COURSE HRD 2101: COMMUNICATION SKILLS
LECTURE NO. 2 TO ENGINEERING,
TECHNOLOGY STUDENTS, JKUAT
AGRICULTURAL
SCIENCES
AND
Given by Paul N. Njoroge
In my first Lecture, I promised to attempt an answer to the question, “What is
communication?” with a view to giving a partial introduction to the enormous subject
of communication. I still hope to give the first part of my Introductory Lectures on
the subject of Communication—because one cannot possibly manage to give an
adequate introduction in one lecture. But before I begin let me briefly revisit our
review of what is actually taught in tertiary institutions of learning here and abroad. I
think this is of great importance. It will help you appreciate the great relevance of
this subject to your technical education. You will understand the importance given to
communication studies in modern day post-secondary education.
The first thing one should note is that Communication Studies have as a target
students of different disciplines. I have identified the following classes of disciplines.
1.
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL/TECHNICAL DISCIPLINES
Students of the major courses offered at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture
and Technology would fall under this class of disciplines or courses of study. In
institutions of higher learning elsewhere in the world Communications Studies
targeted at this class of students carries an emphasis on what is called Scientific
and Technical Communication. To understand what the concerns of this course
are about let us consider the Scientific and Technical Communication course
offered at Bowling Green State University in the State of Ohio in the United States.
This University offers what is called a Master of Arts Degree in Scientific and
Technical Communication. The course covers the following areas: (a) technical
writing; (b) technical editing; and (c) research in technical writing. Visual
communication and computer studies and programming are also introduced.
What is meant by technical writing and technical editing? In simple language, what is
meant is putting in writing technical subjects either for a community of people
involved in that technical area or for the benefit of lay persons interested in the
subject. For example, the Internet is a technical subject. In the JKUAT library there
is a wonderful book: Harley Hahn and Rick Stout, The Internet: Complete Reference
(New York: Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1994). It is written in simple language, contains
funny jokes, but enables the reader to access the internet and to advantageously use
the computer. If you were a student of Horticulture and wrote a book on intensive
cultivation of cabbages and peas, you would be involved in technical writing. Editing,
of course, refers to the improvement of a piece of writing—changing words,
simplifying and clarifying sentences—to make a piece of writing to communicate as
effectively as possible with a given target reader or target audience.
2.
BUSINESS/PROFESSIONAL DISCIPLINES AND COURSES
English skills—speaking and writing—are taught to people pursuing the career of
secretary to help them write better letters, for example, or write better minutes of
business meetings. Administrators may learn better report writing. Work-place
success may be enhanced or increased by people taking communication and
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language courses. And not only middle-level employees (secretaries, administrators)
want to take communication or English courses. Top level staff i.e. managers, in
manufacturing (industry) trading or business and service firms and companies
undergo communications skills training. They learn skills like:
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
techniques of public speaking;
writing clearly and concisely;
active and effective listening in order to creatively handle personnel
problems.
In other words, communication effectiveness is seen as part and parcel of
effectiveness as a manager. For a manager is concerned with bringing resources at
his disposal—including personnel and workers with different skills and functions—
together in order to achieve the objectives of his or her organization/firm. If the
manager is the manager of production at Kenya Breweries his task is to ensure that
all the equipment and ingredients are available and all technical workers are in place
to produce enough good beers for the Kenyan and international markets!
So one very important area of Communication is Business Communication/
English.
I mentioned some of the professional bodies in Kenya offering Business English. I
should also mention courses in this particular University’s Institute for Human
Resources Development; Communication Business English is offered as a segment in
the Bachelor of Business and Office Management degree course, as well as the
Bachelor of Commerce and Business Administration course. And the British Council
offers a Business Course which they advertise on the Internet as follows:
“Do you want to improve your business language skills? Our new Business
Language course is a practical course for upper-intermediate students who wish
to improve their language skills relevant to the workplace. Focusing on relevant
international business situations it will help you enhance your competency in
English and will teach the language necessary to succeed in business
situations”.
