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Course HRD 2101: Communication Skills
LECTURE NO. 1
Lecturer: Paul N. Njoroge
General Introduction to Communication, Development of Human Communication,
Communication Theory and Principles, and
Key Skills in Communication
1.0
Communication Skills as a Common Unit for All Undergraduate Degree Courses
Communication Skills is a unit taught to virtually all First Year undergraduate students in all
Kenyan universities. For students from the Faculties of Agriculture and Engineering of Jomo
Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, the unit is offered during the First Semester
of the First Year. For Regular students from the Faculty of Science the unit is offered in the
Second Semester of the First Year, while Alternative Degree Programme students from the
same Faculty study the unit in the First Semester.
Why have the Kenyan University managements accepted the need to teach Communication
Skills to students in a whole range of disciplines—from Commerce and Business Information
Technology, to Medicine, Engineering and Biotechnology? The simple answer is that it has been
recognised locally, and indeed internationally, that the Communication Process is the essential
key to the process of teaching and learning. Two key components in the process of teaching
and learning, as I’ll explain shortly, are the transmission of information and ideas, and the
reception of that information and ideas. No wonder then that if we are going to be effective
learners we must consciously try to master the skills of information transmission and receiving,
skills taught in the Communication Skills course.
Students in the Humanities, and also, if slightly less so, those in the Social Sciences are more
likely to take the Communication Skills unit in their stride, to find it a natural part of their
studies. For example, students of literature in English will take for granted the need to look at
how effectively the writer has used language to portray characters and to communicate
feelings and emotions. Also, a Business Studies student will be keen to learn how to write
effective letters to customers, or how to choose the appropriate media to carry the
advertisements of a marketing department. However, while the majority of Science and
Engineering students welcome this course because they correctly realise that any new
knowledge can only benefit them by stretching their minds to new dimensions, a group of
students adopt two negative attitudes towards this unit, which they wrongly perceive as nonscientific and humanities oriented. One wrong attitude is that this course is ‘alien’ to the
students’ main academic career, is to be painfully endured, gotten through after three months
of misery, and a passing grade, however modest, will be greeted with a sigh of relief. The other,
probably more dangerous, attitude is that this is a “common-sense” course, one need not
attend lectures or read recommended literature, and one may get through by answering CAT
and exam questions by guesswork. This second attitude guarantees poor performance, a
supplementary exam requirement, and a poor academic transcript. But what is worse, these
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two attitudes result in lost opportunity: the student misses on the uptake of exciting and very
useful knowledge, knowledge as would not only enrich his or her learning but prepare him or
her for the work place after university, where communication may be the key to enjoyment and
success.
One insurmountable barrier to all communication, as will be explained later, is inattention to
incoming messages. And as Stanton (2004: 23) states, “Unless somebody listens to the message
and understands it, there is no communication, only noise.” If a student does not attend
lectures, they are guilty of inattention to incoming messages, and they have caused the whole
process of teaching and learning to break down. You have no doubt read the Regulations of the
University which require students to attend lectures without failure, for the penalty of nonattendance may be disqualification from taking examinations. So I urge you: embrace the
opportunity to receive new knowledge in this important subject, Communication Skills, and I
assure you you will not be disappointed. Endeavour to do three things in order to benefit from
this subject and, indeed, to enjoy learning it: first, attend all the lectures and when possible
participate by asking questions or making suggestions; second, read all the recommended
literature and go out of your way to copy handouts given to your departmental class
representative; and third, search the library for materials to read.
I personally have no doubt about the benefits of this Unit, and in this Introduction I’ll explain
briefly the Skills to be learned. Study that section critically, and feel free to raise any issues with
instructors, verbally or in writing. This introduction will also explain the key position that
communication occupies in human life—in inter-personal relations, in learning and teaching
(education), in social-cultural life, and in making possible modern institutions and organisations.
One of the main purposes of this introduction is to make you think seriously about this
ubiquitous human phenomenon—communication—so that you are convinced about the
importance, nay, necessity of Unit HRD 2101: Communication Skills.
One scientific study reported in Stanton (2004: 22) illustrates the importance of communication
in the work place. I quote word-for-word:

One study which looked at how white-collar workers spent their day, by logging them
at intervals of fifteen minutes over a two-month period, discovered that seven out of
every ten minutes awake were spent in some form of communication activity. It broke
down like this:
9% writing
30% speaking
39% transmitting
16% reading
45% listening
61% receiving
That is to say, for this group of people 70% of their time awake was spent on a communication
activity! Keep a journal and assess how much of your working time is spent on communication
activities.
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For any skeptical science, engineering and technical students, note that communication skills
programmes have become the order of the day in American and other overseas technological
institutions, where subjects like writing on technical subjects and oral presentations are taught.
You can verify this by visiting Websites of foreign universities on the Internet.
One senior Kenyan physician, a consultant to Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and
Technology, once acknowledged to me that part of his success as a medical practitioner owed
to what he learned from the Communication Skills Unit. “Many students don’t realise just how
important communication skills are until they get to the work place”. But communication skills,
you should also realise, are essential for the student for effective study and for effective
performance in writing assignments, research and laboratory reports, and indeed in writing
examinations. Below I discuss briefly the communication skills studied under course HRD 2101,
not necessarily in the way they appear in the unit (course) description.
2.0
Which Key Communication Skills Will You Learn Under this Unit?
2.1
Writing Skills
When you are given a question requiring you to discuss, explain and describe do you answer
that question in points (making brief lists of points) or do you use continuous prose, namely
write your answer in complete sentences and well-developed paragraphs? If you make lists of
points, is it because you are uncomfortable with making complete, grammatically correct
sentences, and linking these into coherent paragraphs? Can you write an 800-words essay that
will be adjudged interesting to read, coherent in its construction of sentences and development
or linking of those sentences into paragraphs, and correct in use of words? Do you find yourself
reading this write-up with ease, enjoyment and understanding or do you find it dull, hard-going
and difficult to understand because it is written in continuous prose and not in summarised
points?
Instructors in technical subjects have decried weaknesses among a good number of students in
sustaining arguments presented in continuous prose. Therefore, one area of skills course HRD
2101 tries to focus on is ability to present descriptions, explanations and arguments in correct
continuous prose.
The approach I personally use is to refresh the student’s mind with a quick review of the rules
and conventions of making sentences in English (English grammar) (see Lecture no. 5). Then I
discuss matters involved in the presentation of written materials: punctuation, writing coherent
paragraphs, spelling, use of correct diction (level of complexity of words) and other
considerations in the use of words. Methods of generating ideas for an essay, organising those
ideas through making an outline, developing the ideas into arguments that flow through
paragraphs are also discussed. Extracts of three different types of essay—self-expression,
exposition, and persuasive—are also supplied.
But I will be the first person to admit that good, effective writing—an essential skill in both
academic life and during professional employment—is a skill that should be learned starting at
elementary school, through middle school right up to college. If something in teaching or
learning these skills went wrong, the student may be uncomfortable with writing essays at
college, or reading books written in the conventional manner—like this write-up. Does this
mean the student should accept that they are no good at writing and leave it there? No. The
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remedy for any weaknesses or inadequacies is right in your hands. What is this remedy? The
remedy is to make a point of READING WIDELY, reading all types of well-written books (history,
the history of science, biographies, autobiographies, etc) and learning from the examples of
good writers. You’ll get to internalise the rules of correct grammar, you will increase your
effective vocabulary, you will learn how to write correctly and sustain arguments and
discussion. Is this a waste of time? No: this is time invested for success in life, because the
better communicator you are, the more effective you’ll become in your chosen professional
career. For a fulfilling, happy personal and professional life, make reading a life-long activity;
embrace the book as your friend.
2.2 Listening Skills Should Be Acquired as a Necessary Part of Study Skills and Interpersonal
Skills Needed in the Workplace and in Managing People
You will be exposed to ideas about effective listening. Effective listening is achieved through the
conscious acquisition of correct habits, attitudes, knowledge and skills. You cannot afford to
take listening, which Stanton (2004: 21) refers to as “the neglected skill”, for granted. “Listening
is not a passive skill but one that requires active hard work”. (Stanton, 2004: 26). You must
develop the positive attitude of receptiveness without prejudice or prejudgement on the basis
of apathy or antipathy towards speaker or topic being discussed. You must cultivate correct
habits: not in interrupting the speaker, being genuinely attentive, encouraging speaker to speak
through appropriate body-language cues (e.g. nodding or maintaining eye contact). You need
skills like getting the major themes and main points in a lecture and quickly writing appropriate
notes. And you need to have broad background knowledge of issues and topics, so that when
people talk (lecture) you can anchor their ideas in what you already know.
You need to listen effectively to receive information and instructions given orally in lectures, for
oral teaching is a major aspect of university teaching. Effective listening will improve your
personal relations with fellow students. When you begin working you’ll need to listen to bosses
to get the necessary instructions, and, if you are a manager/administrator, you’ll need to listen
effectively to employees under you to understand their problems in order to solve them.
Management or administration requires participation in meetings where people have to listen
effectively.
2.3
Reading Skills: A Study Skill, a Necessary Skill in the Workplace
While writing is a transmission skill, reading is a receptive skill, a key knowledge acquisition skill
since the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) and Egyptians invented writing
around 3000 BC. Reading is a key activity in knowledge acquisition in your specialised area—
whether this be Geomatic Engineering, Computer Science, Botany or Horticulture. And reading,
as we have already explained, is a proven potent means of acquiring language competencies
which may be used to enhance one’s effectiveness in producing written material.
But reading does not end when one leaves the gates of the University. A professional needs to
keep reading to keep up to date with developments in their specialty: a doctor must read
contemporary journals of medicine; an engineer will read engineering journals, an agronomist
journals on agronomy. But also a well-rounded intellectual man or woman will read broadly
keeping abreast of ideas in literature, economics and other areas. Even if one were to try and
avoid such reading, a working professional cannot avoid reading all types of reports, including
briefing reports, generated in the workplace—or correspondence, which has to be replied to.
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The topic on reading includes a definition of reading as a receptive psychological-language
process whereby the reader reconstructs the meaning represented by the author as text,
assimilates that meaning and accomodates the meaning in his mind. Reading skills are directed
towards enhancing the reader’s effectiveness (ability to reconstruct a meaning closest to the
meaning intended by the writer), as well as efficiency—enabling the reader to do this quickly
and with ease. Reading skills also include identifying appropriate plans and strategies for
effective study, such as making skilled choice of materials that are essential for reading, that are
useful and those that may be irrelevant, and then reading what is essential and useful for future
recall through carefully prepared and stored notes.
2.4
Sources of Information and Library Skills: Entrenching the Study Skills of Undergraduate
Students, and Preparing Students for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Research and
Research Paper Writing
By the time you join university, you’ve probably learned how to study effectively. The topic
Sources of Information and Library Skills seeks to reinforce effective study skills, to help recall of
those skills for those students who have forgotten them, and to teach library research skills and
indeed field research skills for purposes of writing undergraduate term papers, dissertations
and preparing them for postgraduate research and thesis-writing. Do you know the difference
between a review paper and a laboratory report? These academic compositions are produced
by scientists like you.
According to Desmond W. Evans, effective study, which means ability to access essential
information on a topic, read it and assimilate it and have it reduced into summarised notes,
properly filed away for easy access for the purpose of recall, involves the following skills and
practices:






organising your weekly pattern of work efficiently;
designing and equipping your personal study location; taking good notes during
lectures, laboratory and field demonstrations and organising these notes as well as
other study materials acquired during the course (lecture handouts, copies of book,
journal and newspaper extracts, etc.) for easy access; these materials should be
properly filed in a cherished spring or box file;
knowledge of where to find helpful sources of study material;
knowledge of how to use to your library and its cataloguing system to best effect;
knowledge of what potentially useful reference texts and journals exist to aid your
studies;
knowledge of how to extract the ‘meat’ of a textbook as economically as possible.
(Evans, 1990: 1)
Evans advises the student to make a weekly timetable that includes all your activities in the
week: Lectures, Leisure Time, Meals, Games, Visits to Town, etc. Make sure you have some 1215 hours per week for private study and assignment production (Evans, 1990: 3) This is for time
management.
Evans also advises students to design “study location” to ensure comfort and accessibility of
study resources: “files, books, photocopies, diskettes (flashdisks) [should be] methodically
classified and stored for easy retrieval”. (Evans 1990: 5).
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My Lecture no. 7 entitled “Sources of Information, Library Skills and Writing a Research paper”
discusses study skills and introduces you to library research, and the requirements of writing a
Review Paper and a Laboratory Report. Please study it carefully, raise relevant questions and
seek answers from your Lecturers and the University Librarian.
2.5
Visual Communication for Teaching Presentations and Demonstrations, and the Use of
Graphics in Academic and Business Reports
This topic component lists the items ‘chalkboard, transparencies, stencils, slides, television and
films’—the visual aids used either in teaching or in somebody making a presentation. In the
present world, dominated by IT and the computer, video shows and PowerPoint presentations
would be included. A course that enhances your awareness of these aids to educational
demonstrations is, to say the least, commendable. And these aids are not only presented to you
as a receiver of information: you may yourself be required to make a presentation or
demonstration either as a student, or as a professional in the working world.
