Human Communication

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Human Communication

• UDSM, January 2010.
• English for Water Managers

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Introduction to Communication

• In todays world, communication enables man to
  influence and control his environment and is seen
  as one of the conditions for development. Not
  only is communication an integral part of human
  life, but it is also the pivot of society as the
  key component of all cultural, political,
  educational and economic activity.

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Communication cont/

• Positive change is achieved as a result of the
  efficient and effective flow of information, a
  process that can only obtain through the use of
  effective communication skills.
• . People in organizations typically spend over
  75 of their time in an interpersonal situation
  thus it is no surprise to find that at the root
  of a large number of organizational problems is
  poor communication

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Purpose of this module

• The Communication Skills module will enable
  Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)
  experts to examine the relationship between the
  theory and practice of communication,
• to demonstrate how the acquisition of
  Communication Skills enhances decision-making
  processes,
• encourages the smooth flow of information and
  how, through mastery of communication skills,
  IWRM experts can address the challenges
  encountered in their field.

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Objectives of the Module

• Raise an awareness and understanding of
  communication dynamics
• equip IWRM experts with requisite skills needed
  in making their clients aware of IWRM-related
  issues.
• Enable IWRM managers make informed decisions on
  crucial issues affecting their interaction with
  the environment.
• equip Water Managers with the knowledge, skills
  and techniques needed in evaluating a variety of
  situations and circumstances likely to arise
  during interaction with clients.
• Working with different view points
• Define the term communication.
• Identify the various components of the
  communication process.
• Discuss the role and importance of communication
  in development issues.

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What is Communication?

• Communication is a process in which feelings,
  ideas are expressed as verbal and/or non-verbal
  messages, sent, received and comprehended.
• Theodorson (1969) quoted in McQuail and Windhal
  (1993) defines communication as the transmission
  of information, ideas, attitudes or emotions from
  one person or group to another primarily through
  symbols

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Definition (cont)

• Rodgers (1986) in Communication Technology
  defines communication as a process in which
  participants create and share information with
  one another in order to reach a mutual
  understanding.
• Carey (1992) defines communication as a symbolic
  process whereby reality is produced, maintained,
  repaired and transformed .

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Communication (cont)

• Human communication is dynamic the
  communication process is always in a constant
  state of change. As attitudes, feelings,
  expectations, emotions of persons who are
  communicating change, the nature of their
  communication changes as well

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Communication

• Communication is continuous it never stops.
  Human beings are always processing information
  and ideas, thoughts, expressions all the time,
  whether awake or asleep our brains remain
  active and are always communicating.
• Communication is irreversible once we send a
  message, we cannot undo it. Once we make a slip
  of the tongue, or give a meaningful glance

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Communication

• Or an emotional outburst, we cannot erase it.
  Sometimes our apologies, denial cannot erase what
  has taken place.
• Communication is interactive as communicators,
  we are constantly in contact with other people
  and with our selves. Other people react to our
  speech, actions and we also react to our own
  speech it becomes a cycle of action
  reaction becomes the basis of our communication.

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Communication

• Communication is contextual it is a part of our
  entire human experience. We need to develop an
  awareness and skills necessary to function as
  effective communicators and to adapt to
• the setting
• the people present
• the purpose of the communication

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Human Communication

• This occurs on basically 3 levels
• Intrapersonal communication with one self. It
  encompasses thought processing, personal decision
  making, listening, and determination of self
  concept.
• Interpersonal communication takes place between
  two persons who establish a communicative
  relationship. This includes

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Human Communication

• activities such as interviews, conversations
  and small group discussions.
• Public communication is characterized by a
  speaker sending a message to an audience. This
  may be face to face or direct communication for
  example, delivering a message or it maybe
  indirect such as relaying a message through the
  radio or television.

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Communication Process

• SENDER (SOURCE OF INFORMATION Originator of the
  message (WHO).
• MESSAGE WHAT IS COMMUNICATED.
• CHANNEL By WHAT MEANS is the message
  communicated.
• RECEIVER AUDIENCE
• FEEDBACK RESPONSE to the message.