In the UK, Business English is all the rage and is seen to contribute to good
management of business, to the enhancement of all round productivity in the
manufacturing and service industries, and indeed ultimately to the increase in
national prosperity. If you read British books in Business Communication you will
notice that they are not only concerned with language skills but dialogue skills
between management, personnel at lower levels of a business organization and,
indeed, trade unions and employee organizations.
For your general information, the following are British professional examining bodies
awarding some kind of certificate in a course incorporating Business Communication:
1. The Associated Examining Board (AEB) awards a certificate of Professional
and Business Use of English Language.
2. Association of Medical Secretaries awards a Diploma in Medical Reception.
3. The London Chamber of Commerce awards: (a) Private Secretary’s
Certificate; and (b) Private Secretary’s Diploma.
4. The Pitman Examination Institute awards a certificate for Correspondence
and Report Writing and English for Office Skills.
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5. The Royal Society of Arts awards: (a) Certificate in Road Passenger
Transport; (b) Diploma for Personal Assistants; and (c) Royal Society of Arts
certificates for English Language Stage II and stage III. For the award of (a)
and (b) Language and Communication Skills are examined also.
6. Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators gives certification to
Chartered Public Secretaries (CPS).
7. National Examinations Board in Supervisory Studies also awards a certificate
in language studies.
8. So does Civil Service Commission.
So highly rated is Business Education (with its Business Communication/Business
English component) that there is in the UK a Business Education Council (BEC) to
oversee its provision.
Why do I talk about this in some detail? Because there is some intersection between
the concerns of technical communication and business communication. To begin
with, both students pursuing technical subjects, like yourselves, and those pursuing
business courses have to cover similar areas like writing correct sentences, writing
compositions and summaries or making oral presentations about some subject. But
there is also a fundamental intersection: business, technology and science are
increasingly being mobilized in conjunction to further the purposes of enterprise, to
increase resources, prosperity and profits. The student of science and technology
today is the business man or woman of tomorrow, the entrepreneur of tomorrow
who will be called upon to start science/technology based businesses which will
increase productivity, increase availability of say, food, create employment for
people, and generally alleviate poverty.
A good international example of business enterprise married to science and
technology and to innovations in communication is Bill Gates, the billionaire owner of
Microsoft Corporation which produces software for millions of computers worldwide.
3.
COMMUNICATION AND ENGLISH IN THE HUMANITIES OR ARTS
Communication and English is also, of course, taught to students following
Humanities/Arts courses. Here language and communication may actually be part
and parcel of the student’s area of study. For example, a student of literature
(fiction, poetry, and drama) will study language as the essential medium of these
artistic expressions. (Just as a painter will have to study the use of charcoal, pencils
for drawing sketches, paints and colours and brush work.) Again a student of the
performance arts—theatre, cinema and video shows—will pay special attention to
language communication and body communication. A dancer will study especially
non-language body communication. A radio/television announcer will study proper
language diction (that is style or manner of speaking) and oral delivery (including
correct pronunciation and clarity of delivery). And a print-media journalist
(newspaper reporter) will learn to write stories in simple direct language; he will
have to write correctly working to strict deadlines.
The temptation may be to say, without giving it extra attention, that the concerns of
Humanities/Arts students with regard to communication have little to do with the
concerns of Science/Technology or Business Education students. But this is a risky
and hasty conclusion. Consider a Holticulture agricultural extension officer talking to
a group of farmers in Nyandarua about vegetable growing. Or a food-processing
company manager giving a presentation on future plans to expand production to his
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Board of Directors. Aren’t these scientist and business people involved in some kind
of ‘performance’ with kinship to theatre performance or radio-announcer roles?
The safest and most positive and rewarding approach is to see the concerns of all
types of communication as relevant to you. Subject of course to limitations of study
time and available resources, make it your concern to learn as much as possible
about communication.