The use of graphics is also taught under this component. When you write a laboratory report or
a review paper (see my Lecture no. 7), you may be required to include different types of
graphs—line graphs, bar graphs or pie charts, or even tabulated data. The objective is to help
you produce academic or professional reports that visually present data in an immediate,
summarised graphical manner.
2.6
Oral Communication
Oral communication has been indisputably the most important means of human
communication since human speech developed about 50,000 years ago. The facility of speech,
rather than the ability to invent and use tools, defines Man. The statistics of the study already
quoted from Stanton show that speaking and listening occupy 75 per cent of all communication
activities of white-collar workers. No course on communication, therefore, would be complete
without giving some consideration to spoken communication.
As a human being, you need good oral, speaking, skills in order to carry out day-to-day
conversations. As a student you need oral speaking skills to make contributions during lectures,
tutorials and laboratory and field demonstrations. As a working professional you need oral
speaking skills in order to make good oral presentations—to give a spoken report, for example
of an engineering plant breakdown, or of problems in the application of a certain pesticide on
the rose-flower farm—or to participate effectively in committee meetings and interviews.
Oral communication skills include things like giving accurate information in what you say in a
conversation or a public speech, consideration of others’ feelings during a conversation, a
public speech or a committee meeting, courtesy, clarity of expression, and use of appropriate
accompanying body language (for example relaxed body posture and eye-contact with the
person spoken to or addressed).
2.7
Public Communication—a Requirement for Success in Your Professional Career
The engineer and professional of today is increasingly playing the roles of entrepreneur,
businessman and manager. As such he or she will become more and more involved in public
communication which involves public relations and advertising. Public relations is defined by
the United Kingdom’s Institute of Public Relations (IPR) as “the planned and sustained effort to
establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its
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publics” (Blundel, 2004: 232). These publics (or stakeholders) include shareholders of a
company, customers who buy the goods or services of a company, suppliers, employees, banks,
local communities and government departments/agencies. When you are the manager of an IT
company and you send out annual reports and brochures to major customers, suppliers,
financiers and shareholders, you are involved in public relations corporate advertising. Again,
agronomists, engineers and architects may be employed as marketing managers, required to
manage the advertising of products.
2.8
HRD 2101: Communication Skills: A Well Thought-out, Eminently Relevant, and ContentRich Course
I have been able to demonstrate that this course is a well thought out, eminently relevant and
content-rich course. It is certainly not boring or mainly oriented towards the humanities. And it
certainly is a demanding course whose content should be painstakingly studied and the
meanings of whose topics should not be guessed at. From an intellectual, scholarly point of
view, this course is at par with the units of the most prestigious engineering, science and
agriculture courses!
It is, however, quite obvious that the topics of this unit may not be adequately covered within a
period of a mere three months. There is also the challenge of delivering adequate lectures to
the very large Agriculture/Engineering and science groups—made up of approximately 500 and
300 students each, respectively.
How do you ensure that you get the maximum benefit? Ensure that you attend the lectures
AND ALSO that you pay for all copies of the handouts and study them. If you do this, you’ll
easily secure a distinction which can only enrich your academic transcript.
But this course has a relevance beyond your ability to sit the examination successfully. If you
are one of those students who appreciate the importance of Communication Skills for their
academic career, professional life beyond university and, indeed, their daily lives, the ability of
deepening your communication skills is within your grasp. All you need to do is to keep on file
the HRD 2101: Communication Skills course description, notes made during lectures, and
handouts of lectures or book extracts given to you. Then you’ll be conscious of the areas which
need to be broadened and deepened and the materials you have preserved will guide you in
carrying out more research in the library and on the Internet. You’ll also be able to talk to
colleagues and instructors to get more ideas, as well as consult professionals in the work place,
e.g. managers, who are involved in communication tasks. And, not of least importance, you’ll
be able to practise communication and self train yourself through such activities as active
reading, active writing (maintain a diary where you record your daily experiences and
perceptions), making rehearsed video or audio-taped speeches, or making rehearsed video
taped PowerPoint presentations.
Good luck!
2.9
Three Topics Taught by Myself: General Introduction to Communication, Writing Skills,
and Sources of Information and Library Skills
The General Introduction to Communication forms the major part of this Lecture and follows
shortly. Its purpose is to provide you with a good overview of what communication is all about,
its importance in the cultural development of Man, the major forms it has taken in human
history, and some major technologies of communication that have been developed, including
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the currently ubiquitous IT. Most of this is treated in a fairly detailed manner in my earlier
Lecture No. 3 entitled “Communication in Human History: A Brief Survey”, which students are
encouraged to read. A good relevant topic treated in this write-up is Communication and the
Making of the Scientific Revolution. The General Introduction, then, discusses the following
topics as listed in the course description: definition of communication, elements, processes,
purposes, qualities and barriers. These topics constitute Communication Theory.
Communication theory is interesting in itself, but it is also practically relevant. Awareness of
how communication takes place enables the communicator to make correct choices of
methods appropriate for different situations and audiences.
Writing skills are contained in Lecture no.’s 5 and 6, where the emphasis is laid on the grammar
of the English language and composition writing. Extracts from Heffernan are attached to
Lecture 6 and illustrate the following types of writing: (a) a self-expression essay, (b) an
exposition essay, (c) a persuasive essay, (d) a résumé such as is attached to a letter of
application for employment, and (e) a letter of application for employment. Also attached, from
Stanton, are two examples of Reports. Also attached are specimens of business letters,
memorandum and e-mail, from Blundel’s book to illustrate correct format.
The student is reminded that text-based communication channels are of key importance in
organisations. As a checklist, the student should remember some of the major text-based
channels used in organisations and if possible learn about them. Why? Because many students
will find themselves working in organisations after they complete their university programmes.
Learn more about the following channels:
 Business letters, used in inter-organisational communication, sent by individuals to
organisations, sent by organisations to individuals. There are different categories of
letters (Blundel, 2004: 172)
— Promotional letters sent by the marketing department of a company to prospective
customers to increase awareness of products and brands and to stimulate sales.
— Adjustment letters sent by the customer services department of a company to
customers, indicating the remedial measures (corrections) that will be taken after
customers have complained about goods or services.
— Employment Contract sent by the Human Resources Department to newly-hired
employee to provide clear and accurate information on pay and employment
conditions.
 Memoranda are generally short messages exchanged between people in the same
department or people from different departments in an organisation. A slow channel
(memos need to be typed and personally circulated) compared to email.
 E-mail is an electronic text-based channel facilitating communication between people
connected through Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN) or the
Internet. Messages are typed and received on the screen of the computer. A very fast
mode of communication, but you cannot enter into contracts through e-mail.
 Short-message texting is increasingly being used for business transactions, e.g. to
enquire about your electricity bill from Kenya Power and Lighting—and to receive your
billing.
 Reports “come is all shapes and sizes” (Blundel, 2004:197), but generally reports are
written documents providing information requested on the basis of clear ‘terms of
reference’ or specification, e.g the Vice Chancellor requesting the Director of the IT
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Center to write a report on ‘Problems of Security for Computer Equipment at the
Centre’. Some examples of Reports (Blundel, 2004:197):
— Executive briefing, e.g. the Chief Engineer of Kenya Airways provides the CEO with a
concise summary of the causes of the crash of the KQ 507 flight on 5 May 2007
before the Annual General Meeting, to enable the CEO to address the issue before
shareholders.
— Research results. People in marketing carry out field research (interviewing potential
customers) about a new product and its prospective sales and prepare a report for
discussion.
— Regular update report. May be prepared by sales representatives on a monthly basis
indicating levels of sales and efforts to promote products.
— Business proposal may be written by a manager seeking to establish a new foodprocessing factory in a new town; it would indicate the finance-investment required
to set up the plant and to employ new workers, and would show the possible returns
from the investment.
 Notices are ubiquitous on university and college notice-boards, from lists of names
of students admitted to certain programmes, to examination timetables, to seminar
calls-for-papers. It is a cheap channel of communicating to a large group of
interested parties.
 Newsletters are periodical publications highlighting happenings in an organisation.
JKUAT has its Agrinews.
 Brochures are printed pamphlets describing some activity of an organisation. There
are brochures, illustrated with photographs, highlighting JKUAT’s major academic
programmes.
The write-up on Sources of Information, Library skills and Writing a Research Paper should, of
course, supplement what students learn during library orientation soon after joining university.
3.0
Trying to Understand the Phenomenon of Communication
According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary a phenomenon is a “fact or occurrence,
especially in nature or society, that can be perceived by the senses” or/and, I would add, the
mind. Everybody, including yourself have an idea what we mean by communication. I’ll in this
section do the following things: first, give definitions of communication, according to the
literature on communication; second, look at human communication and its roots in animal,
and specifically in mammal, behaviour; third, look at the unique manifestations of human
communication and how communication has made human cultural evolution possible; fourth,
look briefly at the major developments of human communication from the time speech was
acquired to the development of communication technology in our time; and fifth, look at the
processes of human communication.
3.1
Definitions of human communication
The word communication comes from the Latin word communicare which means “to make
common, to share, to impart, to transmit” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1997, Vol. 16)
Communication is therefore the process of making information or ideas common between
different individuals, by transmitting it or imparting it from one person to another.
Communication is the “the exchange of meanings between individuals” (Encyclopaedia
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Britannica). Communication is made possible through two key processes: transmission and
receiving; in the absence of one of these processes, communication has not taken place.
According to a picture-book entitled Media and Communication written by Clive Gifford,
communication is “the sharing of information, ideas and thoughts” and “is a vital part of life for
all of us”. (Gifford, 1999: 8) The concept ‘ideas’ encompasses many things: “memories,
opinions, perceptions, images, emotions and facts” (Hefferman). Blundel on his part says that
the messages (information) exchanged in organisations include raw data (e.g. number of barrels
of crude oil pumped out of an oil well), factual information (e.g. JKUAT admitted 1000
engineering and science students for the academic year 2007/2008), ‘ideas’, opinions (‘It is my
opinion that government ministers should be appointed from professional circles and should
not be members of parliament’), beliefs and emotions.
All these things can be shared between one person and another, between one person and
several (many) others, or between a group of people.
What I think is a very important area of communication is the exchange of objective, more or
less factual, information as takes place in the process of teaching and learning, namely in the
instructional and educational context. If an instructor teaches a student of horticulture how to
use the green house to grow English cucumber, such communication takes place. When a
student of architecture learns from his lecturer how to draw architectural plans, such
communication takes place. When one is instructed how to overhaul an internal combustion
engine and grasps all the steps, such communication takes place. Communication of objective,
factual information is the life blood of education—teaching and learning.
A rather different emphasis is given by Donald Smith. Smith draws our attention to the fact that
the following words (with the meanings they carry) all share the same Latin root word,
communis:
Communication
Common
Commune
Community
Communion
According to Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, ‘common’ means shared by two or more
people; to ‘commune’ with somebody is to talk to somebody intimately and to feel close to
them; a ‘community’ is a group of people sharing and having things in common; and
‘communion’ is a state of sharing or exchanging the same thoughts, beliefs or feelings; in
Christian communion church congregations share the ‘Body and Blood of Christ’ in accordance
with their shared religious faith and beliefs.
Communication is, therefore, a process which brings people together, nurtures harmony and
understanding between people. According to Smith, while the concept of communication
encompasses the idea of exchange of information, the essential meaning of communication is
the creation of understanding, hence the title of Smith’s book: Creating Understanding.
According to Smith, human relationships and people’s involvement with one another are an
essential part in the process of communication or creating understanding: “Communication is a
relationship. We communicate by being involved. Involvement is the foundation of all
communication.” (Smith, 1992: 39)
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And Smith quotes another writer, David Augsberger, to reinforce the idea of people’s
involvement with each other:
Communication is co-response. To communicate with you is to respond to you and to
recognise your response to me. Being in each other’s presence is communicating…
Communication is co-response-ability. To communicate effectively is to honour the
mutuality of our relationship and to respect our equal privilege to respond to each other.
(Smith, 1992:25).
Empathy (feeling with the other person, respecting their feelings and their humanity, being
able to share another’s joy and griefs and being aware what hurts the other’s feelings) is
necessary in creating understanding—in genuine human communication.
Evans (1998:25) is aware of this side of communication—communication as a human relations
process. According to Evans, we say that there has been a “a breakdown in communication”
when “relatives in families cease to speak to one another, managements and trade unions
refuse to meet, and governments recall ambassadors when relations between states reach a
low ebb”. This kind of communication calls for “social skills”.
3.1.1 Two Concepts of Communication: Two Different Types of Skills?
3.1.1.1 Factual, Objective Communication
Let us give simple, direct examples:
1.
A single parent (man left by this wife) explaining to his ten-year old son how to cook ugali;
“Light the stove. Heat five cupfuls of water in a sufuria over the stove to boiling. Use a
sufuria with a handle. Pour a handful of maize flour into the boiling water. Stir
repeatedly. Pour another handful. Stir. And so on until the mixture is consistently
hard.”