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Source of the Message

• Communication starts when a Source is consciously
  or unconsciously stimulated by some event, object
  or idea. A need to send a message in then
  followed by a memory search to find the
  appropriate language (verbal or non-verbal) in
  which to take the ideas and put them into message
  (encode).

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Message

• What is to be communicated to the audience.
• The Channel
• The means by which the message is communicated to
  the audience e.g, we rely on five senses,
  electronic channel telephones (sound),
  television (sight), physical contact e.g. tapping
  a person on the shoulder (touch channel)

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Examples of Communication Channels
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Communication channels cont.
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Choosing a channel

• When choosing what channel to use to communicate
• particular information, the following should be
• focused on
• the availability of the channel
• the credibility of the channel
• permanence
• speed with which information is disseminated
• and potential for feedback from the receiver to
  the source or sender of the information.

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Communication channels cont.

• the diversity of cultural, linguistic and social
  groupings
• the physical barriers of terrain and distance
  which have resulted in an undeveloped transport
  and communication infrastructure
• the educational barrier of illiteracy
• limited access to the mass media

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Audience

• Audience refers to the Receiver of the message.
  The message must be translated (Decoded) into the
  receivers own language system. This message is
  not identical to the other encoded by the source
  because each persons symbol system is shaped by
  a unique set of perceptions.

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Feedback

• Once meaning is assigned to the received message
  - the receiver is in a position to respond.
  Feedback can be a verbal or non-verbal reaction
  to the message or both. Feedback indicates
  whether the receiver understands the message e.g
  by nodding, misunderstands (by shrugging
  shoulders), encouraging source to continue (by
  leaning forward and saying yes) or by pulling
  back (disagrees).

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Feedback (cont)

• The act of responding by which the receiver sends
  feedback to the source, actually shifts the role
  of the receiver to that source.
• Noise
• Messages are influenced not only by
  interpretations of each communicator but also by
  noise which is any internal or external
  interference in the communication process (e.g.
  environmental, physiological, semantic (meanings
  of words), syntactic (inappropriate grammatical
  use), cultural, psychological-stress,
  frustration, irritation

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The Context.

• Communication does not occur in a vacuum it
  always relates to a context. That is
• Who is present
• Where the communication is taking place (e.g.
  size of the room)
• General attitude of those assembled

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Communication cont.

• Communication is power. Those who have mastered
  its effective use can change their own experience
  of the world and the worlds experience of
  them.(Anthony Robbins).
• What do you think is the single most important
  benefit of learning the skills of communication?

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Test yourself

• Respond to each of the following statements with
  T for true if you think the statement is always
  or usually true and F for false if you think the
  statement is always or usually false.
• Good communicators are born, not made
• The more you communicate, the better your
  communication will be.
• Unlike effective speaking, effective listening
  really cannot be taught.

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Test

• 4. Opening lines such as Hello, how are you or
  Fine weather today serve no useful communication
  purpose
• 5. Like good communicators, leaders are born and
  not made.
• 6. Fear of public speaking is detrimental and
  must be eliminated.

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Language and Meaning

• The process of communication involves using words
  to create meaning and expectations. Meanings are
  in people and not in words as you go through
  this course, it is important for you to note that
  you have your own meaning that you ascribe to
  words you use and other people have theirs.
• A Japanese proverb By your mouth you shall
  perish brings in another dimension on language
  and communication the dimension of meaning and
  culture.

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Language and Meaning

• As Water Managers, you work in different cultures
  and subcultures different from your own. All
  these have different languages that vary from
  culture to culture - it is important to
  recognize that the language we speak helps
  sustain our perception of reality and our view of
  our world
• -in your day to day interaction with communities
  you work with, you should not assume that the
  words you use and the words people from other
  cultures use mean the same thing and that people
  see reality the same when viewing the same
  situation.

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Language and Gender

• Sometimes the sex of the communicators affects
  not only the meaning they give to their
  utterances but also the very structure of those
  utterances. A linguist, Deborah Tannen, points
  out that women and men use different
  gender-lects
• while women speak and hear a language of
  connection and intimacy,
• men speak and hear a language of status and
  independence.

