Communication

Do you think communication is a No-Brainer? Communication is consistently listed as one of the keys to success in business and life, and just as frequently identified by employees as a key missing link to maximum productivity and job satisfaction. We communicate every day verbally and nonverbal to co-workers, to people on the phone, and to our family. We've been communicating since the day we were born. Actually, we were communicating before we were born, in our mother's womb. What is communication? Communication is the process of constructing meaning together. We live in a world of meaning, and communication is the process of collaboratively constructing these meanings. We hope in this process, that presenting something to other individuals that we are getting our ideas across precisely. We would hope that through this process the receiver would be able to translate our messages into ideas. Unfortunately there are a lot of barriers to this process. I will be discussing four different topics, verbal & nonverbal communication, perception, listening, and self-disclosure. Through the presentation of these topics, I will demonstrate several ways in which we can communicate among ourselves more effectively. This paper will demonstrate how we can become more effective as communicators, and to be able to apply the four topics covered.

Verbal communication includes anything written, or spoken. Nonverbal communication includes eye contact, body movement, facial expression, tone of voice, touch, silence, and several different expressions. This book discusses verbal & nonverbal communication jointly. It has become obvious that you can't really separate the verbal & nonverbal parts. As stated by D.J. Higginbotham & D.E. Yoder, "It is impossible to study either verbal or nonverbal communication as isolated structures. Rather, these systems should be regarded as a unified communication construct."

One example that the author s John Stewart & Carole Logan use is that language be regarded in terms of a sliding scale. The main communication blocks on a sliding scale that runs from primarily verbal (written words) to mixed (vocal pacing, pause, loudness, pitch, and silence), to primarily nonverbal (gestures, eye gaze, facial expression, touch, and space). The degree that you can isolate the words speakers use, they might be considered primarily verbal, but spoken words always come with vocal pacing, pause, loudness, pitch and silence, and as a result these are labeled mixed. Gestures, eye gaze, facial expression, touch, and space are labeled primarily nonverbal because they occur without words, but they are usually interpreted in the context of spoken words. This is why language is considered soup. As humans, we're immersed in language beginning at birth and ending at death, like a fish is immersed in water. This soup includes all of the verbal & nonverbal parts of our communicative life. Language is more than a system we use or an activity we perform it is a subject that we manipulate