraction. They always reduce experience to a set of categories and as a result always leave something out" (Littlejohn, 2001, p.19). Since no theory can reveal the whole truth, maybe a better approach would be to use the right theory in the right context.

As a working results driven professional in the information and communication science industry, getting the intended message out to the receiver is extremely important. So, my theory would be closest to the sender-receiver model, but with a twist. In my model, the communication is valid whether is intentional or not as long as the receiver understands the message and interprets it correctly. I would like to call it the Sender-Receiver Interpretation model. Besides theories, there are other things that are important in becoming a good communicator. One of those essential elements is active listening. "The art of listening is a part of human communications. We allow ourselves to become so busy that we don’t' hear the sender speaking to us” (Byrd, 2007). Here Byrd is not literally saying that the receiver did not hear anything, but rather misinterpretation or incomprehension of the intended message. In human communication, being listened to is just as important as speaking. An infant cries so that he or she can be heard. "Communication encompasses a person's lifetime, from the very first breath to the last as a need to be heard understood, and to understand others" (Hile, 2007).

As technology, culture and environment changes so should the models and theories of communication. The internet has brought a new realm in communication that most theorists in the book would not even have considered as means of communication. "Human communication over the years has grown to incorporate not only face to face interaction, but also communication via computers and other portable devices... Now even emotions can be sent virtually through the use of emotion icons, thus allowing the evolution of this realm of communication (Antoine, 2007).

"Good theory development is a constant process of testing and formulating (Littlejohn, 2001, p. 25). So, for a theory to stand the test of time, it needs to evolve with time.

In conclusion, we see that no single theory can completely explain all aspects of human communication. We might have to be selective on what theory to apply based on the research we are trying to do. For someone studying the science of sound, its production, transmission, and reception, the Shannon-Weaver model might be the perfect choice. On the other hand, someone interested in communication in a business setting might want to look at the Sender-Receiver model with special attention to non-verbal, cultural, and social influences. We also need to master our listening skills, just as much as we do on our verbal skills. Change is inevitable. So, in order to practice good communication in this ever changing world, we need to be open to new views, idea, and technology. As Darwin suggested, only the ones that can adapt to changes will survive.

References

Peters, John Durham (1999). Latin Roots of "Communication". Retrieved August 25, 2007 from
University of Colorado, Department of Communication Web site:
http://www.colorado.edu/communication/meta-discourses/Theory/latin.htm

Littlejohn, S. W. (2001). Theories of Human Communication (7th ed.). Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth/Thomas Learning.

Antoine, K (2007, September 18). Human Communication. Retrieved October 21, 2007 from
Ball State University, Center for Information and Communication Sciences Web site:
http://www.cicsworld.org/blogs/kaantoine/2007/09/human_communication.html

Hile, D (2007, October 21). Defining Human Communication in my Terms. Retrieved October
21, 2007 from Ball State University, Center for Information and Communication
Sciences Web site:
http://www.cicsworld.org/dehile/2007/10/defining_human_communication_i_1.html

Byrd, J (2007, October 13). Human Communications. Retrieved October 21, 2007 from Ball
State University, Center for Information and Communication Sciences Web site:
http://www.cicsworld.org/blogs/jbyrd15/2007/10/human_communications.html

Posted by Rajeev Karki at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)