Just in case you want to develop into a communication nerd—that is American
colloquial English for expert, for ‘being in’, as they say—apply to study at the
university I mentioned in my first lecture, namely, the University of Southern
Indiana. They have about 21 courses under Communication Studies, including
Introduction to Public Speaking; Introduction to Interpersonal Communication;
Introduction to Performance Studies (including things like oral rendering of poetry or
drama); Business and Professional Speech; Organizational Communication (that is
how communication is carried out in organizations bringing together different
departments under whose umbrella many individuals work). And so on and so forth.
I hope I am not boring you with this Course review or pre-view. Keep this
information on your file or in your portfolio. You may be surprised in the future when
it comes in handy. For now I’ll say nothing more on this subject, but in a subsequent
lecture I mean to say something about the Requirements Placed on Students at
University Level—about attendance in class, about individual application and hard
work, and about building great expectations, etc. But let us now begin talking
seriously about communication.
WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?
The English word to ‘communicate’ derives from a borrowing from the Latin word
communicare, meaning “to make common, to share, to impart, to transmit’’.
Communication is, therefore, the exchange or sharing of meanings between
individuals or between groups of people, using a common pool of symbols.
Communication, as we shall show, is achieved through the use of a common system
of symbols. A symbol, defined very generally and in a simplified way, is a sign that
carries some meaning. For example, the beating of a drum at extended intervals
among the Ibo people of South-Eastern Nigeria could mean the announcement of the
death of a prominent person. Words themselves are symbols. People who speak the
same language are able to share meanings as diverse as the expression of feelings in
a statement like: “Take comfort, brother. We are with you in your hour of loss”, or in
passing on practical information in a statement like: “Go to Kijabe Street in Nairobi
and visit the Simlaw Seeds Company. Ask for hybrid maize seed, variety 513. Make
sure you plant it in deeply dug soil. Plant two seeds in holes dug in rows one metre
apart. Each hole should take a tablespoonful of DAP fertilizer.’’
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Macropaedia, Knowledge in Depth, Vol.
16), a very good definition of communication was given by I. A. Richards as a scholar
of literature. According to I. A. Richards:
Communication takes place when one mind so acts upon its environment that
another mind is influenced, and in that other mind an experience occurs which
is like the experience of the first mind, and is caused in part by that
experience.
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What Richards is actually saying is that communication is a meeting of minds. We
can see what he means: when you read an exciting novel or a verse of the Biblical
Psalms your very mind is stirred and affected. But one must comment that we are
here speaking of aspects of the highest forms of human communication, the
achievement of thousands of years of human development. I do think it is a good
idea to go back further into the past in order to understand the phenomenon of
communication more deeply and to see how communication has evolved.
Communication and the Ancestors of Man
An English writer of great imagination, H.G Wells, wrote a book entitled A Short
History of the World. (He also wrote many other books including some we used to
read, in simplified Abridged versions, in our youth: The Time Machine [about
travelling into the past, millions of years back when monster dinosaurs were living]
or The War of the Worlds, about an attack on England by creatures from Mars.)
There is a very interesting claim in this fascinating book. The claim is that
communication comes into the world with the evolution of warm-blooded mammals
and birds. Archaeologists tell us that the first Mammals made their first appearance
on earth 200 million years ago—having evolved from land-living reptilian life.
According to H. G. Wells a great revolution in animal mental life took place when
Mammals replaced Reptiles as the lords of the earth. Let us hear Wells out:
With very few exceptions the reptile abandons its eggs to hatch alone. The
young reptile has no knowledge whatever of its parents; its mental life, such as
it is, begins and ends with its own experiences. It may tolerate the existence of
its fellows, but it has no communication with them; it never imitates, never
learns from them, is incapable of concerted action with them. Its life is that of
an isolated individual. But with the suckling and cherishing of young which was
distinctive of the new mammalian and avian strains arose the possibility of
learning by imitation, of communication by warning cries and other concerted
actions, of mutual control and instruction. A teachable type of life had come
into the world.
Caring for the young and the requirement of nurture are the basis of the
establishment of families and relationships and these relationships are cemented
by some kind of communication, some kind of sharing of messages and meanings.