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Language and Gender

• As a result, when conversing with men,
• women tend to listen attentively rather than
  interrupt
• or challenge, what a man is saying.
• Another researcher, Gillagan (1982) asserts that
• women are guided morally by a motivation to
• maintain relationships and protect their social
• partners they tend to seek to minimize harm to
  all
• persons within the social context.

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Language and Gender

• Men are said to argue linearly to solve a problem
  of a moral conflict, generally arriving at a
  definitive conclusion distance is established
  to distance oneself from personal involvement in
  the decision-making process itself
• the assumption seems to be that challenging men
  in conversation could damage the established
  connection that most women believe must be
  preserved at all costs.

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Male-Female Communication

• Men
• Use speech to report
• To compete
• To gain attention
• To maintain their position in a social hierarchy
• Women
• Use speech to gain rapport
• To maintain relationships
• To reflect a sense of community.
• .

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Men-Female

• Men
• Men tend to use Language to preserve their
  independence
• Men tend to say what they have to say, assume
  that the message is clear and proceed from that
  point.
• Women
• Tend to use Language to create intimacy and
  connection
• Women use more words to make their point they
  tend to be more sensitive to the needs of their
  listener, spend time clarifying to their listener

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Male-Female

• Men
• Men tend to be task-oriented, they want results
  at all cost
• Men are more direct when men want something,
  they ask for it directly
• Women
• Women tend to be more maintenance-oriented
• Tend to be more supportive conversationalists
  they are likely to check the connection of
  conversations they tend to ask more questions.
• Women tend to be more indirect and tend to use
  tag questions e.g that movie was terrific, dont
  you think?

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Male-Female

• Men
• Men tend to be self-oriented and concerned with
  action.
• Men have been taught to hide or disregard their
  feelings
• Men are interested in visual stimulation and
  physical detail
• Women
• Women disclose more personal information than men
  do. In their vocabulary, women tend to be people
  oriented and concerned with psychological and
  emotional states.
• Women have larger vocabularies for describing
  emotions and aesthetics. Women have been taught
  to express their feelings
• Women are interested in tactile sensations,
  emotional overtones and intimacy.

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Meaning and Experience

• The meanings of words are based on our
  experiences with the words and things they
  represent. Take note of this observation from
  Anton Chekov If you cry Forward! you must be
  sure to make clear the direction in which to go.
  Dont you see that if you fail to do that and
  simply call out the word to a monk and a
  revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite
  directions(Anton Chekov)

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Male-Female

• Men
• Men offer solutions and invalidated feelings
• Men tend to pull away and silently think about
  what might be bothering them
• Men are motivated when they feel needed
• Men primarily need a love that is trusting,
  accepting and appreciative
• Men think women want solutions rather than
  empathy
• Men feel that instead of feeling nurtured, he
  feels hes being controlled

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• Women
• Women offer unsolicited advice and direction
• Women feel an instinctive need to talk about what
  is bothering them
• Women are motivated when they feel cherished
• Women primarily need a love that is caring,
  understanding and respectful
• Women complain that men dont listen they want
  empathy
• Women might think that they are nurturing men.

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Communication and Culture

• Communication and Culture have a direct link.
  Culture consists of all those individuals who
  have a shared system of interpretation.
• No culture can live, if it attempts to be
  exclusive (Mahatma Gandhi)

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Communicating in a Culturally diverse world and
society.

• To help you assess your personal preparedness to
  communicative effectively with persons of
  different cultures, respond to each of the
  following statements by labeling as either True
  or False
• 1. I try to communicate with persons like me as
  often as I can
• 2. I rarely consider my culture or the cultures
  of the individual I am interacting with
• 3. I find it difficult to , tell when persons
  from other cultures do not understand me
• 4. I am fearful of persons from different
  cultures
• 5. Persons from other cultures have no right to
  be angry at members of my culture

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• 6.People from other cultures who dont talk when
  around others act that way because they usually
  have nothing to say
• 7. Disagreements with persons from other cultures
  should always be expressed openly
• 8. My culture is superior to other cultures
• 9. I am uncertain how to behave with persons of
  different cultures.
• 10. I am unfamiliar with rules of any culture
  other than my own.

