PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION:

Understanding the Multicultural World through Language

What is Purposive Communication?

Purposive communication is a three-unit course that develops students’ communicative competence

and enhances their cultural and intercultural awareness through multimodal tasks that provide them
opportunities for communicating effectively and appropriately to a multicultural audience in a local
or global context.

It equips students with tools for critical evaluation of a variety of tests and focuses on the
power of language and the impact of images to emphasize the importance of conversing messages
responsibly.

The knowledge, skills and insights that students gain from this course may be used in their other
academic endeavors, their chosen disciplines, and their future careers as they compose and produce
relevant, oral, written, and audio-visual and /or web-based output for various purposes.

UNIT 1- NATURE AND ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION

What is communication?

- taken from the Latin verb “communicare” or noun “communis” which means “sharing”

- imparting or exchanging of information or news

- successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings

- social contact

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION

1. source or sender- encodes a message based on diverse stimuli available in the environment
that trigger a thought

2. message- may be transmitted through words/ and or actions

3. receiver/ listener- receiver of the message conveyed by the source or sender who uses an
comprehensible language

4. channels- where the receiver’s decoded message is being transmitted (voice, letter,
telephone, radio, tv, etc.)

5. 5. feedback- the receiver’s response which may be through words/and or actions

When role reversal happens, the sender now becomes the receiver of the message.

There are instances, when the receiver fails to respond appropriately to the message because of
barriers that affect his/her reception and understanding of the message. These barriers are
referred to as noise.

MODELS OF COMMUNICATION

1. LINEAR (by Aristotle before 300 B.C.)

- emphasized three key points:

a. ethos (ethical appeal)- the source’s credibility or trustworthiness

 b. pathos (emotional appeal)- persuading by means of appealing to the audience’s emotions

c. logos (logical appeal)- pertains to persuasion through reasoning done through effective
use of message, design, and strategy

1. LINEAR (Aristotle before 300 B.C.)

Speaker Speech Audience

LINEAR (by Laswell, 1948)

-based on five questions:

Who says? What? Through To whom? With

what channel? What effect?

2. INTERACTIONAL (by Osgood and Schramm, 1955)

- assumes communication to be circular in nature, which implies that communication is an

interaction

- assumes that communication proceeds by taking turns, and that every message helps
shape the next

3. TRANSACTIONAL (by Barnlund, 1962)

- considered by critics as the most systematic model of communication

- suggests that giving and receiving messages is reciprocal

- a sender and a receiver is linked reciprocally

  When the communicator fails to consider context (setting, background, environment,
perspective, etc.), there is possibility of communication breakdown.

PURPOSES OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is one of the fundamental activities of every human being.

We communicate, either through speech or through writing, for various purposes.