And the logical step from family—father, mother, offspring—is society, grouping
several families together—or herd or pack among animals. There is a necessary
element of communication to keep the pack or herd together. Probably the same can
be said about a flight of geese or some other birds.
Let us get agreed on something: the rudiments of communication are to be found in
mammals—and some birds. The proof is in human ability to maintain some level of
communication with dogs, apes (e.g. chimpanzees) and some birds. Are you aware
you can train a goose to guard your home like a dog? I can assure you, from
personal evidence, that they can be frighteningly fierce towards intruders! As you
must know from your Biology lessons, Man belongs to the Primate Order of
Mammals, the most advanced on the evolutionary tree, with species having a large
brain. And among the apes the rudiments of social life are easily observable—with
male apes exercising protection over females and young in their pack.
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Anthropologists tell us that all primates—the most advanced of the mammals—have
been able to develop societies. Among the gibbons you find elementary families—
father, mother and children. Baboons maintain groups with as many as 400
individuals. What is more there is mutual care amongst these groups—with males of
some primate groups doing their share of baby-minding and care-taking; and (mark
this) with some rudimentary “marriages” being recognised in the form of seemingly
arranged bonding between a particular male and several females, at least over a
period. This can only be possible with some kind of communication. According to the
author of the book from which this section has benefited (Robin Fox in Kinship and
Marriage, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), “Howler monkeys have a special
cry for ‘infant fallen from tree’”!
So the roots of social life and communication in Man go millions of years back, to
Man’s Mammalian ancestry. And with the Primates Man shares a social life.
But of course human society is essentially different from animal herds or packs—and
Man is unique in the way he harnessed communication to social life and became the
only animal with a developed and ever developing culture.
It is, of course, beyond the scope of this Lecture to go into the speculations of
scholars about how Homo sapiens sapiens made the revolutionary break with the
other higher animals, including the other primates and Man’s cousins, the apes. But
we can briefly mention the significance some scholars have perceived in the fact of
the helplessness of the offspring of human parents. A human baby would perish
without intimate care and nurture. It is born frail and helpless—but with a big head,
big brain, and great potential for learning, with latent power locked in its genes. The
human family, therefore, becomes all important: the mother to nurture the child, the
father to provide life needs like food, shelter and protection to the mother and child.
And the human child becomes confined, by its frailty, to an ultimate learning
environment. And the family, thrown by need and necessity together, falls back on
the need to communicate—for survival and security.
The speculation is that over a period of 2 million years up to 50,000 years ago, prehuman apes of the genus Homo (to which modern Man belongs) evolved into Man. A
combination of factors including activities forced on the creature by the needs of
survival and security of not only families but also societies and populations led to the
evolution of culture. Culture is the essential characteristic of humankind.
Human Culture and the Central Role of Communication in Culture
Some simple examples are given to show the essential difference between Homo
sapiens sapiens and other primates:
(1)
Man can look at a mountain and believe that the mountain is the home of
God; no ape (or any other animal) is capable of a similar symbolization.
(2)
Only Man makes a classification of relatives: my grandmother on my
mother’s side; my brother’s wife.
(3)
Only Man makes rules against incest: unacceptable sexual relations
between people with kin relations (son and mother; brother and sister;
first cousins of the opposite sex).
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And so scholars tell us that the revolutionary break that Hominids made with the
Apes to become Homo sapiens sapiens involved the evolution of the mind beyond
what is called the instrumental stage (a chimpanzee, Man’s closest ape cousin, has
attained this stage and can use a stick to knock a banana to the ground, thus
exercising control over things in the external world) to the symbol stage, where
socially significant meanings are attributed to overt actions or objects to achieve
greater security and to make life more meaningful; such meanings are not a
necessary part of the external event or object.
The mind of a creature which merely makes tools has developed to the instrumental
stage. The mind of a creature which uses language has developed to the symbol
stage. Notice that a word symbol is ‘arbitrary’—the word itself is simply a convention
or habit accepted by a group of people belonging to the same culture to denote or
be a sign for a certain object or idea. Thus the Kiswahili word-symbol ‘mmea’ and
the English word symbol ‘plant’ refer to the same thing, although they sound quite
different.