2.
A teacher in a mathematics class: “There are four arithmetical operations: addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division.”
3.
An Embu elder explaining the origins of the Embu to young children: “The Father of the
Embu is called Mwene Ndega. He settled in Embu many generations back. He made his
home in a forest in Embu called Mwene Ndega’s Grove.”
You may appropriately define this kind of communication as the exchange of information and
meanings between persons in a rather detached way. The information is fairly objective—it
causes no emotional disturbances between the communicator and those communicated with.
(I am, of course, very much aware that even supremely objective, practical instruction can
cause deep resentment and bitter feelings: just imagine, an instructor teaching you how to
drive and rudely shouting his instructions to you.)
But on the whole, this kind of communication has been supremely successful in human history.
People have gained immense technical skills through its agency. Massive scientific knowledge
has been transmitted from one generation to the next and from global region to global region.
In education, this kind of communication is the very life blood. Our communication skills course
will have much to say about this kind of communication.
11
What kinds of skills are key requirements in this type of communication? One may mention the
following: clear grasp of the content of information, namely good knowledge of the facts to be
conveyed; good transmission skills, e.g. use of correct and concise language; and good
reception skills, including good background knowledge in which to anchor new information
received, and clear understanding of language used. We are speaking of general knowledge,
intelligence and cognitive abilities (abilities to acquire knowledge). We are not speaking of the
human social skill of empathy—feeling with others.
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3.1.1.2 The Second Conception of Communication: Comminication as the Nurturing of
Understanding through People’s Involvement with Each Other
Smith emphasises the conception of communication as the creation of understanding between
people through people’s involvement with one another, through empathy and mutual
sympathy. When one talks of communication in a marriage between wife and husband or
communication between the parents and their children, one is talking about this kind of
communication.
This kind of communication is supremely important in interpersonal relations both in informal
and formal situations. This kind of communication is a necessity in genuine friendships. But this
kind of communication is also important in interpersonal relations in organisations—between
workmates, between managers and staff under them, and so on. And this kind of
communication is also supremely important between social groups, for example ethnic
communities living in the same nation state, or between different nation states.
This kind of communication faces formidable psychological and cultural barriers. As you
yourself are aware from personal experience, relations between different persons are often
fraught with conflict: conflict is probably part and parcel of the human condition. Even in the
most loving relationships, quarrels do break out between brothers and sisters, parents and
children, husbands and wives. Work places are arenas of conflict. When the Bahutu and
Abatutsi of Rwanda went at each others’ throats in 1994 and 1 million victims were massacred
in genocidal strife, this was simply one extreme example of the type of conflict and breakdown
in communication between different cultural communities. The twentieth century witnessed
such conflicts on a vast scale, including two World Wars which claimed tens of millions of lives.
It also witnessed a polarisation of hatred between the Communist East and capitalist West. At
the beginning of the 21st century an ugly conflict is festering between militant Jihadist Islam and
American assertion of supremacy. Nearer home, Kenya has had its problem with so-called tribal
clashes during which criminals from opposed ethnic communities murder, rape and burn
houses and granaries.
Communication in the second sense is supremely important, but it faces formidable
psychological and cultural barriers, and should also be an area of concern in a course in
Communication Skills.
The kind of skills needed in this second type of communication are quite different from the
skills required in the transmission and acquisition of instruction and knowledge in educational
teaching and learning. The ability to empathise with other people is a quality that needs to be
nurtured in people who wish to communicate: this enables people to understand others’
feelings and emotional needs and concerns. An individual who is self-centred and selfpreoccupied is a poor communicator.
Does the HRD 2101 course teach the social skills for inter-personal and intergroup
understanding/communication? Yes, the component Listening Skills is concerned with nurturing
empathy and helping people eschew prejudice and prejudgment which hinder people from
hearing what is actually said by others. The quality of empathy is also a requirement in face-toface oral communication, telephone conversation and participation in meetings and public
speaking: you must be aware of your audience’s feelings and must speak about things that
concern your audience. And the ‘seven Cs’ qualities of effective business communication are
perceived to include interpersonal communication skills: ‘the seven Cs’ are completeness,
13
conciseness, consideration, concreteness,
(http://www.amazon.com, 6/29/2004)
clearness,
courteousness
and
correctness
3.1.3 Definitions of Communication as Transmission of Messages Using a Common Pool of
Symbols or as Requiring the Mediation of a Channel
The Encyclopaedia Brittanica definition states that communication is “the exchange of
meanings between individuals through a common system of symbols” (p.623). The
Encyclopaedia also quotes a famous definition of communication given by I. A. Richards, a
British scholar of Literature:
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.
The question, therefore, arises: What are symbols? And what does Richards mean by saying
that “mind acts upon its environment”? The question what symbols are will be treated more
fully later in this Lecture. But simply put, a symbol is a sign that carries some meaning higher
than itself. It is an overt object or event that is vested with a higher meaning by a group of
people. It is a sense-perceivable (seen, heard, touchable, tastable and smellable) occurrence
that represents a meaning in the minds of the transmitter and receiver of a message. Words are
symbols and languages are systems of symbols. People speaking the same language share the
same pool of word symbols. Therefore meza means the same as table although the sounds of
the two words are quite different; the Swahili have ‘agreed’ to call the object meza, while the
English have ‘agreed’ to call it table. Similarly, elimu and education mean the same thing—as do
the words upendo and love. Verbal language is symbolic. But there are other types of symbolic
systems used in human communication. For example, body language has symbolic significance:
a nod, a smile, a wink, a shrug of the shoulders, a shake of the fist, a hug, a kiss, a lowering of
the eyes, a wag of the forefinger. … I shall later in this chapter discuss the Key Twelve Symbol
Systems used in all human communication.
So, communication takes place—that is, it is mediated—through symbols. It is rarely a direct
process, mind to mind, like one computer communicating with another computer. I. A. Richards
is also thinking about the mediation of artistic messages. Imagine a singer who has observed
the futility, lonesomeness and sense of loss of a man who lived irresponsibly, failed to raise a
family, and finds himself living in poverty-stricken old age on the streets of Nairobi. This singer
will compose a song telling this story and sing it sadly to the accompaniment of sad
instrumental tunes. The person hearing the song on radio or from a cassette recorder will
‘relive’ this sad experience. The singer has acted on his environment, produced a medium to
express the feelings in his mind, so that another person may be similarly affected. If a young
person went to America and felt lonely and stressed up and wrote a letter to her mother
expressing her feelings which are then shared by her mother, communication has taken place in
the Richards sense.
Richards adds the idea of communication being mediated through media—that song encoded
in words and the sounds of guitar strings and recorded on a cassette, so that the cassette is the
medium to carry the message. The letter written by the stressed student is the medium
carrying the student’s feelings across the seas to the student’s mother.
Therefore communication uses symbols and is mediated through channels.
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The use of symbols and media which have gotten ever more complex and sophisticated
represents the unique developed of human communication, as compared to communication
among animals. Therefore, before we look at the theory which has been developed about the
process of human communication, featuring both the use of symbols and media, it is a good
idea to say something about the revolutionary development of human communication from its
animal rudiments. This will shed important light on the fascinating phenomenon of human
communication.
4.0
Communication as an Animal Attribute; Communication and the Ancestors of Man
Animals at different stages of evolution are known to be capable of some kind of
communication—sending messages to each other which are received and acted upon. The
social insects—for example ants and bees—which have been around on earth for hundreds of
millions of years—are known to communicate in order to maintain societies where specialised
activities are performed by different classes of insects (workers, the queen, etc.) Bees
communicate distance and direction of food from the hive by a symbolic dance which is their
language. But this communication is essentially instinctual and is ‘programmed’ into the
behaviour of these insects—and has probably been happening in the same manner for the last
several hundred million years. This communication does not draw from intelligence.
The communication that takes place among the lower classes of Vertebrates, for example the
‘call’ to mate between a female and male reptile is also instinctual.
Human communication, however, arises from the behaviour of animals in the highest biological
Class on the evolutionary tree: Mammalia, to which Class Man belongs. Mammals are warmblooded animals with a backbone, are viviparous—that is, their offspring develop within their
mother’s bodies—and they have milk-bearing breasts on which they suckle their young. Man
shares all these attributes. Human communication and that of other mammals have great
affinity: they derive from a life shared between individuals living together and dependent one
upon the other as a family, and are facilitated by a larger metal life and the ability to teach and
learn made possible by the larger brains of mammals. Birds, another class of warm-blooded
vertebrates, are also capable of communication behaviour, but, of course , Man is not
descended from the evolutionary line of this Class of animals.
An English writer of great intellect and imagination, H. G. Wells, who wrote during the latter
part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th, explains that the emergence of
communication was a great revolution in animal mental life and took place when Mammals
replaced Reptiles as the lords of the earth. Mammals made their first appearance on earth 200
million years ago—having evolved from land-living reptilian life. 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 [bird]
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.
15
Caring for the young and the requirement of nurture and the establishment of families and
relationships and social life create the necessary environment for communication, including
teaching and learning, for both human beings and other mammals. For mutual survival in an
animal pack or herd or human family or social group, feelings, concerns and fears are shared,
and the sharing of certain meanings enables concerted, cooperative, actions.
Animal communication is mediated through the animal senses and coordinated by the brain.
Young animals use their sense of sight to observe and imitate adult behaviour; animals roar and
voice other warning cries which are heard, using the sense of hearing, understood and heeded.
The other senses—smell, taste, touch—are also used. Human communication similarly uses
these ‘animal’ senses—and a highly sophisticated brain. The organs of communication are the
mouth and the vocal organs, the eyes, the ears, the hands, the nose—and the brain.
Mental capacity or mental development or intelligence enable communication among
mammals and birds. There can be little dispute about mammal intelligence because examples
abound of their capability to be trained by human beings and, indeed, their capability to act out
on messages communicated to them by humans. For ages dogs have been trained to hunt, to
look after sheep and cows, even to ‘sniff out’ drugs at customs counters at airport terminals;
they know the voices of their handlers and obey their simple spoken commands. The horse is
also a most intelligent animal, taking instructions from its handler under the demanding and
stressful conditions of a competitive race. There is a Gikuyu saying that the cow knows its
milker and not the herdsman who takes it to the grazing field: and, indeed, the cow responds to
soothing words from the person who customarily milks her and freely yields her milk; but it’s
also true accustomed herdsmen do communicate with their cattle. Communication between
people and animals, particularly mammals and birds, is a fascinating subject and one can go on
and on … A donkey learns the way home from the stream where its master draws water into a
drum for it to deliver in a cart. And you can train a goose to guard your compound as fiercely
and as loyally as any German Shepherd. And wild elephants have a memory for experiences
undergone many years in the past.
Over a span of 200 million years mammals have grown in mental capacity and intelligence. The
highest Order of Mammals, Primates, made its evolutionary advent about 70 million years ago.
Included among primates are animals like monkeys, lemurs, gibbons, baboons, gorillas,
chimpanzees and Man. These animals have a large brain. The animals with the most highly
developed brain among the primates are the higher apes which include the chimpanzee, the
gorilla and Man.
Among the primates, and especially the apes other than Man, the rudiments of social life are
easily observable—for example with male apes exercising protection over females and young in
the pack. Among the gibbons, you find elementary families—father, mother and offspring.
Baboons maintain groups with as many as 400 individuals. What is more there is mutual care
amongst these groups—with males doing their share of baby minding. Among some primates
some rudimentary “marriages” are recognised in the form of seemingly arranged bonding
between a particular male and several females, at least over a period. This is only possible
because there is 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 has fallen from tree’”!
The story of the evolution of human communication capabilities, which are unique in the
animal world, is the story of the evolution of primates over tens of millions of years, resulting in
16
ever-growing anatomical (body) and mental sophistication and adaptation. The Primates first
appear 70 million years ago. “The Primates differ from other Mammals in their precocious brain
development, improved stereoscopic vision [ability to see things in their three dimensions] and
reduced face size, flat nails in place claws, and opposability of the thumb to the other fingers”.
(Ed. J. Ki-zerbo, Methodology and African Prehistory, UNESCO General History, Nairobi:
Heinemann, 1990, p. 167) By probably 10 million years ago all the currently existing Four
Families of Primates were present in the world. The most ‘primitive’ Family is the
Cercopithecidae, which includes animals like baboons (with their markedly animal-like faces)
and macague monkeys, animals of the trees. But also included in these Families are the
Pongidae Family which includes the higher apes—the gorilla, chimpanzees and the orangutan.
The most sophisticated Family, to which Man belongs, is the Hominidae Family.
Remember the hierarchical biological classification of Living Things, starting with Kingdom,
through Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and ending with Species.
