The definition of communication is shared in the Webster's Dictionary as "sending, giving, or

exchanging information and ideas," which is often expressed nonverbally and verbally.

Non-verbal communication is the act of saying what's on your mind without speaking words.
Examples of this include facial gestures (smiling, frowning), body language (arms crossed,
giving someone the "finger", legs shaking resembling nervousness, sitting upright giving
someone their full attention), and the impression you give to others with your appearance
(dress, body image, body odor).

Also, the tone of your voice can be expressed non-verbally. For instance, if you are saying
one thing, but your tone of voice is saying another, then that reflects how you are truly
feeling without speaking a word about it (yelling and crying while saying your okay).

Verbal communication is the act of saying what's on your mind with words. This form of
communication is often taken for granted..such as saying regretful things and opening your
mouth before thinking about what you are saying.

Words can hurt or they can heal. So, it's very important to become aware of what words
you choose to use when communicating to others as well as to yourself.

Check out this communication poll to see how you and others are communicating.

Communication: Communication is a process whereby information

is enclosed in a package and is channeled and imparted by a sender to a receiver
via some medium. The receiver then decodes the message and gives the sender a
feedback. All forms of communication require a sender, a message, and an
intended recipient, however the receiver need not be present or aware of the
sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication in order for the act of
communication to occur. Communication requires that all parties have an area of
communicative commonality. There are auditory means, such as speech, song, and
tone of voice, and there are nonverbal means, such as body language, sign
language, paralanguage, touch, eye contact, through media, i.e., pictures, graphics
and sound, and writing.

Information communication revolutions:

Over time, technology has progressed and has created new forms of and ideas about
communication. The newer advances include media and communications psychology. Media
psychology is an emerging field of study. These technological advances revolutionized the
processes of communication. Researchers have divided how communication was transformed
into three revolutionary stages:

In the 1st Information Communication Revolution, the first written communication began, with
pictographs. These writings were made on stone, which were too heavy to transfer. During this
era, written communication was not mobile, but nonetheless existed.

In the 2nd Information Communication Revolution, writing began to appear on paper, papyrus,
clay, wax, etc. Common alphabets were introduced, allowing the uniformity of language across
large distances. Much later the Gutenberg printing-press was invented. Gutenberg created this
printing-press after a long period of time in the 15th century.

In the 3rd Information Communication Revolution, information can now be transferred via
controlled waves and electronic signals.

Communication is thus a process by which meaning is assigned and conveyed in an attempt to

create shared understanding. This process requires a vast repertoire of skills in interpersonal
processing, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing, gestures and evaluating. It is
through communication that collaboration and cooperation occur.[1]

There are also many common barriers to successful communication, two of which are message
overload (when a person receives too many messages at the same time), and message
complexity.[2] Communication is a continuous process. The psychology of media
communications is an emerging area of increasing attention and study.

Human communication:
Human spoken and written languages can be described as a system of symbols (sometimes
known as lexemes) and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated. The word
"language" is also used to refer to common properties of languages. Language learning is normal
in human childhood. Most human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for symbols which
enable communication with others around them. There are thousands of human languages, and
these seem to share certain properties, even though many shared properties have exceptions.

There is no defined line between a language and a dialect, but the linguist Max Weinreich is
credited as saying that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy". Constructed languages
such as Esperanto, programming languages, and various mathematical formalisms are not
necessarily restricted to the properties shared by human languages.

Bernard Luskin, UCLA, 1970, advanced computer assisted instruction and began to connect
media and psychology into what is now the field of media psychology. In 1998, the American
Association of Psychology, Media Psychology Division 46 Task Force report on psychology and
new technologies combined media and communication as pictures, graphics and sound
increasingly dominate modern communication.

Nonverbal communication:
Nonverbal communication is the process of communicating through sending and receiving
wordless messages. Such messages can be communicated through gesture, body language or
posture; facial expression and eye contact, object communication such as clothing, hairstyles or
even architecture, or symbols and infographics, as well as through an aggregate of the above,
such as behavioral communication. Nonverbal communication plays a key role in every person's
day to day life, from employment to romantic engagements.

Speech may also contain nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality,
emotion and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress.
Likewise, written texts have nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement
of words, or the use of emoticons. A portmanteau of the English words emotion (or emote) and
icon, an emoticon is a symbol or combination of symbols, such as :), used to convey emotional
content in written or message form.

Other communication channels such as telegraphy fit into this category, whereby signals travel
from person to person by an alternative means. These signals can in themselves be representative
of words, objects or merely be state projections. Trials have shown that humans can
communicate directly in this way[3] without body language, voice tonality or words.