We are told that the capacity to use symbols revolutionized human social life. The
fact of the bonding of a male and a female for purposes of procreation assumed a
higher social meaning when it was perceived as marriage and the founding of
human family—the means of reproducing society, whose individual members may
die, but which had the capacity of existing in perpetuity. Marriage also, of course,
gave the kind of order to social life as would have been impossible in a situation of
unbridled promiscuity. An ordinary object, say a staff wielded by an elder, became a
symbol of authority assisting the function of holding a village community together.
And a community of men, women and children who believed their mountain was the
seat of God were more apt to obey God’s behest to live in harmony and to assist one
another.
At the core of the revolution that transformed pre-human ape-like Hominids to Homo
sapiens sapiens, at the centre that is of the evolution of mind to the human stage of
using symbols, was that great tool of communication—spoken, oral, language.
Man became Man because he thought and he expressed this thought in words and he
communicated this thoughts to his fellows. (We are not being sexist: Man includes
Woman.) The belief in God and spirits was expressed in words. The idea of marriage
was expressed in words. And the language of the beginning, 50,000 years ago, had
words for father, mother, brother, sister, uncle-on-mother’s-side, uncle-on-father’sside … and so on. The rule against incest flowed from clear categorizaton of kinsmen
and kinswomen.
Language is at the centre of culture. Notice that a cultural community is usually
named after the language in which the community expresses itself: the Swahili
people, the Agikuyu, the Luo, the English, the Germans, the Russians. … Each
language very adequately expresses the characteristics of the social group that
speaks it and the way this group views the world and its beliefs. The language
reflects the characteristics of the physical environment in which the group lives; the
language reflects the level of material and technological development of the group;
the language expresses the social and interpersonal values of the group and their
beliefs about the ‘spiritual’ life.
Examples are given about the Eskimo who have different names for the blubber
(fat) of whales in its different states: when it is on the body of the whale; when raw;
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when cooked; when stale. This illustrates their great attachment to and need of this
sea creature for their livelihood. I am sure if you looked at your ancestral languages
you will discover similar features. One of the most interesting features of the Gikuyu
naming system, to give a different kind of example, is the way names keep on being
recycled. The first child born to a couple is named after the mother of the father, if a
girl and after the father of the father if a boy. The second child is named after its
grandparent on the mother’s side. The third child is named after its paternal uncle or
aunt, and the forth after its maternal uncle or aunt. And so on. Think about this
significant symbolization. To quote John Middleton and Greet Kershaw in their
Ethnographic Survey of The Kikuyu and Kamba of Kenya (London: International
African Institute, 1965):
The Kikuyu [in their world view] conceive of individuals, institutions and the
people as a whole, as they are living in the present, as embodying the past as
well as the future. The living male person is his grandfather, he is also his
grandson.
By this symbolization the community becomes undying, continually reproducing and
renewing itself, but in essence remaining itself. No wonder Jomo Kenyatta in the
dedication to Facing Mount Kenya called upon the living dead, the now-living and the
unborn to join hands in rebuilding the shrines destroyed by the alien colonizers.
I would like you to think about the names in Kenyan languages for different forms of
gourds: the tiny ‘baby’ gourd in which tobacco snuff was put and probably hang
around the neck (Mungiki syle?); the big giant gourd in which traditional beers or
fermented millet uji were stored (and for the beer, sometimes brewed beside the
three-stone fire place in a traditional hut); the big half gourd used in keeping large
servings of food; the medium size half gourd, used in scooping servings of food from
the black-black cooking pot. … The calabash was ubiquitous in our cultures as whale
blubber was ubiquitous in Eskimo culture.