Man belongs to the Kingdom of Animals
Man belongs to the Phylum of Chordata, sub-Phylum Vertebrates
Man belongs to the Class of Mammals
Man belongs to the Order of Primates
Man belongs to the Family of Hominidae
Man belongs to the Homo Genus
Man belongs to the Homo Sapiens Species
With the arrival of the Pongidae Family, the potential to move on hind legs and use the
forelimbs and the hand for grasping had arrived. The chimpanzee, belonging to the Pongidae
Family, and Man’s closest cousin still existing today, ha developed to the second highest mental
level, only one level removed from the mental level of Man. The chimpanzee has attained the
Instrumental Stage, which is to say it is capable of exercising control over things in the external
world: the chimpanzee can think about taking a stick and using it to knock down a banana from
a banana tree. But it cannot design and make a tool to perform work.
4.1
Towards the Use of Symbols in Human Communication and the Development of Human
Culture
Designing tools, making them and using them to perform work would become the prerogative
of the Hominidae Family, cousins to the Pongidae, and would be accompanied over millions of
years, by the development of Primate to Ape to Ape-Man to Man with all Man’s unique toolmaking and communication attributes. Man’s Becoming was not an event; it was a long process
taking millions of years. And the process involved anatomical (body-structure) developments,
including development of cranial capacity to accommodate a larger brain, development of an
upright posture, the ability to walk on two feet and legs while leaving the forelimbs (now arms)
free to perform work, and the acquisition of the dexterity of the hands in designing tools. It also
involved the development of mind and metal capacity, the development of sophisticated
communication, and the development of culture.
The Hominidae ancestors of Man are tool making beings. From as far back as 2.5 million years
ago, stone tools were being made for performing such work as cutting meat or skinning
animals. Culture was therefore developing, where culture is defined as the invention of
material aids to existence in order to make life more secure and more livable, and culture
includes the ability to pass knowledge of these inventions to future generations. Culture
17
involves the ability to use the environment, to manipulate it and shape it to guarantee survival
and security. Somebody has said that culture is man-made environment. The important thing to
remember is that those beings who started the tool making culture were not real People, were
not Homosapiens by species, were probably not even of the Homo genus, but were only linked
to Modern Man at the level of Family—the Hominidae Family. From 2.5 or 2 million years ago
to about 50,000 years ago when Homosapiens (Modern Man) had come into the scene, tools
were being made. Along the way, Ape-Men ancestors of Man now of the Homo genus like Man,
e.g. Homohabilis or Homoerectus took over making tools, probably building societies and
culture and probably giving rise to Modern Man.
And during those years, something unprecedented in the animal world was happening in
mental development: the apex stage of mental development was being approached, and had
been reached maybe 50,000 years ago: the Symbolizing Stage, a qualitatively infinitely higher
stage than the chimpanzee’s Instrumental Stage.
What is symbolizing? Symbolizing is the ability to vest meanings in overt events and objects.
Symbols are overt objects or events which are vested with socially significant meanings. They
are overt (that is they are observable with the senses) representations of higher meaning. The
meaning is not intrinsic in the symbol, that is it does not come out of the symbol, but rather is
ascribed to the symbol according to cultural convention. The best example of symbols are the
words of a language. Words in each language carry meanings for people who belong to that
language-community or culture. It is as if people in that community had agreed that certain
vocal sounds, or words as we call them, would carry those meanings. The words are arbitrary
symbols, such that for different languages completely different word symbols designate the
same object or idea: mmea-plant; table-meza; love-upendo.
And so it was that simultaneously as Hominidae societies evolved, so did the mental capacity to
use symbols. Symbolization revolutionised Hominidae social life, and enabled the emergence of
human societies. Symbolization brought about a revolution in communication when human
speech was achieved probably 50,000 years ago. One can speculate that human speech evolved
from crude vocal expressions of Man’s Hominidae ancestors, something like the cries and
gurgles children make or the grunts made by animals. By 50,000 years ago Man’s vocal
instrument (including the vocal-organs—the tongue, lips vocal cords—which are directed by the
brain) had undergone high “physical and intellectual evolution” (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
Other symbolic means of communication were also evolving. For example, archaeology has
revealed increasing sophistication in stone tools made from around 2.5 million years ago (by
Hominids/Ape Men) right through the New Stone Age which started in 15,000 BC in the human
era). These tools were like communication artifacts, with each generation learning to make
more sophisticated tools by studying the tools made by the previous generation. And of course
there was the use of body language—faces distorted with anger, waving gestures of dismissal,
loving smiles exchanged between mothers and babies or between lovers, postures of
submission adopted by the weak in the presence of the strong, or cowering in fear at the
prospect of attack. And touch and smell would also be used in communication.
From the beginning were evolving the patterns of future human communication which takes
place through all the five senses—hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste—and which is
coordinated, and made meaningful by the brain. That threatening grunt was voiced and heard;
that face contorted with anger was seen; that stone axe was looked at and felt with the
fingers—and the tool maker understood it and improved it.
18
And symbolizing was also having revolutionary significance in the development of society and
the development of culture. The ability to symbolize is the ability to attribute socially significant
meanings to overt actions or objects to achieve greater security and to make life more
meaningful. Human societies and cultures became possible because of this unique capacity to
symbolize. Probably the most significant institution of society is marriage. Symbolizing beings
transformed the act of the bonding of a male and female for purposes of procreation into a
significant social institution: marriage, the founding of the human family and the means of
reproducing society, whose individual members may die, but which had the capacity to exist 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.
The ability to ascribe socially significant meanings to things and events also enabled society to
create institutions of authority. A certain stool could become the symbol of kingly authority,
and the man or woman who sat on it was to be obeyed for purposes of social order and
harmony. A crown worn on the head could also be the symbol of kingly authority—or a staff
wielded by an elder became the symbol of authority assisting the function of holding a village
community together.
And the ability to symbolize created awareness of the existence of a Being higher than human
beings and the authority of this Being. Humankind started to accept Divine authority and to
subscribe to spiritual and moral imperatives. For example, a community of people living near a
Mountain could look at this mountain and ascribe a higher meaning to it, see it as the Dwelling
of God. This also, of course, had social significance because a community of men, women and
children, who believed that their mountain was the home of God were likely to obey God’s
behest to live in harmony and to assist one another.
To quote Encyclopaedia Britannica:
The introjection of symbolizing into primate social life was revolutionary. An ax was no
longer merely a tool with which to chop; it became a symbol of authority. Mating became
marriage. … The world of nature, from the stones beside the path to the stars in their
courses became alive and conscious spirits. ‘And all that I beheld respired with inward
meaning.’—Wordsworth.
Encyclopaedia Britannica gives three propositions which illustrate the essential difference
between Homosapiens 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 father, my mother, my brother, my
sister, my grandmother on my mother’s side, my brother’s wife
(3) Only Man makes rules against incest: socially unacceptable sexual relations between
people with blood relations (son and mother; father and daughter; brother and sister;
first cousins of the opposite sex).
Which is to say Man creates social values and moral values and social prohibitions. All these
become part of the culture of a community of men, women and children. The important thing
to note is that these values are also expressed in the language the community uses and, since a
community lives in perpetuity, they are passed from one generation to the next through
teaching and learning using human speech. The old teach the young, for example about
prohibitions against incest or about the need for the young to respect all women of their
19
mother’s age, or about their God. And the young become adults and teach their children … and
so on through generations.
For this teaching and learning to succeed, all human languages from the earliest times became
replete with words describing acceptable and non-acceptable social behaviour. Such words
ranged from terms expressing the absolute disapproval of behaviour like incest and the murder
of kinsfolk—abomination, taboo—to more mild terms like lazy. Moral-spiritual concepts also
abound in all languages: love-hate, kind-cruel, fear-courage, evil-good, and so forth. The moral
imperatives could not be upheld without the use of a common language, common speech,
which had words whose meanings were shared by people in the language-community. In later
times, these moral imperatives would become written, coded law: Hammurabi of the Old
Babylonian Kingdom wrote the law around 1800 BC to ensure that “the strong might not
oppress the weak”. Human speech is a necessary condition for social regulation and control—
and the acquisition of speech opened up vast possibilities for the cultural, social, moral and
spiritual development of Humankind.
While each human language “reflects in subtle ways those matters of greatest relevance and
importance to the value system of each particular culture”, each language also evolves to
powerfully reflect the material world, environment and material culture of a particular
community. For example people have names of most of the plants and animals found in their
area. In another telling example, the Eskimo people who highly value the whale as a source of
livelihood have different names for whale blubber (fat) in its various states: on the whale, ready
to eat, raw, cooked, rancid. Kenyan peoples, for example the Agikuyu, who extensively used
calabash products for domestic purposes, had different names for the following categories of
gourd products: the big giant gourd which they used to brew sugar-cane and honey beer, or to
store fermented millet uji; the big half gourd used for keeping large servings of food; the
medium-sized half gourd used in scooping servings of food from the black-black clay cooking
pot; the tiny baby gourd in which tobacco snuff was stored, and which slung around an elder’s
neck. The Maasai have many different words for milk in its different states.
Human speech and human language is, therefore, at the heart of human culture, is part and
parcel of human culture, is inseparable from human culture. The development of human
speech about 50,000 years ago facilitated the development of human cultural communities. To
elaborate on the definition of culture: “Culture is the whole way of life of a community and
comprises the material inventions made by human beings in order to make optimum use of
their natural environment, nd it also includes all their social, moral and spiritual values,
beliefs and institutions and whole process of teaching and learning about these inventions,
values and beliefs.” Culture is transmitted from one generation to the next, ensuring that a
culture-community lives in perpetuity, although individual members die. “Culture is stronger
than death. Culture triumphs over death and offers Man eternal life.” (Encyclopaedia
Britannica) For the larger part of human history culture-communities existed appropriately
named by the language they used—the Swahili, the Agikuyu, the Luo, the English, the Germans,
the Russians. The knowledge of inventions and the values and beliefs of each culture
community was taught from each generation to the next through speech, using the language
shared by, common to, the culture-community.
I want to quote an Australian professor of biology, L. C. Birch who gives a brilliant summary of
the significance of the interplay between Human capacity to symbolize, the use of speech and
the development of human culture, enabling great all-round advancement of humankind:
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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 mater 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 blue prints,
research results, moral systems—all of which are learned and have their basis on
conceptual thought.
(L. C. Birch, “Evolution and the Mind of Man”, in L. C. Birch and others, Brain
Mechanisms and the Control of Behaviour, London: Heinemann Educational Books,
1974)
The capacity for Symbolization enabled the acquisition of speech and the emergence of human
culture-communities, which shared the same material inventions made in response to a shared
environment; people in these communities also shared similar social values and moral and
spiritual values and beliefs. Knowledge and skills of doing things and making inventions were
passed from generation to generation through speech and the Oral Tradition (stories stored in
the memories of people belonging to the same culture community and repeatedly told from
one generation to the next). Similarly, values and beliefs were passed from generation to
generation and served the purpose of holding the community together and giving it an identity:
you must respect all women of your mother’s age the same way you respect your mother; you
must treat all blood relations and kinsfolk as your brothers and must help them when in need;
the mugumo tree is the habitation of God.
Some human communities made key advances which laid the foundation of general human
advance. For example, people living in Mesopotamia and Egypt invented agriculture—the
domestication of food crops and livestock—more than 10,000 years ago, bringing about the
Agricultural Revolution. Probably the key historical event ensuring monumental increase of
human populations and the emergence of Humankind as the Masters of the Earth. This
knowledge was passed from generation to generation, agricultural skills, including skilful use of
irrigation techniques, were improved and food surpluses were achieved. Human civilization
dawned. For civilization is simply the state of living in cities and towns where people practise
occupational and professional specialisation. This becomes possible when a small group of the
population can be relied on to produce surplus food to support everybody including
themselves. Freed from the need to produce their own food, different groups of the society can
devote themselves to such occupations as administration, becoming house builders, cloth
makers and iron workers. Division of labour and occupational specialisation are the mark of
21
civilization. Writing was invented and gradually improved and perfected during this phase of
specialisation by a class of specialists—the scribes. Knowledge of doing things and social rules
were recorded and passed from generation to generation. Knowledge increased and civilization
was enhanced.
Advanced scientific and mathematical knowledge recorded in books has become part of
modern cultures. A child, born like a blank slate—or rather like a blank computer hard disk,
since he or she has great potential for learning, assimilating and accommodating knowledge—
goes through the school system—a kind of acculturation—and acquires an enormous load of
knowledge that has accumulated over the millenia—from knowledge of the Archimedes
Principle, through a knowledge of Newton’s Physics to knowledge of the Law of Relativity
enunciated by Albert Einstein.
That is the power and the importance of Communication, especially through the agency of
human language and speech.
4.2
The Development of Human Communication from 50,000 Years Ago to Today
Marshall McLuhan, a scholar of communication, has suggested that the development of human
civilization has gone through the following phases: Primitive Society, Scribal Society, Printdominated Society and Nuclear Society. Some of these phases he has defined by a dominant
method of human communication—the Scribal Society being characterised by communication
using hand-written documents, a period lasting between around 3,000 BC and AD 1440, and
the Print-dominated Society being characterised by communication materials produced by the
first technology of mass media, the printing press, that gave the world mass printed books and
newspapers from AD 1440.
McLuhan also, of course, identifies the major modes of communication during the other
phases: human speech being predominant during the historical course of Primitive Society, and
electric/electronic-based communication being predominant during the Nuclear Age (age of
nuclear power).
