Language and Communication co-exist, with culture embedded in their respective

natures. Through communication, we have experienced different advancements in most,

if not all, the aspects of life. It is through communication do we use language, and through
knowledge do we communicate.

At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:

define communication;
discuss the importance, elements and dimensions of communication;
differentiate the language functions;
discuss the role of language in communication and in the subject, Purposive
Communication.

LESSON 1. COMMUNICATION
Let us try to formulate a description of what communication is through all these
words, shall we?

Data Art People

Transmission Information Attitudes

Ideas Symbols Different

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COMMUNICATION IN THE GENERAL SENSE

Communication came from the Latin word “communis,” meaning “common” and/or
“communicare,” meaning “to make common.”

Communication is the process of interchanging thoughts, feelings, and information. As a

process, communication changes constantly as interactions take place. If communication
changes over time, same is observed in language.
Communication involves meaning generation, as well as ascription of the information and
attitudes during the processes involving it. As a process, it is quite complex for people
distinctively communication in connection to styles, preferences, strategies, personalities,
and the like.

Communication may be in the form of verbal: oral (face-to-face, near-far, digital, etc.) or
written (graphic, printed, pencrafted), or even gestural (hands, head, or eyes in
meaningful motion).

Humans are unique because of language for language is distinct to humans. It

distinguishes man from lower animals and species-specific.

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION

1. Communicator – also known as the sender or transmitter, it is the element that

transmits and sends information, as well as the one that may be encoding the message.

2. Message – a code, a language, a content, an information, and the like being

transferred. It is the central element for it serves as the key for the connection of the
sender and the receiver.

3. Recipient – also known as the receiver, it is the element that receives the message
from the communicator, as well as the one who may decode afterwards.

4. Medium - the manner the message was delivered.

5. Language Channel – the mechanism and platform used for the message to be
delivered.

6. Encoding - act of transmitting a message (speaking and writing).

7. Decoding - receiving and understanding a message (reading and listening).

8. Encoder - a person who transmits a message.

9. Decoder - a person who interprets a message.

LET’S RELATE THIS AND OBSERVE…

How will you relate these shapes in communication? Is it complex and
multidimensional as well?

5 DIMENSIONS OF COMMUNICATION

1. Communication can be intentional or unintentional.

2. Communication can be verbal or nonverbal.

3. Communication can be internal or external.

4. Communication can involve humans, machines, and animals

5. Communication can take place between two people as well as within groups

www.businesscommunicationarticles.com/different-kinds-types-of-communication/

BASIS VERBAL NON-VERBAL

1. Word use Sound or Symbols No word use

2. Types Oral or Written Various

 3. Comprehension Easy to understand Difficult to understand

4. Structured Highly structured Informal Structure

5. Distortion of Information Less possibility High possibility

Begins and ends Continues until

6. Continuity
through words purpose is achieved

7. Feedback Less and delayed A lot

Oral communication has some real benefits in the business world. Feedback is easier
for communicators to receive and it is easier to modify your message. If your message is
not clear, you can revise or add more information and restate the message. However,
oral messages are not recorded for future reference. Careful wording of a sensitive
message is more difficult with oral communication than it is with written communication.

Verbal communication, from the Latin “verbum,” meaning “word,” informs us that we can
communicate through reading and writing, as it is received in listening, speaking. It may
also deal with viewing and presenting, syntax, vocabulary, language use, and dialect.

Non-verbal, on the contrary, has various ways and features:

1. Proxemics – using spaces and distance.

2. Kinesics/ Body Language – movement and overall state of the body.
3. Object Language/Artifacts – communication through materials.
4. Environment – body movement and behavior in contexts; appearance.
5. Vocalics/Paralanguage – The prosodic features sounds are uttered, same with
movements.
6. Haptics – non-verbal way of communicating with the intent to show emotions, attitude,
etc.
7. Chronemics – using time and pace.

LANGUAGE IN COMMUNICATION

Bonet and Bastardas-Boada (2013) say that language greatly affects the way we speak,
write, describe and understand things. They further said that language is the tool we need
to convey both thought and the method we adapt to address the complex world. Thi s is
made possible because of our cognitive instrument (the brain in interaction with the body),
cognition (understood as perception, emotion and action, the entire process of living),
and, especially, metacognition (the knowing of knowledge). All of which come in in
communication.

Languages are unplanned tools of communication that emerged incrementally, with

different interactants innovating and contributing different pieces at different times (not
without particular constraints!) when necessary, under specific social pressures to
express and share their thoughts or feelings. They are outcomes of successive responses
of the human mind to social-ecological pressures to communicate; their norms have been
shaped by particular social interactive dynamics driven by speakers’/signers’ disposition
to cooperate (p. 201).

FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION

1. Personal - to express one's subjective feelings, thoughts, emotions, needs, desires,

attitudes.
2. Interpersonal - to boost and keep good connections and commonality with others in
forms of expressing sympathy, praise, joy at another's success, etc.
3. Ceremonial – to perform language in ritual or rite.
4. Directive or performative - to control the behavior of others through advice, warning,
requests, persuasion, discussion.
5. Referential - to talk about matters seen in the environment.
6. Metalinguistic - to talk about language (lanugage beyond language).
7. Imaginative - to creatively use language in creative writing of literature.
8. Eclectic - by combining of two or more of the language functions.
9. Informative - to convey information in the form of a declarative statement.
10. Practical/dynamic - to produce some effects in the form of imperative statement:
order, appeals, pleas, requests, commands.
11. Expressive - to express certain feelings; to evoke some emotional response
explanatory statement: jokes, jests, puns, humor, or lyric poems.

IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION IN THE WORKPLACE

The ability to communicate well is often cited by companies as one of the skills they
desired most in employees. Poor communicators are not able to relate well to others and
find their career paths blocked.
 THE LESSON IN A NUTSHELL

Communication makes a being; Language describes a human

It is the KEY
Let us communicate as a MARIAN