JOUR 60: COMMUNICATION THEORY

LESSON 1
CONCEPT OF COMMUNICATION
• Communicare – a latin word means “to share”
• Communis – a french word means “common”

COMMUNICATION
1. Chappel and Read, 1984 - any means by which a thought is transferred from one
person to another.
2. Udall, R. and Udall, S. 1979 – a process by which one person or group shares
information to another so that both clearly understand one another.
3. Obilade, 1989 – process that involves transmission the transmission of message
from a sender to receiver.

FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION
1. Informative Function – to inform others on what we know – facts, information and
knowledge.
2. Social Interaction – communication helps us start, regulate or sometimes end
relationships with other people.
3. Instructive Function – people who hold important information communicate to
instruct people on what to do, when and how to do them.
4. Persuasive Function – you find yourself wanting to influence the opinion of others
to believe or accept your stand on an issue or problem.
5. Motivation Function – we communicate to entice and direct people to act and
reach their goals in life. In the process, we use positive language to make them
realize that their actions lead them to something beneficial for their being.
6. Aesthetic Function – we use communication for pleasure and enjoyment.
7. Therapeutic Function – we talk to other person merely to vent our feelings. After
that, we find ourselves in a much better condition.
8. Regulation/Control - people use communication to maintain control over people’s
attitude and behaviour.

To sum it up:
Communication is giving, receiving, or exchanging ideas, information, signals or
messages through the appropriate media, enabling individuals or group to persuade, to
seek information, to give information, or to express emotion.
IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION
• Helps in smooth working.
• Establishes effective relationship.
• Acts as basis for coordination and cooperation.
• Acts as basis for decision making.
• Helps in motivation and morale development.

COMMUNICATION PROCESS
• Communication as a process is dynamic, recursive, on-going, continuous, and
clinical. There is no recognizable beginning and end, neither is there a rigid
sequence of interaction.

How the process begins?

Stimulation – Encoding – Transmission – Reception – Decoding – Response

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION PROCESS

• Stimulus
• Source
• Message
• Medium/Channel
• Receiver
• Feedback
• Noise

NOISE
1. Physical Noise – environment
2. Physiological Noise – body
3. Psychological Noise – emotional
4. Linguistic Noise – grammatical, semantic, phonological.