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Categories and Features:

G. W. Porter divides non-verbal communication into four broad categories:

 Physical. This is the personal type of communication. It includes facial expressions, tone of
voice, sense of touch, sense of smell, and body motions.

 Aesthetic. This is the type of communication that takes place through creative expressions:
playing instrumental music, dancing, painting and sculpturing.

 Signs. This is the mechanical type of communication, which includes the use of signal flags, the
21-gun salute, horns, and sirens.

 Symbolic. This is the type of communication that makes use of religious, status, or ego-building
symbols.

Static Features

 Distance. The distance one stands from another frequently conveys a non-verbal message. In
some cultures it is a sign of attraction, while in others it may reflect status or the intensity of the
exchange.
  Orientation. People may present themselves in various ways: face-to-face, side-to-side, or even
back-to-back. For example, cooperating people are likely to sit side-by-side while competitors
frequently face one another.

 Posture. Obviously one can be lying down, seated, or standing. These are not the elements of
posture that convey messages. Are we slouched or erect ? Are our legs crossed or our arms
folded ? Such postures convey a degree of formality and the degree of relaxation in the
communication exchange.

 Physical Contact. Shaking hands, touching, holding, embracing, pushing, or patting on the back
all convey messages. They reflect an element of intimacy or a feeling of (or lack of) attraction.

Dynamic Features:

 Facial Expressions. A smile, frown, raised eyebrow, yawn, and sneer all convey information.
Facial expressions continually change during interaction and are monitored constantly by the
recipient. There is evidence that the meaning of these expressions may be similar across
cultures.

 Gestures. One of the most frequently observed, but least understood, cues is a hand movement.
Most people use hand movements regularly when talking. While some gestures (e.g., a clenched
fist) have universal meanings, most of the others are individually learned and idiosyncratic.

 Looking. A major feature of social communication is eye contact. It can convey emotion, signal
when to talk or finish, or aversion. The frequency of contact may suggest either interest or
boredom.

Visual communication:

Visual communication is communication through visual aid. It is the conveyance of ideas and
information in forms that can be read or looked upon. Primarily associated with two dimensional
images, it includes: signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, colour and
electronic resources. It solely relies on vision. It is form of communication with visual effect. It
explores the idea that a visual message with text has a greater power to inform, educate or
persuade a person. It is communication by presenting information through visual form.

The evaluation of a good visual design is based on measuring comprehension by the audience,
not on aesthetic or artistic preference. There are no universally agreed-upon principles of beauty
and ugliness. There exists a variety of ways to present information visually, like gestures, body
languages, video and TV. Here, focus is on the presentation of text, pictures, diagrams, photos, et
cetera, integrated on a computer display. The term visual presentation is used to refer to the
actual presentation of information. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and
graphically oriented usability. Graphic designers use methods of visual communication in their
professional practice.

Understanding the Field of Communication:

The field of communication is typically broken into three distinct camps: human communication,
mass communications, and communication disorders [4]

Human Communication or Communication Studies is the study of how individuals

communicate. Some examples of the distinct areas that human communication scholars study
are:

 Interpersonal Communication
 Organizational Communication
 Oral Communication
 Small Group Communication
 Intercultural Communication
 Nonviolent Communication
 Conflict
 Rhetoric
 Public Speaking
 Media and Communications Psychology

Examples of Mass Communications include:

 Mass communication
 Graphic communication
 Science communication
 Strategic Communication
 Superluminal communication
 Technical communication
 Public relations
 Broadcast Media
 Journalism
 Media and Communications Psychology

Examples of Communication Disorders include:

 Facilitated Communication
 Impairment of Language Modality
 Speech Disorders

Oral communication:
Oral communication is a process whereby information is transferred from a sender to receiver; in
general communication is usually transferred by both verbal means and visual aid throughout the
process.. The receiver could be an individual person, a group of persons or even an audience.
There are a few of oral communication types: discussion, speeches, presentations, etc. However,
often when you communicate face to face the body language and your voice tonality has a bigger
impact than the actual words that you are saying.
A widely cited and widely mis-interpreted figure, used to emphasize the importance of delivery,
is that "communication is 55% body language, 38% tone of voice, 7% content of words", the so-
called "7%-38%-55% rule".[5] This is not however what the cited research shows – rather, when
conveying emotion, if body language, tone of voice, and words disagree, then body language and
tone of voice will be believed more than words.[6][clarification needed] For example, a person saying "I'm
delighted to meet you" while mumbling, hunched over, and looking away will be interpreted as
insincere. (Further discussion at Albert Mehrabian: Three elements of communication.)

