Communication as Process

=  moving, no beginning and no end, and constantly changing.

Like a river:

“active, continuous, and flowing, never the same from one minute to the next.  If we try to understand a river by analyzing a bucket of water drawn from it, we are not studying the river as a whole.  The same is true of communication.  Individual sentences, words, or gestures make sense only when we see them as part of an ongoing stream of events.  To understand communication, we have to look at how what we do and say is connected to what others do and say.” 

(Sarah Trenholm & Arthur Jensen, Interpersonal Communication, 4^th Ed., 2000, Wadsworth Publishing Co.: Belmont, CA., p. 5).

Communication as Uniquely Human

While communication has been used to describe a wide array of phenomenon, from DNA instructions to individuals cells, to regulation and maintenance of processes within the physiology of living organisms, to the signaling chirps, clicks, dances and beeps of animals… we take human communication to be unique among living things on this planet. 

“Although there have been several recent attempts to teach higher primates to use human communication codes, results of these studies are inconclusive” (Trenholm and Jensen, p. 5). 

The natural, spontaneous, flexible, creative, and powerful use of language codes by humans is unique, and “denied to all other creatures” (Trenholm & Jensen, p. 5).

Communication as Collective Activity

Communication presumes social cooperation, depends upon it, and social cooperation necessarily exists by virtue of our ability to communicate with one another.  It is a kind of symbiotic relationship, as one draws from the other, and vice versa.

The etymological basis for “communication” are the terms “munia” and “common.”  Joost Meerloo (“Contributions of Psychiatry to the Study of Human Communication, in Dance,” 1967) describes the munia root as indicating service and connoted “mutual help, exchange, and interaction of those belonging to the same community” (p. 132).  Those with immunity in ancient times were those who were exempted from doing public service.  Those who committed acts offensive enough to be separated and excluded from the common experience of society were excommunicated.  Communication, rooted in “common,” presumes a degree of shared meaning between the participants, thus the participants have something in common.

Communication as Creative Endeavor

While most things in our world have an objective reality apart from us, like a chair, rock, car, and water, there are ideas which we create that exist only in our shared meaning.  Examples might be abstract values such as humility, compassion, injustice.  These are symbolic ideas or things, and they can have a powerful impact on us.  Even our sense of self comes from our communication with others:  what people say about our behavior becomes a type of reality for us as we accept it, act on it, and then make further decisions based on that shared meaning about who we are as persons in the world.

Communication as Regulatory

Another way of looking at this is through the lens of power.  Without the ability to communicate we lack power to influence our world.  Some cultures take this dimension quite literally, believing that our words create reality around us, such as speaking good or bad fortune on ourselves or on others.  When we come down with a throat cold or laryngitis, for instance, we can sense some degree of exclusion from the normal flow of life around us; power to impact our world is temporarily taken from us, and we feel the regulatory nature of communication.

In democratic societies, many of which are modeled from the design established by the United States in 1776, the freedom to speak is highly prized and protected by national laws.  Communication is viewed as a fundamental right of those participating in democratic social organization.  Why -- because it provides every citizen the power to influence the outcome of their lives in that society, rather than having it controlled by others, especially by a government that becomes oppressive.

Intentionality principle:

Communication can be intentional or unintentional.  Some may argue that intent does not exist, simply because you cannot see it or prove it.  However, most people understand that we are made as volitional beings, that we have a will, the ability to made decisions, to choose between values, ideas, options, etc.  Or, they argue that unintentional communication messages do not “count” because they were not intended.  We derive meaning from them, nonetheless.

Impossibility principle:

A communication axiom is “You cannot not communicate.”  This describes the phenomenon of constant meaning making.  We are constantly inferring meaning from what we see.  People do not necessarily intend meaning in every act of their bodies, but others are still deriving meaning from their behavior.

Non-container nature of words:

The meaning we share with one another is not in the words themselves, as if the words were containers of meaning.  Meanings are in our minds, and our communicative transactions are a process of arriving at a most-accurate match of our meanings.

End-all Solution:

Communication is not to be treated as the end of all solutions to relational conflict and/or confusion.  Communication may actually be to root of the conflict.  Besides this, there are other, more significant and fundamental areas of our lives that impact our behavior, namely, our values and beliefs.  Our communication about a topic may be a crystal clear exchange, we may understand one another perfectly; the conflict may be about the underlying values and beliefs.

More is not always better:

Negative interaction has a way of promoting more negative communication; simply doing more of the same is no guarantee of success, and may actually destroy existing chances of building positive communication.  Like water, that can be dirty or clean, drinking more water simply because it is wet does not guarantee a healthy outcome.

System Complexity:

No single event or statement causes an outcome.  Communication happens within a larger system of people’s lives, internal thinking/feeling/volitional processes, external influences, and history in the relationship.  A person’s reaction to some remark may be due to influences other than what you said to them.

Content:  the subject being discussed.

Relational:  reflects how the parties feel about one another.  They commonly deal with one or more of the social needs of affection, control, or respect.  Types include:

• Affinity:  the degree to which people like or appreciate one another.  This is independent of Respect.

• Respect:  the degree to which people esteem one another as valuable.  This is independent of Affinity.

• Control:  the degree to which people in a relationship have the power to influence one another.  Conversational control (who talks, when) and Decisional control (who decides what will happen in the relationship and when).

Complimentary relationships:  when one party exercises control and the other is willing to go along.

Symmetrical relationships:  partners seeks the same degree of control.  Types: Neutralized symmetry (shared control), Competitive symmetry (both seek control).

Parallel relationships:  partners shift between different types in order to maintain balance.