Although every classification includes an element of simplification, McLuhan’s divisions of hman
history into four major phases, or periods, or eras of human communication is very useful, and
assists the student of communication to clearly see major areas of concern in understanding
the process of communication today and developing skills to deal with today’s communication
challenges. The following are the four Phases:
1. The Oral Phase (50,000 years ago to about 3000 BC in Egypt and Sumeria,
Mesopotamia, when the first writing systems were invented).
2. The Scribal Phase (from 3000 BC when the earliest writing systems were invented to
AD 1440 when printing using movable type was invented by Gutenberg in Germany).
3. The Print Dominated Phase (from AD 1440 to say 1950 when mass media produced by
the printing press—books, newspapers, journals—dominated the educational sector
and the knowledge/information industry).
4. The Electronic Era (from around AD 1950 to the present during which radio, TV,
telecommunications and the Internet have become predominant).
A reasonably detailed discussion of these Phase and the achievements in human mental,
educational, social and material (technological) development facilitated by these
communication breakthroughs is contained in my write-up entitled Lecture no. 3:
22
“Communication in Human History: A Brief Survey”. Also of particular relevance to students of
science and engineering is my treatment of the topic: Communication and the Scientific
Revolution. I have reread this write-up, and I am convinced it is well written. The curious
student would want to read it to get a broad picture of the development of human
communication.
All the methods of communication that have evolved over the last 50,000 years of human
existence are in use today and each of us has to make choices every day of the most
appropriate methods for different contexts and different audiences. Will you call your friend for
a drink to talk over your planned wedding using one of the oldest means of human
communication (speech), or will you write an e-mil or a short-message-text (using the latest
electronic and telecommunication technology)?
Speech and writing or text remain key means in human interpersonal interaction, teaching and
learning, and the transmission and receiving of knowledge and information. Great
technological; breakthroughs of the last part of the twentieth century have harnesses these
millenia-old means of communication. This speech is used in interpersonal communication
assisted by sophisticated telecommunication networks—through conventional telephone and
cell phone; thus radio facilitates mass communication using speech and other audio effects;
thus the Internet uses text in sending email and facilitating the posting of masses of
information on websites. The key position of speech cannot be doubted, since oral, word-ofmouth, communication and written systems are all verbal systems, relying on human speech
and language.
Human capacity for speech is a great miracle in human evolution. Probably human speech
defines Man or Humankind more accurately than the capacity to make tools: remember that
tool-making predates Man by not less than 2 million years!
Consider the following amazing factors about human speech and language:
1. “Man’s vocal instrument can express the most basic instinctual demands as well as a range
of highly intellectual processes, including the possible mastery of numerous complex languages,
each with an enormous vocabulary.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Talented people are able to
imitate the sounds of nature including the sounds made by wild animals and are able to
communicate with wild animals.
2. Human language can express the most basic emotions, can describe practical or technical
ways of doing things—e.g. how to overhaul an engine and can express the most abstract of
ideas in scientific, mathematical or philosophical thought. To name but a few, there is the
language of poetry, the language of science, and the language of religion. All the specialisms of
human knowledge have their own diction and vocabulary.
3. Although each human language “reflects in subtle ways those matters of greatest relevance
and importance to the value system of each particular culture”, “any known language may be
employed without major modification to say almost anything that may be said in any other
language” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The best example is the translation of the books of the
Bible, originally written in Ancient Hebrew and Greek, into virtually all languages of the world—
such that the Bible is able to speak to people of all those language-cultures. Works of Classical
Greek literature have been translated into modern European languages. And virtually all
important scientific theories and knowledge developed in Europe since the 17th century and
written down in Italian, English, French and German are available to the Japanese and Chinese
23
through their native languages. Which is to say that since all human languages can dialogue
with each other, we can think of human speech as a universal channel of communication—that
is, belonging to all humanity.
4. Another amazing thing is that all languages are complex systems and it is erroneous to think
of “primitive” and “advanced” languages. Each language is adequate to meet the
communication needs of each cultural-community,, and if the need arises it can express the
most advanced technological concepts by making necessary adaptations (e.g. borrowing words
and indeed indegenising them).
24
4.3
The Need to Understand the ICT Age—But to Also See It in Perspective
We are living in the Information and Communication Technology Age, and no student can
escape the need to understand and indeed to apply ICT in their studies, their personal life and
their working life. But in my view, it is also important to see it in perspective, to appreciate that
however important it is assumed to be, it is a fairly recent phenomenon.
So what is IT? According to Evans (1991: 77) the term Information Technology was first widely
used to describe the “equipment and systems which were being introduced in both private and
public sectors to create, store and distribute information”.
Evans suggests that there are 5 phases of the IT system: (1) Input; (2) Processing; (3) Storage;
(4) Output; (5) Feedback. For example a letter is typed into a computer (input); the letter is
then edited and formatted on the screen of the computer (processing); the letter is then
printed on the computer printer (output); the letter is stored as soft copy on the computer
hardware (storage). It is also possible to process an e-mail reply to an e-mail message
(feedback); feedback can also be in the form of a pay slip for an employee, generated after you
type in information of new wages or allowances, an deductions of debts incurred.
IT developed essentially to meet the needs of the office in different types of organisations
(businesses like companies which manufacture goods or sell products or services). IT served the
purpose of information management to enable the organisation to achieve its objectives—e.g.
to reach its customers with marketing information, or for purposes of invoicing. It is important
to note that technology—mechanized, electrical or electronic means of carrying out work—
were not always available to the office, and Evans gives the following outline of the Evolution of
IT Communication Systems in the Office:
1870s – 1970s: Office communication heavily relied on the stand-alone type writer: this
typewriter was ‘the office work-horse’. The typewriter in the early period is
manual/mechanical. Then it gets electrically-powered, then electronic,
finally electronic-with-memory.
1970s – 1980s: Stand-alone word processing Personal Computer is introduced: could only
perform word-processing tasks using built-in software.
1980s – 1990s: ‘Connectivity’ or ‘convergence’ evolved: local Area Networks (LANs) and
Wide Area Networks (WANs) interlink computers, printers, fax, telex,
viewdata, copiers etc.
1990s – on:
Open Systems Connection introduced internationally. Protocols
(regulations ensuring compliance) are developed to enable computers of
different manufacture, using different operating systems to communicate
with each other.
What this outline says is simple: IT is not 40 years old! By 1970 human beings had made great
advances in all fields: science and technology, mass education, economic development and
wealth generation through manufacture and advanced forms of agriculture. Some people hold
IT in awe—but we should see our past in realistic perspective. There are young people who
seem to think computers and Cyber Cafes have always been there; this is pathetic lack of
imagination.
And so, even if the invention of printing had been made in 1440 revolutionising mass
communication and getting millions of copies of books and newspapers printed over the
centuries, for centuries, the handwritten letter remained the major means of textual office
25
communication and interpersonal communication until the invention of the manual typewriter,
which could only make copies using carbon paper. Before the typewriter, you had scriveners
working in lawyers’ offices and writing or copying legal documents by practised hand. The era
of the hand written letter, the typewriter and the stand-alone letter-processor is also an era of
manual storage of documents—using spring files and box files. These information storage
systems are still used to this day.
IT has simplified beyond imagination information inputting, processing, storage and outputting
functions in the office. For example, instead of typing letters manually and repeatedly retyping
them to make corrections (or using erasers and white-out and retyping wrongly spelt out words
or lines), one may now type one’s letter, correct it on computer screen and format it and only
print it when it has been ‘perfected’. Thousands of documents may be saved on the computer
memory—and you don’t have to clutter office space with dusty files containing tonnes of paper
work. Evans (1990: 79) suggests: ‘Every student of business and communication needs to
become fully expert in IT and to grasp the fundamental changes that are being wrought in
organisations in the areas of information management and processing, job roles, organisational
cultures, management techniques, communication practices and industrial relations.”
The ICT systems being used today are coordinated by computers in their different forms—
super, mainframe, minicomputer and macrocomputer, e.g. PC. Sophisticated connectivity is the
essential feature of IT. Connectivity is the “ability to connect devices by telecommunications
lines to other devices and sources of information” (Stacey Sawyer, A Practical Introduction to
Computers and Communication, 3rd Edition, McGraw. Hill, 1999). Connectivity is ensured by
telecommunications lines (telephone lines), fibre optic cables, radio communication (or wireless
communication), communication satellites, radio and television, transmitting stations,
telephone switchboards and telephone handsets—and, of course computers and computer
systems.
“Today, fibre-optic telephone-line technology has made possible the introduction of the
Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) which carries thousands of telephone conversations
simultaneously along a single, slim cable, and also digitized computer data at high speed.”
(Evans 1990: 91)
The effect of all this is that people can transmit and receive mutli-media information—including
text, graphics, video pictures, music and voice. Such information is received at computer
terminals on the computer screen or on video screens.
5.0
The Theory of Communication: Understanding the Elements, Processes, Purposes,
Qualities and Barriers in Communication, for Purposes of Making Appropriate Choices in
Practical Situations
To quote Encyclopaedia Britannica, Marcropaedia Vol. 16, 1997, “until modern times, the topic
[communication] was usually subsumed under other disciplines and taken for granted as a
natural process inherent to each [discipline]”. But of course the Classical Greek were concerned
with communication, although they did not so name it: Socrates’, Plato’s and Aristotle’s
concerns and preoccupations with logic and good argument in philosophical discourse were
concerns with clarity of communication using human speech and language.
The American psychiatrist Juergen Ruesch in the early part of the 20th century identified 40
different disciplinary approaches to the study of communication, including architectural,
26
anthropological and political. Architectural communication is concerned with the way
architects communicate both among themselves and with professional counterparts like civil
engineers and construction managers and builders using conventional architectural designs and
drawings. Architects also communicate with ordinary people by achieving deliberately planned
effects in finished buildings and structures: these buildings evoke certain feelings in people like
warmth or grandeur; the Don Bosco Church in the Upper Hill area of Nairobi probably evokes
feelings of communion in congregations that worship in it.
As students of Architecture will tell other students, they study a unit called Architectural
Communication.
People in different disciplines or areas of study communicate differently and face different
communication challenges. Mathematicians rely on numbers, mathematical symbols (+, ,
etc), shapes on a plane and graphic representations to communicate. People studying fiction,
poetry and drama are interested in the use of words, e.g. figurative use of words, to evoke
certain feelings and emotions. People in the performing arts (theatre, film actors etc) are
interested in the effective use of the human voice (appropriate volume, variation of tone, clear
pronunciation of words) and the effective use of body language (eye-contact and facial
expression, gestures, postures of submission or defiance). A fine artist is concerned with
drawing two dimensional shapes, lines, use of colours and shades of colours—and is always
trying to decide which medium (canvas? Wood surface?) to use.
On the basis of the concerns of different disciplines Juergen Ruesch suggested that there are at
least 50 different ways of looking at and analysing communication. Ruesch’s insight is of course
very relevant. Every specialism has its own language (‘jargon’). For example it is difficult or
impossible for a lay person to understand the specialised medical terms used by medical
practitioners, or the language of computer scientists. An engineer may find it difficult to
understand many terms used by economists.
It would be an impossibility to write a textbook that would enable the ordinary person to
understand the languages of all the specialised areas. But it probably would be possible to
teach all specialists to use such a language as would be understood by ordinary people, and
would therefore also allow people from different specialised areas to speak and dialogue with
one another. Think, for example, about the specialised technical encyclopaedias in JKUAT’s
library, ground floor. A person trained in the humanities simply cannot comprehend the
contents of these books. In telling contrast, general encyclopaedias like Encyclopaedia
Britannica treat all manner of subjects—including scientific and engineering topics—and
ordinary people with a general education are able to understand reasonably well complicated
technological matters.
Our concern here is with understanding the principles and processes of communication for
purposes of being able to make correct choices of methods of effective communication for
different purposes, different situations, and different audiences.
5.1
Development of the Theory of Communication: The Linear Model of Communication Tries
to Explain the Process of Communication
The earliest theorists of communication sought to explain the phenomena of radio and
telephone communication. But the question was early posed by a political scientist, Harold D.
Lasswell. Lasswell stated that the communication theorist’s task is to answer the question:
“Who says what to whom with what effect?”
27
Lasswell was, therefore seeking to identify four elements (components) in the process of
communication. These elements would in due course receive labels as follows:
Who says what?
What is said? :
To whom?
:
What effect? :
:
Sender of the message
the Message
the Receiver
Feedback or Response
The American communication theorists Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver were interested
in how an electric signal was transmitted along a telephone wire or by radio waves and what
happens to it during transmission. they constructed a Linear Model—that is a graphic
representation of how the components in the communication process relate to each other. The
Shannon-Weaver model (according to Encyclopaedia Britannica) looks like this:
Fig. 1: The Shannon-Weaver Linear Model of the Process of Communication
1. MESSAGE 2. AN ENCODER
SOURCE
(ENCODING)
3. MESSAGE 4. CHANNEL
5. DECODER
6. RECEIVER
OR
(DECODING)
TRANSMISSION
NOISE
The label Message source and Sender are used interchangeably. By Noise Shannon and Weaver
were referring to atmospheric static or atmospheric interference with the clear sending and
receiving of radio or telephone signals. (Noise is today regarded as any distortion or
interference with the clear sending and receiving of a message.)
