What is Communication and How Does it Happen?

To adapt to the environment, people engage in message-receiving and message- transmitting behavior.
This behavior is called communication. In its broadest sense, human communication occurs whenever a
person becomes aware of a stimulus and responds either overtly or covertly to it.

When people use words to adapt to their environment and when the words are received primarily by
the hearing mechanism and transmitted by the voice, this behavior is called speech communication.
Consequently, speech communication encounters involve, at the minimum, both verbal stimuli (words)
and vocal stimuli (non-verbal cues such as inflections, intonation, emphasis, stress, etc.). During speech
communication encounters, there is a dynamic interplay between message-receiver and message
transmitter; each affects the other in many apparent and subtle ways. Encounters take place when a
person both transmits and receives his/ her own messages (as when a man talks to himself). They take
place when two or more people both transmit messages to and receive messages from each other (as in
a conversation, interview and discussion). And they happen when a person assumes the main
responsibility of transmitting messages and when others take on the task of receiving messages (as with
public speech and television talks).

In the book Men, Messages, and Media, Schramm (1973) started defining communication by listing
down samples of “everyday human communication.” We quote the samples here, but we localize the
activities:

 A driver studies a road map.

 A soldier’s voice rings out in the night.
 A traffic light changes from red to green.
 A picture tube flickers on. We look over the shoulders of three newsmen who are asking
polite questions of the Philippine President. The President speaks over their shoulders to us.
 The girl is 13, blond, blue-eyed, with a heart-shaped face. The boy is tall, lanky, with arms
and legs that seem longer than necessary, as they usually do at age 13. He moves toward
the girl; his face is rather red. He says, “Anna, would you like…” and stops in
embarrassment. She smiles up at him. I’d love to,” she says.
 A man buys a morning paper, climbs aboard an MRT coach, finds a seat, and settles down to
read the story under the black headlines.

Can you guess what is common in all these? If your answer is Information, then you are right! All
examples show the role of information in communication. Whether verbal (written or spoken) or in
symbols, communication takes place when information is not simply transferred or transmitted but
shared. It is the process through which individuals share meanings.

The samples above also illustrate Kincaid and Schramm’s (undated, from UPOU module on
communication concepts and principles)ideas of communication: