Background

Individuals sometimes view success in communication as a relatively simple matter. After all, we start communicating early on and continue throughout our lives. The mere experience of communicating, in principle, should lead to continual improvements in our skill as communicators. To some extent this is true, but experience alone is usually insufficient for substantial improvement. Of equal, if not greater, importance is a knowledge of how communication works, what conditions and capabilities contribute to success, and what factors and practices may lead to its breakdown.

This lesson introduces you to some important information about what communication is, what determines the success and failure of communicative acts, and how this knowledge can help you to become more skillful in your interactions with others, especially in small groups. The lesson will also enable you to reflect on your own past successes and failures in communication and thereby develop new insights into how much they are a product of practices you have typically followed, versus how much may be the result of other factors over which you have little if any, control. Such insight can lead you to a more realistic set of expectations about your interactions with others than those who have not formally studied communication usually have.

In Chapter 2 (pp. 21-38) of the textbook, the authors emphasize the fact that communication involves the exchange of symbols (words and actions) that represent thoughts and feelings. The thoughts and feelings themselves are not exchanged. Because individuals who are interacting with one another seldom, if ever, have identical meanings for the symbols they exchange, some degree of miscommunication is inevitable. The degree of miscommunication, however, can be minimized if one is careful about how he or she frames messages, uses feedback (others' reactions) to messages to form later ones, and provides feedback, so that those with whom he or she is communicating can do the same. To use and provide useful feedback requires that one be a careful listener. Knowing this, you may have a greater appreciation for the attention in Chapter 2 that the authors pay to listening in the communication process. As you move through the chapter, you will discover that the authors are primarily concerned that the reader understand that communication is a process, that success in the process depends heavily on communicators' ability to bring shared meanings to the symbols they exchange, and that they cannot do this very well if they are careless about how either they form messages (choose what to say) or attend to them (listen), not to mention ignoring other sources of interference.

For a visual illustration of this process, you may find the video below to be of interest.