The six components in the Shannon-Weaver model are easily illustrated if we imagine a
message being sent over a telephone wire. In such a situation the message source or sender
would be the man speaking on the telephone. The encoder would be the mouthpiece of the
telephone which transforms the words and voice of the speaker into electrical signals; encoding
is the process of transforming speech-message into electrical signals that can be carried along
the telephone wire. The message is the information being passed. The channel of transmission
is the telephone line or network that carries the signals to the earpiece of the telephone at the
other end. The decoder is the earpiece of the telephone, enabling the translation of the
electrical signals back to voice and words, and decoding involves both the process of translating
signals back to voice and words and also the process of translating the words into meaning. And
the receiver is the person being spoken to.
From the earliest attempts at modelling one can generate a simple 5-components model,
incorporating the five probably most essential components, and including Feedback—meaning
the receiver’s response to the sender’s message, an essential component for the cycle of
communication to be completed.
SENDER
MESSAGE
CHANNEL OF
TRANSMISSION
RECEIVER
FEEDBACK
28
According to Stanton (2004: 1) the process of communication looks like this:
Z
Z
Sender or
Source
Z
Encoding:
Message creation
Channel or
Medium
Z
Z
Decoding
Z
Receiver
Z
Feedback
Z = Noise or interference
Stanton is acutely aware of the problem of noise or interference with the clear conception,
sending and receiving of messages. “Human communication is fraught with problems and
difficulties.” (Stanton, 2004: 1) These problems and difficulties are called barriers to
communication.
According to these linear models, the process of communication takes place as follows. The
sender conceives a message that he wants to impart or transmit or share with the potential
receiver. He then encodes this message into appropriate symbols or signals for the selected
channel of transmission, sends the message which is received by the receiver. The receiver
translates the signals into meanings and sends back a reply. After the reply is received, the cycle
of communication is completed: for transmission has taken place, receiving has followed and
understanding has been realised. Of course many times interferences at any stage of the
communication process may result in failure to understand or failure to provide appropriate
feedback.
Just to give a simple example, John studies at the Alliance High School. Just before school closes
for the second term holidays, he decides to call his father who lives in Nairobi to request him to
collect him from school on the closing day. He has conceived his message. He decides to
telephone his father: his message is encoded in words or speech and as electrical signals. The
channel of transmission are telephone wires or radio waves. The father receives the radio
waves which are decoded into John’s voice and John’s words, translates these into meaning
and sends back the message that he’ll collect his son from school on closing day. The cycle of
communication is complete.
Lately, scholars of communication have felt linear models are probably not very appropriate for
describing the communication process, and have created cyclical models. At the back of this
lecture we reproduce Evan’s cyclical model of the process of communication, with Evan’s
explanations of what takes place at each stage including possible barriers to effective
communication (Evans 1990: 26).
Donald Smith (1992:17) comes up with the following cyclical model of the process of
communication.
29
PURPOSE
CHANGE
COMMUNICATOR
COMPREHENSION
SIGNALS
MEDIA
AUDIENCE
According to this model, the Communicator (sender or source of message) conceives a purpose
of communication with some audience (receiver or receivers). He puts his message, which will
help him achieve his purpose into symbols or signal through some medium (a letter or a
poster, etc). the audience receives the signals, translates them into meaning. This
understanding brings about some change; e.g. the audience may be persuaded to take some
life-transforming actions.
5.1.1 The Components or Elements of the Process of Communication
The terms components or elements refer to factors that comprise the whole process of
communication involving conception of message, its transmission and its receiving. From the
models already looked at, the following are components or elements in the process of
communication: sender, encoding, message, channel of transmission, decoding, receiver and
feedback. You may also include different terminology and factors: communicator, purpose,
audience, comprehension and change. Let us now say more about each component.
The sender is the person who conceives and formulates the message in his brain in order to
achieve some purpose or need. A teacher has the purpose of imparting new information to
some audience, and is a sender of a message. A shopper is a sender of a message when he asks
for some product from the shopkeeper.
Encoding may, in the context of the example given above, be seen as the process of converting
the sender’s thoughts into words; it may also be seen as the process of the microphone of the
telephone converting the words of the speaker into electrical impulses or –in a digital system—
into binary code for transmission. but in general, encoding is best defined as the process of
converting the message into symbols or signals which are appropriate for transmission through
the chosen channel. You can encode a message, for example, as verbal: spoken words or oral
symbols signals; as verbal written words (text); as images (still pictures, or ‘moving’, video
pictures); as sound; as body language, e.g. a smile or a nod or a shaking of the fist. Smith
suggests that there are Twelve Signal Systems used in human communication. All these
systems are used in coding messages. These Twelve Systems are discussed later in this writeup.
30
In our earlier discussion of the definition of communication we have explained what messages
consist of: ideas, information, thoughts, including memories, opinions, perceptions, images,
emotions, facts, beliefs and raw data. The message is the content conveyed and the message is
properly received when the receiver understands that content.
Channels of transmission are the means used to convey the message from the sender to the
receiver. You may therefore correctly speak of a face-to-face channel used in interpersonal
conversations, in face- to-face exchanges in the context of committee meetings and interviews.
The following means of transmission are channels:












letters;
telephone conversations;
e-mails;
posters;
brochures;
billboards;
video conferences, whereby people inter-connected through the Internet or Local Area
Networks (LANs) or Wide Area Networks (WANs) hold discussions while being able to
see each others’ faces on video screens;
teleconferences;
radio;
television;
newspapers;
the Internet.
Decoding may be seen as the conversion of electrical impulses or signals or binary code back
into words or pictures or sound. But the broader definition of decoding is translating signals or
symbols into meaning which can be perceived by the mind of the receiver of the message,
hence yielding understanding.
The receiver or the audience (many receivers) understand the meaning and may provide
feedback or response. When a person receives an e-mail message, understands it and types
back the reply, feedback has been provided and the cycle of communication has been
successfully completed.
5.1.2 Models Simplify a Highly Complex Psychological Process: Smith’s Explanation of the
Communication Process
Models may appear to simplify a highly complex process—making it appear that
communication is achieved as a matter of course, while the truth is that there are many
communication failures. For a student of communication skills it is important to be aware of
these complexities which characterise the whole communication process, including
transmissions and receiving of messages.
We will appreciate the complexity of this process by remembering that communication is
essentially a psychological process, that is also highly influenced by past experience, past
training and skills acquired and present attitudes and needs. When signals carrying a higher
meaning are transmitted, they “are received by the five senses: hearing, sight, touch, taste, and
smell” (Smith 1992: 51). The individual person then tries to develop meaning and perceive it in
their mind, and to do this, the receiver must draw on his familiarity with the type of signals
31
used and knowledge of how to interpret the meaning of these signals as well as other past
experiences and present needs. “Meaning is internal and individual”> (Proposition 3, Smith,
1992: 50) Let us simply explain this: let us say that a message is passed using the words of a
language and, of course, using the accepted structures of that language, and the receiver draws
on his familiarity with the particular language, the words used, the structure of the sentences,,
in order to understand. If certain things are spoken about, the receiver uses his past experience
to understand what is said: if, for example, one spike of an exotic animal, say a cougar of the
large-cat family, a Kenyan person will call up a picture of a leopard which he already knows
about. The receiver’s present needs will come to bear on the receiver’s understanding of the
message.
If the president is about to announce improved prices for milk, dairy farmers are more likely to
receive that message more positively than town-dwelling civil servants.
Let us elaborate little. Books are written to transmit information. For people to read these
books and understand the information, they will need to have learned grammar (the rules of
constructing sentences of the language used), the vocabulary and idioms of the language and
he rules of punctuation and spelling. An untrained person will not be able to understand a line
graph showing population increase trends. To give a different kind of example, the Ibo people
of Nigeria in the past used the ekwe drum to communicate the death of prominent elders.
People were able to understand the meaning of the drum beat because “one of the things
every man learned was the language of the hollowed out instrument” (Achebe, Things Fall
Apart, p. 84). If you were a stranger unschooled in the Ibo culture you would not have
understood the meaning even if you received the audio signals.
The important point we are making is that human communication relies on culturally based
knowledge and acquired skills.
Communication experts have therefore tried to explain the complexity of human
communication by explaining the process of communication using other terms than those that
apply to the linear model of communication. Smith explains how meaning is developed (Smith,
1992: 51-55) and uses the following important concepts which provide insight into both the
external and internal (psychological/mental) manifestations of the communication process: (1)
Signal, (2) Referent, (3) Experience, (4) Needs, (5) Environment, (6) Mental Model, (7)
Thought, (8) Response. He also deals with the concepts of the External (Visible) aspects of the
communication process and the Internal (Invisible) aspects. He produces diagrams to illustrate
the communication process, and these diagrams appear at the end of these Lecture Notes.
I wish to explain this process using my own words as I understand Smith’s explanation, while
also extending Smith’s concepts to apply to the sender of the message (for Smith is mainly
interested in the development of meaning in the audience’s mind).
The communicator who wants to transmit an idea to another person is a complex person, living
in an external world and environment which is continuously impacting on his sensory and
mental experiences. His internal/invisible world is a mind carrying memories and many sensory
experiences and metal impressions and attitudes and needs. The communicator feels the need
to transmit a message to another person or persons about a certain object, or event or idea and
this is the referent.
The thought that is generated by this referent is obviously shared by the communicator’s
mental perceptions of his experiences of the external world. The communicator will therefore
32
create appropriate signals in order to transmit the thought about the referent to the receiver’s
mind.
Let us give an illustration to make this less complicated. The communicator wants to narrate his
experience as of a matatu journey from Nakuru to Nairobi. This story (thought) will be coloured
by the communicator’s experiences with matatus (whether or not he likes the behaviour of the
conductors and drivers, whether he enjoys or loathes the music played over matatu
loudspeakers, etc). The communicator will select word signals to convey his experience. The
environment, an important factor in communication, is the broader context in which
communication is taking place; it shapes meanings both in the minds of the communicator and
the receiver. For example, to extend our example, you may imagine two lovers who have
travelled by matatu for a holiday, or a chat over matatu travel by matatu operators/owners.
Such communicators would be operating from an environment different from a passenger who
simply loathes matatus.
When the signal is transmitted by the communicator—that is when the narrative is told, the
receiver on his part will first develop a mental model. To quote Smith, “the mental model is like
an interpreter, taking unknown signals and ‘translating’ them, giving the signals significance for
the receiver. Significance is given to the signals so that they agree, ‘make sense’, with the
model that seems most appropriate at the moment.” (Smith, 1992: 53) the mental model of the
object, vent or idea (referent) that has been signaled by the communicator is now shaped by
the Experience, Needs and Environment of the receiver, and it coalesces into Thought, or
meaning that is finally perceived by the receiver. The receiver’s thought may be more or less
similar to the communicator’s thought. The closer it is the more successful the communication.
The less close the receiver’s thought is to the communicator’s, the less successful the
communication since meaning has not been well shared. If the receiver’s thought and the
communicator’s thought bear no resemblance, communication has failed. This happens many
times. The receiver will send feedback through his own signals based on the thought (meaning)
he has perceived.
Needless to say, Smith’s explanation of the communication process is far superior to the
oversimplified picture given by old linear models. And Smith’s factors (Referent, Thought,
Experience, Needs, Environment and Mental Model) should all be seen as important
components and elements of communication.
Figure 1.6, attached to this Lecture, is a diagram which attempts to capture the process of
communication the way Smith presents it. It is made up of two circles which intersect and have
a shared zone. One circle represents the communicator and both his external and internal
worlds—that is, the external environment in which he lives, including the people he interacts
with and the inanimate world he interacts with, all these providing past and continuing
experiences impacting on his sensory and mental experiences. The second circle represents the
receiver and both his external and internal worlds comprising similar experiences. As people
trying to communicate or to share meanings, the communicator and the receiver share a
common external environment—hence the shared zone in the two circles.
5.1.3 Other Important Concepts Relating to Components of Communication
1. Noise or entropy. Noise or entropy are any interferences with the clear conception,
transmission or receiving of messages, or any distortions affecting clear conception, sending or
receiving of messages. External noise is interference coming from the external environment,
33
for example atmospheric audio or visual static that may interfere with the sending of telephone
or radio voice messages or Television video pictures. Conditions of physical discomfort, e.g. a
stuffy room, constitute noise if they interfere with a class’s receiving of information in a
learning situation. Internal noise are all those factors to do with psychological and mental
states of communicators and receivers. If the hostility of the speaker is obvious to the listener
there is internal noise that may hinder effective communication. If a listener does not
understand words used by the speaker, there is internal noise. The terms noise and entropy are
used interchangeably.