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Intercultural Communication

• This can be defined as the process of
  interpreting and sharing meanings with
  individuals from different cultures. It also
  comprises interracial, inter ethnic,
  international, intra-cultural which includes
  all forms of communication among members of the
  same racial, ethnic or sub-cultures.
• Who are the people involved in teaching members
  of a community their culture? Parents, teachers,
  religious institutions, peers, mass media.

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Activity

• What steps have you personally taken to reduce
  the strangeness of strangers? (Intercultural
  Communication)
• Note all of us work hard enough to understand or
  to be understood by those with whom we differ. To
  counter this strangeness, we need to
• Open ourselves to differences by adding to our
  knowledge of others
• By learning to cope with uncertainty
• By developing an appreciation of how increasing
  our cultural sensitivity will positively affect
  our communication competence

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Activity

• How do individuals feelings about socialization
  differ from your own?
• To what extent do the individuals values and
  attitude differ from yours
• Which of your behaviours did the individual have
  difficulty understanding or accepting? Which of
  his or her behaviours did you have difficulty
  with?

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Activity

• Individualism versus Collectivism
• Individualistic cultures for example, in the UK,
  France, Germany, Canada focus on stressing the
  individual goals, whereas collectivistic cultures
  for example, Arabic, African, Asian, Latin
  American countries, group goals are given
  precedence instead.

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Activity

• Collectivistic cultures
• Tend to nurture group influence We is
  dominant in such cultures.
• These are also referred to as high context
  cultures, that are tradition bound, that is,
  cultural traditions shape the behaviour and
  lifestyle of group members causing them to appear
  overly polite and indirect in relating to others.

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Activity

• Individualistic cultures
• Cultivate individual initiative and achievement
  - I is important
• Generally encourage members to exhibit a more
  direct communication style for example, Americans
  tend to speak directly on an issue, whereas
  individuals from Japan, Korea, China prefer to
  avoid confrontation to preserve
• sense of harmony
• to make it possible for the individuals with whom
  they are speaking to save face or maintain
  self-esteem.
• For example, Saudi Arabians rarely criticize one
  another publicly, to do so would be to label the
  individual as disloyal and disrespectful.

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Intercultural communication

• Improving intercultural communication
• One can do this by accepting the fact that our
  culture is
• not superior to other cultures
• avoid basing our behaviour expectations for
  members of other cultures on our own cultures
  norms.

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Activity

• How to improve your ability to communicate
  interculturally
• limit your reliance on stereotypes that can
  diminish your success when you interact with
  others
• there is need for you to reduce your uncertainty
  levels regarding the persons of different
  cultures with whom you communicate
• Refrain from formulating expectations based on
  solely on your culture
• Recognise how faulty education can impede
  understanding(personal biases, prejudices,
  acknowledge differences that you have developed
  over the years)
• Make a commitment to develop communication skills
  and abilities appropriate to life ins of a
  multi-cultural world.
• Familiarize yourself with the communication rules
  and preferences of members of different cultures
  so that you can increase the effectiveness of
  your communication encounters.

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Communication and self concept

• How do your friends picture you?
• Self-concept
• Spend some time considering who you are and what
  you intend to do with the rest of your life. Self
  concept is everything you think and feel about
  yourself.
• It is the entire collection of attitudes and
  beliefs you hold about who and what you are. E
  One is not born with self concept but develops
  one. Although one undergoes changes, it is
  difficult to alter or change the picture you have
  of yourself. The way we are treated by others
  influences our sense of self.

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Self concept is shaped by

• Ones environment
• By people around you for example, peers,
  relatives
• If people important to you have made you feel
  accepted, valued, worthwhile, lovable and
  significant, you have probably developed a
  positive self concept.
• On the other hand, is those important have made
  you feel left outm small, worthless, unloved,
  insignificant, you probably have developed a
  negative self concept.
• Self concept is a mental picture you have of
  yourself. If you feel you have little worth, you
  probably expect to be taken advantage of, stepped
  on, demeaned by others.
• Our opinions about ourselves grow more and more
  resistant to change as we become older and
  presumably wiser, how you look at yourself is
  affected by how you look at other people, how
  people actually look at you, how you imagine or
  perceive that people look at you. Self concept
  may be realistic or unrealistic self concept is
  derived from experience and projected into future
  behaviour