You can notice that the content or the word that you are using is not the determining part of a
good communication. The "how you say it" has a major impact on the receiver. You have to
capture the attention of the audience and connect with them. For example, two persons saying
the same joke, one of them could make the audience die laughing related to his good body
language and tone of voice. However, the second person that has the exact same words could
make the audience stare at one another.[citation needed]

In an oral communication, it is possible to have visual aid helping you to provide more precise
information. Often enough, we use a presentation program in presentations related to our speech
to facilitate or enhance the communication process.

Communication modeling:

Shannon and Weaver Model of Communication

Communication major dimensions scheme

Communication code scheme

Linear Communication Model

Interactional Model of Communication

Berlo's Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of Communication

Transactional Model of Communication

The first major model for communication came in 1949 by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver
for Bell Laboratories [7] The original model was designed to mirror the functioning of radio and
telephone technologies. Their initial model consisted of three primary parts: sender, channel, and
receiver. The sender was the part of a telephone a person spoke into, the channel was the
telephone itself, and the receiver was the part of the phone where one could hear the other
person. Shannon and Weaver also recognized that often there is static that interferes with one
listening to a telephone conversation, which they deemed noise.

In a simple model, often referred to as the transmission model or standard view of

communication, information or content (e.g. a message in natural language) is sent in some form
(as spoken language) from an emisor/ sender/ encoder to a destination/ receiver/ decoder. This
common conception of communication simply views communication as a means of sending and
receiving information. The strengths of this model are simplicity, generality, and quantifiability.
Social scientists Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver structured this model based on the
following elements:

1. An information source, which produces a message.

2. A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals
3. A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission
 4. A receiver, which 'decodes' (reconstructs) the message from the signal.
5. A destination, where the message arrives.

Shannon and Weaver argued that there were three levels of problems for communication within
this theory.

The technical problem: how accurately can the message be transmitted?

The semantic problem: how precisely is the meaning 'conveyed'?

The effectiveness problem: how effectively does the received meaning affect behavior?

Daniel Chandler critiques the transmission model by stating

It assumes communicators are isolated individuals.

No allowance for differing purposes.

No allowance for differing interpretations.

No allowance for unequal power relations.

No allowance for situational contexts.

In 1960, David Berlo expanded on Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) linear model of
communication and created the SMCR Model of Communication.[8] The Sender-Message-
Channel-Receiver Model of communication separated the model into clear parts and has been
expanded upon by other scholars.

Communication is usually described along a few major dimensions: Message (what type of
things are communicated), source / emisor / sender / encoder (by whom), form (in which form),
channel (through which medium), destination / receiver / target / decoder (to whom), and
Receiver. Wilbur Schram (1954) also indicated that we should also examine the impact that a
message has (both desired and undesired) on the target of the message.[9] Between parties,
communication includes acts that confer knowledge and experiences, give advice and
commands, and ask questions. These acts may take many forms, in one of the various manners of
communication. The form depends on the abilities of the group communicating. Together,
communication content and form make messages that are sent towards a destination. The target
can be oneself, another person or being, another entity (such as a corporation or group of beings).

Communication can be seen as processes of information transmission governed by three levels of

semiotic rules:

1. Syntactic (formal properties of signs and symbols),

2. Pragmatic (concerned with the relations between signs/expressions and their users) and
3. Semantic (study of relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent).
Therefore, communication is social interaction where at least two interacting agents share a
common set of signs and a common set of semiotic rules. This commonly held rules in some
sense ignores autocommunication, including intrapersonal communication via diaries or self-
talk, both secondary phenomena that followed the primary acquisition of communicative
competences within social interactions.

In light of these weaknesses, Barnlund (2008) proposed a transactional model of communication.

[10]
The basic premise of the transactional model of communication is that individuals are
simultaneously engaging in the sending and receiving of messages.

In a slightly more complex form a sender and a receiver are linked reciprocally. This second
attitude of communication, referred to as the constitutive model or constructionist view, focuses
on how an individual communicates as the determining factor of the way the message will be
interpreted. Communication is viewed as a conduit; a passage in which information travels from
one individual to another and this information becomes separate from the communication itself.
A particular instance of communication is called a speech act. The sender's personal filters and
the receiver's personal filters may vary depending upon different regional traditions, cultures, or
gender; which may alter the intended meaning of message contents. In the presence of
"communication noise" on the transmission channel (air, in this case), reception and decoding of
content may be faulty, and thus the speech act may not achieve the desired effect. One problem
with this encode-transmit-receive-decode model is that the processes of encoding and decoding
imply that the sender and receiver each possess something that functions as a code book, and that
these two code books are, at the very least, similar if not identical. Although something like code
books is implied by the model, they are nowhere represented in the model, which creates many
conceptual difficulties.

