Purposive

Communication

Irish Mae Fernandez-Dalona, Ph.D.

English Department, MSU-IIT
Communication
“It's not JUST oral communication. It's body
language, eye contact, the grinning, the little
signals that go on between people.”
~ Keith Richards

What does this mean?

 Communication involves various elements!
• paralinguistics (i.e. tone, pitch, pace, etc.)
• Even silence - - - all these convey several meanings

• COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE (Hymes, 1966; Gumperz, 1972;

Canale & Swain, 1980; Celce-Murcia, Dornyei & Thurell, 1995; in
Wardhaugh, 2010)
• includes your sociolinguistic (appropriate use of the language
within a context), discourse/pragmatic (grasp of anything beyond
the sentence structure), and strategic (compensatory strategies)
competencies)
• This further suggests that…

more important than the emphasis of eloquence and fluency

in speech, the discussion on communication should focus on
every little thing that matters --- the nonverbal cues, the
context, culture, age, gender, among others.

It is NOT ENOUGH that you sound good. Communication is

about understanding every element of the process, and then
responding appropriately to these elements.
Communication Effectiveness depends on the following:

❑ ability of the sender and the receiver to encode and

decode the message/information

❑ extent to which both parties have similar codebooks

❑ shared mental models about the topic’s context

❑ sender’s experience at communicating the

message
Communication
Linguistic repertoire refers to the range of linguistic varieties which
the speaker has at his disposal and which he may appropriately use as a
member of his speech community.
~ Platt and Platt (1975), cited in Pennycook (2017)
 Sender
Message
Feedback
Communication
Elements
Medium

Receiver
Barrier
Communication Models
 Aristotelian Model of Communication

In order to attain the effect or achieve the purpose of communication, people

should be able to master the art of rhetoric!
 The Three Rhetorical Appeals
Pathos (Passion/Emotion) Logos (Logic) Ethos (Ethics)

The use of emotional appeal.
Examples: heart-warming stories,
personal experiences, humorous
jokes, pitiful photographs, etc.
The use of logical argument.
Examples: statistics, facts,
reasonable arguments, logical
organization of information, etc.
The use of credibility
and trust.
Examples: quotes from professionals,
customer reviews, celebrity
endorsement, personal qualifications,
testimonies, etc.
 Laswell’s Model (1948)
• This is another example of a unidirectional COMMUNICATION
MODEL, which specifically highlights the need to choose the
appropriate CHANNEL.

With
Who What Through To
what whom?
what
says? ? channel? effect?
 Choosing the best Channel
• Social acceptance *
How well the communication is approved and
supported

• Media richness
Medium’s data carrying-capacity – the volume and the
variety of information that can be
transmitted during a specific time
(Richard L. Daft and Robert H. Lengel, 1986)
• Oculesics
• Haptics
• Proxemics
• Chronemics
We can lie VERBALLY, but not with NON VERBAL cues.

Here is a video about how non-verbal cues tell so much

about a person’s inner emotions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8LA10Tg1Os

*This video is also posted on the site.

2 Osgood-Schramm’s Communication Model
Barnlund (1962)
Information Overload Cross-Cultural
Communication Model by Wood (2006), Adler and Towne (1996)
 What are your thoughts about the
Communication Model by Wood (2006),
Adler and Towne (1996)?
 PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION

• Defined as the intentional communication that happens

within the bounds of specific contexts, Purposive
Communication challenges the communicator to
strategically use a language that is understood, familiar, and
accepted in a context, in order to communicate his/her
specific intentions. The assertion is that, when the
communicator fails to consider context, there is a possibility
of a communication breakdown.