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Communication and self concept

• 1. List the names of all the people with whom you
  interacted during a single day this week/ or last
  week. For each
• Identify the environment in which you
  communicated
• Choose an adjective to describe your image of
  yourself during each interaction and an adjective
  to describe your image of the person with whom
  you spoke.
• What can you say about the nature of your
  self-image? To what extent does your view of
  yourself change as you move from person to person
  what contributes to these changes.
• Are you the person you think you are?
• 2. If you could trade places with any TV or film
  or well known person or your hero who would the
  person be? What does this person real of
  fictional do for you? Why would you like to be
  like them? Why would you like to be more like the
  media image? Or would you like the image to be
  more like you?

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Purposes of Communication.

• Intrapersonal (communication with oneself) To
  think, reason, analyze, reflect
• Intercultural (between people of different
  cultures)
• To learn, relate, influence, help, play.
• Mass (addressed to an extremely large audience,
  mediated by audio and/or visual means) To
  entertain, to persuade, reinforce, change,
  activate, inform, confer, create ties

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Visuals and Communication

• The use of visuals in communication are
  classified into three categories namely, those
  that are used for telling, and showing and doing.
  He points out that visuals that allow the
  audience to do or experience something are more
  concrete than visuals that simply show
  something. Examples from Dales cone of
  experience
• Telling using verbal symbols, visual symbols,
  graphs, charts, cartoons, diagrams, pictures,
  sketches, maps, bar graphs, line graphs.
• Showing using demonstrations, excursions, study
  trips, video clips, films these bring the
  audience closer to reality than mere telling.
• Doing participation by the audience for
  example, role playing, working on case studies.

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Activity

• Think about textbooks, newspapers, magazines you
  have read. How have visuals in these helped you
  to understand the information being put across?
  Have they
• clarified an image not made quite clear by words
  alone?
• guided you through a maze of unfamiliar
  information?
• emphasized materials so that you remember it?
• allowed you to find information quickly? and to
  make comparisons between items?
• People rely on non-verbal messages to help them
  communicate and people respond to visuals to a
  higher degree and this is probably because people
  think in images as well as symbols.

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Visuals and Communication

• Advantages of using visuals in communication.
• visuals, especially tables can consolidate a
  great deal of information int0 relatively little
  space.
• They clarify concepts
• They emphasize materials
• They guide the audiences through important
  material
• They make it easier to see an overall pattern and
  draw comparisons
• They help to make ideas concrete and encourage
  creative thinking by projecting alternate
  solutions to a problem.
• can express simultaneous conditions as words
  cannot.
• They help in solving anticipated problems in
  conveying ideas or information and to add
  emphasis.

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remember

• Remember,
• Communication takes place within a system as we
  enter into communicative relationships with
  others, we set a pattern by which we will
  interact
• We teach others how to treat us we need to
  develop a system, a structure within any
  communicative exchange, and each person plays a
  role within the system. If the role is accepted
  by the other person, it becomes a pattern
• We communicate what and who we are every time
  we communicate, we tell a great deal about
  ourselves our selection of words, we tone of
  our voice and the gestures we use combine to give
  a picture of our values, likes, dislikes,
  experiences, beliefs and self perception. We give
  clues of our background by the pronunciation
  patterns we produce, and the attitudes we express

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remember

• Much of our communication centres on our wanting
  others to act or think or feel as we do in other
  words, much of it is an attempt at persuasion
• Meaning is in people, not in words the meaning
  of a word only has that meaning by virtue of the
  meaning people give to that word
• We cannot not communicate communication does
  not necessarily stop simply because people stop
  talking and listening much of our communication
  is done below the verbal level

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remember

• People react to our action we are constantly
  demonstrating the action reaction
  principle. For example, when we smile, others are
  likely to smile back.
• We do what we do because in the end we expect to
  achieve happiness when we enter into
  communication, we do so hoping to gain from the
  experience.
• We cannot always have the same understandings and
  as others- as we communicate we must recognize
  that because of differences in our cultures, the
  only areas we share are those in which we have
  common experiential ground.

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Human Communication

• THE END