Theories of coregulation describe communication as a creative and dynamic continuous process,

rather than a discrete exchange of information. Canadian media scholar Harold Innis had the
theory that people use different types of media to communicate and which one they choose to use
will offer different possibilities for the shape and durability of society (Wark, McKenzie 1997).
His famous example of this is using ancient Egypt and looking at the ways they built themselves
out of media with very different properties stone and papyrus. Papyrus is what he called 'Space
Binding'. it made possible the transmission of written orders across space, empires and enables
the waging of distant military campaigns and colonial administration. The other is stone and
'Time Binding', through the construction of temples and the pyramids can sustain their authority
generation to generation, through this media they can change and shape communication in their
society (Wark, McKenzie 1997).

Communication noise:
In any communication model, noise is interference with the decoding of messages sent over a
channel by an encoder. There are many examples of noise:

Environmental Noise: Noise that physically disrupts communication, such as standing next to
loud speakers at a party, or the noise from a construction site next to a classroom making it
difficult to hear the professor.
Physiological-Impairment Noise: Physical maladies that prevent effective communication,
such as actual deafness or blindness preventing messages from being received as they were
intended.

Semantic Noise: Different interpretations of the meanings of certain words. For example, the
word "weed" can be interpreted as an undesirable plant in your yard, or as a euphemism for
marijuana.

Syntactical Noise: Mistakes in grammar can disrupt communication, such as abrupt changes in
verb tense during a sentence.

Organizational Noise: Poorly structured communication can prevent the receiver from accurate
interpretation. For example, unclear and badly stated directions can make the receiver even more
lost.

Cultural Noise: Stereotypical assumptions can cause misunderstandings, such as unintentionally

offending Jews by wishing them a "Merry Christmas."

Psychological Noise: Certain attitudes can also make communication difficult. For instance,
great anger or sadness may cause someone to lose focus on the present moment. Disorders such
as Autism may also severely hamper effective communication.[11]

Nonhuman communication:
Communication in many of its facets is not limited to humans, or even to primates. Every
information exchange between living organisms — i.e. transmission of signals involving a living
sender and receiver — can be considered a form of communication.[12] Thus, there is the broad
field of animal communication, which encompasses most of the issues in ethology. Also very
primitive animals such as corals are competent to communicate.[13] On a more basic level, there is
cell signaling, cellular communication, and chemical communication between primitive
organisms like bacteria,[14] and within the plant and fungal kingdoms. All of these
communication processes are sign-mediated interactions with a great variety of distinct
coordinations.

Animal communication is any behavior on the part of one animal that has an effect on the current
or future behavior of another animal. Of course, human communication can be subsumed as a
highly developed form of animal communication. The study of animal communication, called
zoosemiotics' (distinguishable from anthroposemiotics, the study of human communication) has
played an important part in the development of ethology, sociobiology, and the study of animal
cognition. This is quite evident as humans are able to communicate with animals, especially
dolphins and other animals used in circuses. However, these animals have to learn a special
means of communication. Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of the animal
world in general, is a rapidly growing field, and even in the 21st century so far, many prior
understandings related to diverse fields such as personal symbolic name use, animal emotions,
animal culture and learning, and even sexual conduct, long thought to be well understood, have
been revolutionized.
Communication as academic discipline:
Communication as an academic discipline, sometimes called "communicology,"[18] relates to all
the ways we communicate, so it embraces a large body of study and knowledge. The
communication discipline includes both verbal and nonverbal messages. A body of scholarship
all about communication is presented and explained in textbooks, electronic publications, and
academic journals. In the journals, researchers report the results of studies that are the basis for
an ever-expanding understanding of how we all communicate.

Communication happens at many levels (even for one single action), in many different ways, and
for most beings, as well as certain machines. Several, if not all, fields of study dedicate a portion
of attention to communication, so when speaking about communication it is very important to be
sure about what aspects of communication one is speaking about. Definitions of communication
range widely, some recognizing that animals can communicate with each other as well as human
beings, and some are more narrow, only including human beings within the different parameters
of human symbolic interaction.