Chapter 1: Foundation of Interpersonal Communication

• Communication skills:
o Ability to convey a message to your audience in a
manner that is comprehensible
• Interpersonal skills:
o Ability to get along with others on a personal level,
to be empathy and to simply get along with people
on a personal level
• Reason of studying Interpersonal Communication:
o Personal Success:
▪ Help individual make & maintain close
friendships, romantic and family relationships
o Social Success:
▪ Help individuals engage in comfortable &
enjoyable conversation with people they meet
every day
o Professional Success:
▪ Succeed in job interview, participate in a
meeting and lead the meeting
• Nature of Interpersonal Communication:
o Involves interdependent individuals:
▪ Takes place between people who are
connected
▪ Interdependent – they have impact on one
another
▪ Between father & son, two lovers
▪ It can also be in small intimate group – family
o Relational:
▪ Takes place in a relationship, it impacts and
defines it
▪ Way you communicate is influenced by the
type of relationship you are with the person
▪ Way you communicate influenced your
relationships in both (+) & (-) ways
o Exists on a continuum:
▪ From impersonal >>> highly personal
▪ Role vs. Personal information:
• People respond to each other according
to the roles they play
▪ Societal vs. Personal rules:
• Server & customer – society rules
• Father & son – personal rules
▪ Social vs. Personal messages:
• Message exchange in the server &
customer – impersonal
• Message exchange in father & son –
highly personal
o Involves verbal & nonverbal messages:
▪ Send and receive interpersonal message by:
• Facial expressions
• Eyes
• Posture
• Nonverbal: online text, photos, videos
▪ Silence – nonverbal communication
▪ Some situations – verbal conveys more
messages
o Takes place in varied forms:
▪ Face-to-face
▪ Online:
• Synchronous:
o Via the computer network
o Takes place in real time
o Google hangout, Skype
• Asynchronous:
o Via the computer network
o Don’t take place in real time
o Leaving comment on Insta
o Sending direct message to a person
that they will reply the day, week,
month or year after
o Involves choices:
▪ Interpersonal message:
• result of the choices we make
▪ Choices:
• Who to communicate with
• What you say
• How to phrase what you say
• Elements of Interpersonal Communication:
o Source-receiver:
▪ Each person performs both source and
receiver functions
▪ Source:
• The speaker who sends messages
▪ Receiver:
• The listener who take in and understand
messages
o Encoding-decoding:
▪ Encoding:
• Producing messages – speaking & writing
▪ Decoding:
• Understanding messages – listening &
reading
o Messages:
▪ Signals that serve as stimuli for a receiver and
are receive by one of our senses
▪ Either:
• verbal/nonverbal
• intentional/unintentional
▪ Metamessages:
• Underlying meaning (message in a message)
• Feedback messages:
o Message that are sent back to the
speaker concerning reactions to
what is said
o Feedback messages from others:
▪ As you are speaking to
someone you see him/her
frown so you adjust your
messages
o Feedback messages from yourself:
▪ As you are speaking to
someone you feel you are
fidgeting so you adjust your
messages
• Feedforward messages:
o Information you provide before
sending your main message
o Channel:
▪ Medium message being send
▪ Channel types:
• Face-to-face, email, telephone, Facebook
o Noise:
▪ Anything distorts the message (prevent the
receiver from receiving the message)
▪ Types of noise:
• Physical:
o Passing of cars
o Illegible handwriting
• Physiological:
o Visual impairments
o Hearing loss
o Articulation problem
• Psychological:
o Wandering thoughts
o Preconceived ideas
o Close-mindedness
o Extreme emotionalism
• Semantic:
o Different language and dialects
o Used of slang and complex term
o Context:
▪ Environment that influence the form and
content of messages
▪ 4 dimensions:
• Physical:
o Where communication take places
▪ Room, park
• Temporal:
o Time of day, moment in history and
where a particular message fits into
the sequence of communication
events
▪ A joke about illness told
immediately after the
disclosure of a friend’s illness
• Social-Psychological:
o Status relationships among
participants, roles and games they
play, norms of the society,
friendliness, formality, or gravity of
the situation
▪ Facebook – informal & for fun
communication
• Cultural:
o Cultural beliefs & customs of the
people who are communicating
o You may follow different rules of
comm which can have (-) impact
• Principles of Interpersonal Communication:
o Transactional process:
▪ The process is circular
▪ Person A message will be related to what
person B will saying base on person A message
▪ Simultaneously as a speaker and as a listener
▪ It is interactive process
o Purposeful:
▪ To learn: better understand the world & urself
▪ To relate: comm. friendship and love
▪ To influence: social media sites influence us in
direct ways and indirect ways
▪ To play: provide balance & rest your mind in
f2f comm. and online
▪ To help: offer guidance through interpersonal
interaction
o Ambiguous:
▪ Messages can have more than 1 meaning
▪ Different people will understand the message
in different way
o Symmetrical or complementary:
• Symmetrical R:
o 2 individuals mirror each other
behaviours
• Complementary R:
o 2 individuals engage in different
behaviours
 o Refers to content & relationship:
Content Relationship
You had better see me immediately Superior-inferior
May I please see you as soon as possible? Equal R – show respect

o Series of punctuated events:

▪ Communicators segment this continuous
stream of comm. into smaller pieces
▪ Punctuation:
• The tendency to divide comm. into
sequences of stimuli and responses
▪ After each statement, there is a reaction
▪ The person replies on each word, sentence or
paragraph
o Inevitable, irreversible & unrepeatable:
▪ Inevitable:
• You can’t avoid communicating
• You are communicating whether you
intend or not
o Ur teacher saw u staring outside the
window so she understands that you
are bored
▪ Irreversible:
• You can’t take a message back
• You communicated remains
communicated, cannot uncommunicated
o You send a mssg when you’re mad
to ur friends and when u are cooler
u explain to her but it’s too late
▪ Unrepeatable:
• You can’t never repeat exactly a specific
message
• Never get second chance to make a first
impression
• The way a person receive message for the
first time doesn’t same like the second
time