2. Redundancy is the repetition of elements within a message to prevent failure in
communication. In teaching such repetition is common: the teacher repeats key points to
ensure understanding of topics. Advertising messages are highly redundant, with advertisers
repeating the same advertisement many times a day over the radio or TV and several times a
week in the newspapers. The idea behind this is that if persuasive messages are repeated over
and over again they are imprinted on the minds of receivers—critics would say in a process
similar to ‘brain washing’—and the public’s buying habits are shaped as intended. According to
Encyclopaedia Britannica, redundancy is an “indispensable element for effective
communication”. Some literary genres like poetry (and Christian hymns are poetry) are
repetitive and this makes them rather effective. But very high levels of redundancy may
negatively affect the message, by making people ignore it or take it for granted.
3. Negative entropy, unlike entropy or noise, is a good thing. Negative entropy may occur
when incomplete or blurred or half accurate messages are received in the correct intended
form because the receiver is able to fill in missing details or to recognise the error. When Jomo
Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology students were demonstrating outside their
gate against Thika Road matatu operators, a TV crew took pictures. When the media house was
reporting, the mistake was made when it was stated that students of Kenyatta University had
demonstrated. By an act of negative redundancy, the TV viewer could tell the demonstrators
were JKUAT students because the footage clearly showed the sign board reading JKUAT.
The following is a useful axiom: “Entropy distorts, negative entropy and redundancy clarify.”
5.1.4 The Great Variety in the Communication Process: The Twelve Signal or Symbol
Systems Used in Human Communication
The Encyclopaedia Britannica states that by the end of the 20 th century the “study of the
dynamics of verbal (and perhaps extrasensory) communication” was one of the main
preoccupations of communication studies. Note this: when one speaks of the process of
communication, one is talking about the interaction of the components and elements of
communication in transmitting messages, receiving them and developing understanding.
Attempts at explaining this process are made through linear and cyclical models (like the ones
which have already been explained) and by Smith’s admirable explanation. But when
Encyclopaedia Britannica speaks of dynamics it suggests the variety of ways in which human
communication takes place. All these ways have something in common—they share the same
factors, namely conception of message to be conveyed, translation of thought into symbols or
signals, transmission of those signals to the receiver, and translation of those signals into
meaning. Therefore it is meaningful to talk about one communication process. However, the
variety of ways in which the communication process takes place is captured by the great variety
of symbol or signal systems that may be used—and the corresponding variety of transmission
34
channels that may be chosen. T therefore want to do two things in this section: one, outline, as
per Smith the major signal/symbol systems; and two, categorize the different systems into
Verbal, Non-Verbal, Visual, Non-Verbal and Non-Visual.
5.1.4.1 The Twelve Signal Systems
In many discussions of things (objects and events) which represent higher meaning, scholars
have made distinctions between signs, signals, symbols, icons, etc., making the discussion
rather complex. Smith refreshingly focuses on symbols or signals as overt representations of
higher meaning in the communication process. What are signals, according to Smith?
Signals are the raw materials of communication, to be refined into billions of differing
patterns, each capable of conveying ideas. These signals are an integral part of being alive,
essential to expressing and shaping culture. Mutually understood signals are the fabric of
culture, indistinguishable from culture itself. (Smith 1992: 18)
An earlier section has stated these ideas in different words. For example, spoken words are
symbols and each human language is a system of symbols. A language is inseparably part of the
culture of each language-community. Human speech is capable of generating billions of
different messages and meanings. Human society cannot exist without communication using
human speech and generally use of human speech is part of being alive.
In one of 23 major Propositions which Smith makes about communication in his book,
Proposition number 11 states: All human communication occurs through the use of Twelve
Signal Systems. He lists and discusses the following Signal Systems.
1. Verbal, oral, speech signal system. “The most commonly recognised signal system is, of
course, speaking—the verbal system.” (Smith, 1992: 146) Words are the raw materials in
language systems that are highly organized grammatically. Smith suggests there are probably
five thousand different languages in the world, together, of course, with dialectical
modifications in each language.
Human speech is used in a great variety of contexts. In interpersonal communication, people
hold face-to-face conversations, or they may use the telephone to talk to each other. In
teaching and learning contexts, human speech was used to teach material culture (ways of
doing things like growing food or making metal tools) as well as social values to the younger
generation using oral teaching as well as the Oral Tradition (stories told from one generation to
the next). Today students learn from oral presentations during lectures, field and laboratory
demonstrations and they discuss topics in seminar sessions. In organisational communication
instructions may be given orally, oral reports are given at committee meetings, where also oral
discussions are held, and many types of interviews are carried out through speech.
Again, the development of media of communication and electronic technology have harnessed
the use of human speech to ensure communication over vast distances (virtually across the
globe) as well as to reach mass audiences, indeed billions of people over the globe.
Telecommunication networks ensure global reach of speech communication by use of the
telephone, the radio, television and the Internet. The key role of human speech has not
diminished over the last 50,000 years—that is since Man became Man when he developed
speech.
2. Written or Textual Signal System. “The written system grows out of the verbal, so that
people can send information without the restrictions of time and space.” (Smith, 1992: 146)
35
There are two major systems of writing in the world: the phonic system represents the sounds
of human speech, e.g. our Greco-Latin alphabetical system; the ideographic system represents
ideas of things, e.g. Chinese characters; in an English dictionary the ideogram (ideograph ) (!)
may be used to denote the idea that a word is prohibited (taboo) in polite speech.
The written system includes all textual representations of meaning: hand-written, typed text
using computer printers and letter-processing softwares, textual materials in books, journals,
newspapers and magazines reproduced using the printing press, and even electronically
displayed text in e-mails and other Internet media like web-pages, Short Message Texts on cellphones, and textual information relayed on TV.
The written signal system is used in interpersonal, educational, organisational and mass-media
communication. In interpersonal communication people exchange letters, e-mail, SMTs. For
millenia hand-written manuscripts and holy scriptures facilitated education, before the printing
press revolutionised learning by introducing the greatest tool of learning—the printed book;
today, the printed book is supplemented by textual materials on the World Wide Web as well
as electronic books. For m ass communication across nations and continents the printed
newspaper is still important. And in organisations text-based channels, already mentioned in
this write-up abound. The business letter remains the channel of choice for contractual
transactions.
The invention of writing ushered humanity into the historical age, and writing sustained over
the millenia the preservation of the record of human history. The writing system continues to
enable humankind to dialogue across millenia.
3. The Numeric Signal System. “The numeric system uses individual numbers to carry meaning,
as well as expressing relationships through numbers in mathematics. The number 7 often
represents divine perfection in the Bible, and 6 is the number representing humanity. The
number 3 often represents danger in Western cultures, as with three blasts on a horn or three
flashes of light. The universal signal of distress is represented in Morse code by three dots and
three dashes: …_ _ _ …” (Smith, 1992: 147)
Number systems are used to enable subscribers to use the telephone-service provider firms.
Bank accounts and the service accounts of utilities lie KPL Company are denoted by numbers.
Students’ registration particulars include registration numbers. Businesses present
performance data in their annual reports in number figures, showing values in the relevant
currency. And countries’ bureaus of statistics show the performance of the various sectors of
the country’s economy in number-figures.
4. The Pictorial Signal System. The pictorial system uses two dimensional representations of
meaning, or pictures, which would include line drawings (say, of a man), paintings, photographs
in colour or in black-and-white, maps, road-signs, organizational logos, graphs of all types
(linear, bar charts, pie charts), icons used to identify the programs in computers—and probably
also video and cinema pictures which, although they reflect three-dimensional reality, are really
two dimensional on the video screen. The pictorial system is eminently important in
educational c_, e.g. photographs, maps, diagrams and graphics or video shows. It is also very
important in organizational c_: organizational logos give identity to organisations (e.g. the shell
of Shell Petroleum) and brands of products may carry a picture (e.g. the elephant head of
Tusker beer). Different universities have different logos; football clubs have different emblems.
Nation-states have national flags which sometimes carry pictorials (e.g. the ‘stars and stripes’ of
36
the US flag). Also organisations (particularly business organisations) use video pictures to
advertise on TV.
5. Artifactual Signal System. This is all communication using three-dimensional art objects—
carvings, sculptures or mobiles (i.e. ornamental hanging objects made of metal, plastic or
cardboard)—or three-dimensional utility objects which carry some higher symbolic meaning,
e.g. clothing, ordinary and ceremonial (say a suit and tie or a judge’s red gown), books in a
room (for example large hard-cover gilded volumes in a lawyer’s office), furnishing like an
‘executive’ desk and executive chair in a spacious office covered by a thick wall-to-wall carpet.
“Architecture, of both building and landscapes, is a use of very large ‘objects’ to communicate
as well as to provide shelter and beauty.” (Smith, 1992: 152) A humble car like a Volkswagen
beetle sends its own distinct message—as does the distinctive presidential Mercedes Benz 600
limousine.
Ways of dress are important in interpersonal and organisational communication. In the office,
personnel may, for example, be required to wear formal dress; in certain situations uniforms
are worn, to communicate the importance of ‘corporate’ identity.
6. Audio Signal System: this is the use of non-verbal sound and silence to communicate
meanings. In some traditional African societies the language of the drum beat was well
understood: it could signal death or an invitation to a dance. Ambulance sirens, the blowing of
whistles, the ringing of a bell, the playing of instrumental music with its intervals of worldless
sound and silence: all these are examples of audio communication.
Smith notes that “the audio system overlaps with the verbal” (Smith, 1992: 152), when people
make sounds like grunts or humming which do not constitute aritculated words. Such vocal
sounds of approval, disapproval or as expressions of certain emotions are known as
paralanguage.
7. Body Language Signal System. The study of this is called kinesics. Sign language that is used
to pass messages to the hearing impaired is body language used in a systematic and conscious
manner. Body language includes facial expressions (a smile or a frown); hand gestures
(beckoning, shaking a fist); it may be conscious or unconscious, e.g. fidgeting or rubbing your
nose when you are nervous.
Body language, consciously or unconsciously, accompanies speech communication in all faceto-face encounters in private and organisational settings. A good communicator ensures
harmony between what he says and what his body language communicates.
Body language is eminently important in the theatre arts and cinema and video where it
portrays the emotional states of characters. It is also the language of the art of dancing.
8. The Optical Signal System. This is the use of light and clolour to transmit messages: the
messages sent by the differently coloured traffic lights, the flashing lights of a police patrol car
or an ambulance, the colours of a flag symbolising meanings (‘red’ for blood-sacrifice, green for
the land, black for the African people).
9. The Tactile Signal System. This is the use of touch to pass messages. The study of this system
of communication is called Haptics. Holding hands and kissing convey feelings of affection. A
Maasai elder may lay his hands on the head of a young person as a gesture of blessing.
10. The Temporal Signal System. This is the use of time to convey certain meanings. The
formal study of this system is called Chronemics. One way of using time to communicate is
37
either to be strictly punctual for appointments or to be lax about keeping time. This has much
to do with culture. For public appearances people of high status normally appear many
minutes, if not a few hours, after the public has settled down; the chief executive officer of a
company arrives when the managers have settled down. People may convey eagerness by
keeping time and meeting deadlines, or they may show lack of enthusiasm by appearing late
and failing to meet deadlines.
11. Spatial Signal System. This is the use of spaces to convey certain meanings. The formal
study of this system is called Proxemics.
Two parties who are communicating may maintain physical closeness or distance to convey
intimacy or social distance. In organisations, spacious well furnished offices convey status while
cramped-up cubicle-like offices suggest low status.
12. The Olfactory Signal System. This is the use of the sense of taste or smell to convey
meanings. Perfumes are worn for creating certain pleasant impressions. Certain oils may be
used in hospitals to suppress the smell of disinfectant. As for the use of taste in communication,
think of all those family get-togethers where sumptuous meals are served which people share
together with feelings of well-being and goodwill. In diplomacy between countries, officials
hold diplomatic dinners and indeed feats complete with rich foods, wines and spirits. These
representations of nations are engaged in communication—creating understanding between
their respective peoples.
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5.1.4.2 Categories of the Different Systems of Communication
The attached chart attempts to clearly show the major categories of the different systems of
communication. Think about how they are used to convey meanings—it is explained above in
the discussions of the different Signal Systems—and the different senses that are used to
receive messages. Also consider whether they are basically human-effort systems, or
communication-technology assisted. Is the numeric system appropriately categorised?
5.1.4.3 Key Dimensions of Communication
Blundel provides an illustration of “T multiple dimensions of organisational communication” as
follows (see Figure attached to this Lecture).
Figure: The multiple dimensions of organisational communication
Internal
One-way
Verbal
Mass
Interpersonal
Interactive
Non-verbal
External
The categories verbal and non-verbal have been explained. One-way communication is of
course not completely one way—since communication involves transmission and receiving,
sender and receiver; but it explains such processes as use of posters and notices or radio
broadcasts, where interaction between sender and receiver is not obvious. Such methods
contrast with face-to-face exchanges where immediate feedback is forthcoming. Again,
interpersonal communication is contrasted with mass communication. “Mass communication
originated with the invention of printing, which allowed people to send the same encoded
message to a large number of people. Newspaper and book publishing were pioneering forms
of mass communication … followed by radio and television in the 20th century.” (Blundel, 2004:
10)
It is also usual to “distinguish [between]communication that takes place within the boundaries
of an organisation from that involving the organisation and audiences in the wider world”
(Blundel, 2004: 11) Hence the dimensions internal and external communication.