I don’t want to over load this lecture. But I want us to genuinely appreciate the great
significance of language (the major means of communication throughout the ages) in
human culture and the development of human societies. One significant point, as
you should have learned from your History lessons, is that classification of human
groups is mainly done on the basis of language and not racial types. Thus the Bantu
language sub-family or the Nilotic language sub-family or the Southern Cushitic
language sub-family are used to describe groups of Kenyan peoples who speak
similar languages. If a Giriama child was adopted into a Luo family, adopted Dholuo
speech and culture, he is to all intents and purposes part and parcel of the Jaluo
people. By the same token Barrack Obama is neither a Luo, nor a Kenyan but part
and parcel of the American culture! Barrack Obama, the US Senate aspirant in the
State of Illinois, gave a rousing historic keynote address on 27 July 2004 to the
National Democratic Convention in Boston. His father was a Kenyan Luo economist
and his mother a white American.
SUMMING UP
We have seen that communication has its roots in animal behaviour, especially as
manifested in the Biological class Mammalia (Mammals—animals with a back-bone,
viviparous—that is having offspring that develop within the mother’s body—and
that suckle their young). Remember the hierarchical classification of Living Things
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starting with Kingdom, through Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and ending
with Species. Birds also have intelligence and do have some form of communication.
Psychologists tell us that many birds and mammals can count, and give the example
of ravens that were able to learn to go to a container that is distinguished as a food
container by having painted on it six symbols. In the highest Order of Mammals,
Primates, mental or mind development is also highest.
We have omitted to talk about the communication among what are called the social
insects—ants and bees. Bees are known to communicate distance and direction of
food from the hive by a symbolic dance which is their language. We have omitted
this discussion because this communication is essentially instinctual, does not draw
from intelligence but rather from genetic programming. The curious among you will
no doubt carry out further investigations into this phenomenon.
But we have seen that in the evolution of the mind Man made a revolutionary break
with his Mammalian ancestors and his ape-cousins in a development that took place
between 2 million years ago and probably 50,000 years ago.
In conclusion of this Lecture, let me quote from L. C. Birch in a chapter entitled
“Evolution and the Mind of Man” in a book authored by Birch and others entitled
Brain Mechanisms and the Control of Behaviour (London: Heinemann Educational
Books, 1974):
Man has a brain that gives him the capacity of thinking in concepts, that is to
say abstract thought. Secondly, the thoughts he thinks can be transmitted by
means of symbols of speech to his fellows. The capacity to communicate and
spread complex ideas and inventions is the root of culture. Culture is what man
invents and transmits to subsequent generations through teaching and
learning. Through his culture, instead of being at the mercy of his environment,
Man is master of his environment. … Man’s birthright is to have dominion over
the face of the earth. He achieves this through thought and the transmission of
thought. These capacities are genetically based. That is to say, man has genes
that the ape does not have that enable him to think and to communicate by
speech. Ability to speak is a matter of genes; while language is a matter of
culture. So man acquires a new sort of inheritance, cultural inheritance. And
this has tended to supersede his genetical evolution.
Man relies on cultural sources (factors)—the accumulation fund of significant
symbols. Birds build nests, bees locate food, mice mate largely on the basis of
instructions located in their genes. This is innate behaviour. Men build dams,
produce food and have a mating behaviour all carried out under the guidance
of information encoded in blueprints, research results, moral systems—all of
which are learned and have their basis conceptual thought.
The extent to which man is dependent upon a cultural inheritance is unique in
the animal world.
I need not say more. In case some bored student—which God forbid! —should think
we are getting into issues which should not be canvassed in a 1st year University
course, let me tell you a secret. This last long quotation was made from a course of
lectures given to the International Science School for High School Students,
sponsored by the Science Foundation for Physics within the University of Sydney at
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the University of Sydney, Australia, August 1972. Participating students were first
grade students drawn from the United States, England, Japan and Australia.
I have great respect for you JKUAT students and know that brain cell for brain cell
you match the best of your age-mate students from Japan, the States, UK or
Australia. You can, therefore, learn as well as they and make as great societybenefiting discoveries as they. Not if you sit back. If you show resolve and
application. I hope this Course in Communication adds that little motivation for you
to do just that. Your country and your Continent expect you to become part of the
global society learning experience to transform underdevelopment to development.
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