6.0
The Characteristics of Different Methods of Communication; the Qualities of Effective
Communication.
39
The communicator chooses a method of communication—or selects a signal system—which is
most appropriate for his purposes, his audience and his circumstances, including resources.
Some characteristics of different methods have been mentioned in earlier discussion. Below we
look very briefly at the characteristics of some types of communication.
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6.1
Verbal Systems: Oral and Written Communication
These are oral communication situations: person-to-person conversation; interviews; meetings;
oral briefings; public address or lecture; telephone conversation; radio broadcasts, etc. in faceto-face or telephone conversations instantaneous feedback is possible. It does not leave a fixed
record—unless taped or otherwise recorded.
The following are examples of written communication: letter, memoranda, reports, newspaper
reports, books. Written or printed documents provide a record—and business letters are the
channel of choice for people who want to enter into a legal contract. They facilitate the
transmission of complicated information.
Books speak across centuries and can speak across millenia. Letters are affected by time delay
between sending and receiving, and do not enjoy the immediacy of speech.
Good quality textual media should be legible (easy to read because the written or printed
symbols are clearly presented), readable (enjoyable to read because of interesting content) and
discernible (clearly understood).
6.2
Visual Communication
Visual communication, whether people’s body language, three-dimensional objects/features,
photographs, paintings, video pictures, the flash of traffic lights, etc. have a dramatic
immediate effect on the audience. Videos may capture the drama of life: people beaming with
pleasure at the victory of their team in a football game, or grimaces of horror at the scene of a
terrorist bombing. Graphics are able to summarise masses of data.
6.3
Computerised Telecommunications
Refer to our earlier discussion of IT. Telecommunication enables vast distance communication
around the globe. Great speeds achieved in transmission and receiving of messages.
6.3.1 Qualities of Effective Communication
Information theory considers effectiveness of a message to consist in three main
characteristics:
(a) the message is well organized;
(b) the message is consistent;
(c) the message displays relatively low and determinable degrees of entropy and
redundancy.
Needless to say, the message should have accuracy of content and this content should be
presented clearly without contradictions. People speak about what they call the “Seven Cs” of
effective business communication: “completeness, conciseness, consideration, concreteness,
clearness, courteousness and correctness”. These qualities probably apply to all manifestations
of effective communication.
The final test of effectiveness of any process of communication is whether transmission and
receiving of messages has resulted in understanding .
7..0 The Purpose of Communication
7.1
The Informative, Dynamic, Emotive and Aesthetic Functions
41
Language, it is widely accepted, plays four major functions: the informative function involves
conveying narrative, story, or descriptive aspects of meaning; the dynamic function involves
exchanges which may bring about changes in attitude and thinking; the emotive function
involves the kind of communication which arouses feelings in order to drive people to do
something or to share another’s likes and dislikes; and the aesthetic function involves
communication that provides pleasure by appealing to the receivers’ sense of good style and of
the beautiful.
The informative function is served in many situations of teaching and learning: this is the way
you overhaul an internal combustion engine; wheat is planted in winter and spring; the
Pythagora’s theorem explains the values of the three squares on the sides of a right-angled
triangle; this is how to get to Don Bosco Church in Upperhill, Nairobi, from the General Post
Office. The Informative function is concerned with cognition—process of acquiring knowledge.
The dynamic aspects of the use of language are seen in a situation of persuasive
communication, for example in provision of HIV-AIDS education, in counseling over drug abuse
or in teaching about moral behaviour. A lot of social education includes these dynamic
aspects—training children and the young to embrace time tested communal values. Artistic
methods may be employed: using songs with good lyrics and persuasive messages, telling
interesting imaginative stories.
The emotive function is served in the political mobilisation of people in times of national crisis.
Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister during the 1939-1945 World War II, ensured the
Allied victory partly by rallying people around the Allied course by his stirring speeches. During
his first speech on 13 May 1940 to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, Churchill spoke
the following unforgettable words:
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. … we have before us an ordeal of
the most grievous kind. … you ask? What is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea,
land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us. … you ask,
What is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror;
victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival. (L.
F. Hobley, The Second World War, Glasgow & London: Blackie, 1971, p. 27)
The aesthetic function is served by all artistic communication: well written novels, drama and
poetry, good music, great paintings and architecture. The form of the communication appeals
to the audience’s sense of beauty and sense of higher moral and spiritual values like love and
human brotherhood and sisterhood.
To appreciate these key functions of language and communication is to begin to understand the
key and main purposes of communication. Other authorities on communication have
recognised the same functions although they may have used slightly different terms. For
example, Wilkie and Vervalin speak about four “types of listening” which they characterise as
appreciative, when you listen to ‘messages’ that provide pleasure, for example when you listen
to music or a well told story (cf. The aesthetic function), comprehensive, when you listen to
understand information and to obtain knowledge (informative communication), empathic,
which involves listening in order to offer emotional support, for example a psychological
counsellor listening to a troubled person, and critical listening, when one wants to make own
judgement after receiving a persuasive message.
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And in discussing purposes for reading Stanton expresses similar ideas when she identifies the
following purposes: pleasure, information and judgement (Stanton, 2004, 174) And she
identifies the following purposes for giving a talk to a group of people: to inform or describe; to
instruct or explain; to persuade, convince or inspire, and to entertain or amuse. (Stanton,
2004: 142) 7.2
7.2
A Summary of Major Purposes of Communication
From the ideas discussed above, we can sum up the following as the major purposes of human
communication.
7.2.1 Communication for Purposes of Interpersonal Interaction
This is one of the most common purposes of communication. In all types of social groups and
gatherings, in working places and in organisations interpersonal communication takes place: in
the family, in the classroom, in a matatu, in an office, in a factory, while shopping at a kiosk or a
supermarket. Students send letters home or telephone their parents; those studying overseas
may send e-mails by way of maintaining contact with their families. Interpersonal and intergroup contacts are also very important in world diplomacy. Leaders representing different
nation-states meet, hold conversations, and decide on joint actions which ill improve their
relations and yield mutual social and economic benefits.
7.2.2 Communication for Purpose of Socialisation and Social Education
We quoted H. G. Wells to the effect that mammals were the first Class of animals which were
teachable. Human parents stay close to their physically helpless offspring, and the offspring
learn from them through the process of imitation. Human children learn to speak and to
understand the mother’s language which then is used to teach them practical tasks like babyminding (in the case of girls) or herding of livestock (in the case of boys). The children are also
taught the values and beliefs of their parents—and, by extension, the values of their social
group. These things are part of socialization and social education. When you teach the young
the cultural skills and values of their community you are carrying out socialization and social
education. Communication, especially human speech, sustains culture through the ages from
generation to generation through the process of teaching and learning; communication ensures
that a cultural-community establishes the necessary link between the dead, the living and the
unborn.
7.2.3 Communication for Purposes of Teaching and Learning and General Education
For many millenia human speech enabled people to impart knowledge and skills of doing things
to others—how to grow food crops, how to domesticate and look after livestock, how to smelt
metal from ores and large metal tools and implements, how to make pottery, basketwork,
gourd products, ornamental crafts, etc. technological knowledge and education were thus
imparted by speech. And this education was transmitted from one generation to the next.
Written communication played a great role in spreading the faiths of the great world religions
and philosophies—Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism. The Greeks laid down the
foundations of modern learning in mathematics, philosophy and logic, scientific enquiry,
medicine, the scientific study of history and founded the Greco-Roman alphabet whose
characters would be cast in metal when movable type printing was introduced in 15th century
43
Europe. Greek learning was recovered by Renaissance Europe from manuscripts written by the
Greeks and preserved in libraries, for example the famous library in Alexandria, Egypt.
After printing had been mastered, printed books and journals could be produced in great
numbers—and this helped the mass spread of education in all areas of human endeavour:
science and technology, medicine, literature and drama, the social sciences, including
economics and political science, etc. coming to the very present, the Internet is a great global
library with a collection of electronic documents covering all types of subjects. The modern
world has been describes as a mass-educated society and advances in mass communication
have enabled these unprecedented educational advancements.
7.2.4 Communication for the Purpose of the Management of Modern Organizations, Both
Private and Public
Scholars of management tell us that the modern world is a world of organized institutions,
whether those institutions are large government departments, local governments, social
amenity institutions like large multi-purpose hospitals and universities or large (sometimes
transitional) extraction, manufacturing, distributing or retailing private organizations:
Our society has become, within an incredibly short fifty years, a society of institutions. It
has become a pluralist society in which every major social task has been entrusted to large
organisations—from producing economic goods and services to health care, from social
security and welfare to education, from the search for new knowledge to the protection of
the natural environment,” (Peter F. Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities,
Practices, London: Heinemann, 1974, Preface)
These institutions or organisations require that their activities be coordinated so that they act
as a unit or team. Such coordination is what management is all about—ensuring that all
individuals working in each department and carrying out some function act together to the end
of achieving that function, e.g. assembling motor vehicles, and ensuring that all the
departments—production, sales, finance, marketing—coordinate their functions to the end of
achieving the objectives for which the organization has been instituted, be it to manufacture
motor vehicles, or to provide public service in water supplies, medical services, road
maintenance, and so on. Communication is an essential function in management. To begin
with, the formal structure of an organization, illustrated graphically in an organisation’s
organisational chart or organogram (see attached chart) reflects the lines of communication,
for example from the top management through middle management to the factory floor.
Horizontal communication is also essential between departments at the same level. And in the
day to day operations of an organisation people have to keep talking to each other, passing on
information and instructions, and reporting back on activities and accomplished tasks. Today
complicated networks of communication exist to facilitate management of a complex variety of
activities. we have already mentioned ICT systems and a varied array of communication
channels—text-based channels, telephone, teleconferencing, videoconferencing, LAN, WAN
and Internet connections, committee meetings and interviews.
Communication makes possible the management of organizations so that they may behave as
cohesive entities in seeking to achieve their objectives
Evans writes: “Certainly the manager needs to be a good communicator since communicating
lies at the heart of what a manager is doing, achieving given objectives through other people”.
Maintaining good human relations is part of the management function.
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7.2.5 Communication Is an Essential Function of the Management of Modern Nation States,
and, Indeed the International Global System
Modern nation states are complexes of institutions whose activities need to be coordinated for
the welfare of people living in each country. Communication is essential within different
institutions and between institutions. Government line ministries establish links between
headquarters and provincial, district and divisional offices. National debates are conducted in
parliament between Members of Parliament elected at constituency localities of all areas of the
country. The president talks to parliament and to the public at national events—and through
the mass media, including radio broadcasting and TV.
Similarly there are international institutions and for a for international communication and
debate, for example the United Nations General Assembly where the permanent
representatives of all countries meet for debate and deliberations. And there are regional for a
bringing of the same region together, for example the African Union, the East African
Community and the European Union. Many attempts to sustain communication across the
Global Village are being made, but of course amity and harmonious relations between the
communities of the World are yet to be realised.
7.2.6 Communication for the Purpose of Keeping People Generally Informed, Entertained
and Involved in Consumer Advertising
These are also major purposes of communication especially of so-called mass media. People
read mass-circulating newspapers, listen to the radio and watch television to keep abreast of
current affairs and news and for entertainment. And companies use the mass media to ‘bend’
consumer preferences through advertisements of consumer goods and services. The cinema,
video and audio tape recordings play a big role in entertainment. The Internet plays all kinds of
roles—educational, advertising, general information provision and entertainment.
7.2.7 Artistic Communication
Purposes of communication overlap. Entertainment can be provided through high quality art.
High quality art—good novels, drama, poetry, paintings, music, architecture—pleases and at
the same time uplifts, arousing noble feelings of human togetherness. Artistic communication
may be allied to religious communication—when religion is concerned with lofty thoughts
about God’s love and concern for humanity and the world.
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8.0
Barriers to Communication
Barriers to communication are all those factors which interfere with the clear conception,
coding, transmission and receiving of a message. Barriers are factors that hinder the process of
understanding—the process of sharing of meanings. If the process of creating interpersonal
understanding is not successful, the factors that hinder it are barriers to communication; if
attempts at resolving conflicts at interpersonal or intergroup level and reestablishing harmony
are hindered the factors hindering these attempts are barriers to communication.
Also barriers are any factors that hinder the exchange of any type of information including
ordinary factors, e.g. in teaching and learning.
A simple way of explaining barriers is that those that affect the first type of communication—
the creation if interpersonal understanding—are essentially psychological and cultural barriers,
including personal attitudes of prejudice or hostility and in-built intergroup attitudes like
prejudice, hostility and hatred. The second type of communication—the exchange of ordinary
information is hindered by the following factors (which can also hinder type 1 communication):






lack of clear conception of the message;
inappropriate coding’
inappropriate medium;
inattention to incoming messages;
inappropriate decoding or interpretation of a message;
failure to provide feedback.
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