More Than Words

An Introduction to Communication

Graeme Burton, Richard Dimbleby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415170062
• eBook ISBN: 9781134699681
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The authors cover the essential elements of communication, including communication between individuals and groups, in organizations and through mass media and new technologies.

Chapter 1

What is communication?

One cannot not communicate.

Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson, Pragmatics of Human
Communication, 1968

This chapter provides a general introduction and background to the whole book by explaining four important aspects of communication:

1. How we experience communication, and how this experience can be analysed.
2. How communication serves our personal, social, economic, creative and play needs.
3. Ways of describing and explaining communication processes.

1 How do we experience communication?

CATHY’S STORY

Cathy was a bouncy kind of person. Even her hair, which caused her private despair, was springy and irrepressible. One of her friends had nicknamed her Tigger. Cathy wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. But it didn’t stop her being disgracefully cheerful in the morning. This one was no exception. Most of her friends were sitting at the table in the college canteen like a scene from Return of the Zombies. Cathy was punching buttons on the juke box and then chatting to the assistant on the till before she came bouncing back to the table. Tom was out of it anyway. You could hear his music even though it was coming through his headphones. Jacob had his head in his hands, but was not dying, only looking at a music mag. Sarah was reading a chapter for the next class, which she should have done a week ago. Cathy felt guilty at this, and pulled out her folder. She was looking at her notes, but not really concentrating. She had put in for entertainments officer in the union elections and this was very much on her mind. She wouldn’t say anything to the others, but she really wanted to win the election. She had run her own poster campaign and had even made a tape for the college radio, with Jacob’s help. Only the lecturer running the course had vetoed electioneering on the radio. Cathy glanced at her watch. She had just remembered that she wanted to photocopy something, and the class time was coming up. Tom waved his hand languidly as Cathy bounced out of the canteen.

ABOUT CATHY’S STORY

If you were asked to spot references to communication in this story, you would probably refer to objects that communicate: things like magazines or television are what many people immediately associate with the word ‘communication’. In fact we also experience communication through other things such as talk and gestures. One could say that all such examples are, in one way or another, means of communication. See what you can find in the story, and see if you can guess what affects how the people in it communicate, or don’t, as the case may be.

1.1 Means of communication

In this case, communication is defined in terms of the means by which it takes place. It seems that if we are talking about radio, or painting, for example, then we must be talking about communication. But this isn’t good enough because it doesn’t tell us how the means of communication is being used. It doesn’t tell us why the communication is happening. In fact, it doesn’t tell us a lot of things, all of which partly answer our main question, what is communication?

Still, we have to start somewhere, and it is useful to sort out how one describes the many means of communication that we use and experience. Not all of them are, strictly speaking, individual and separate forms. So we suggest that you use the following three terms:

1. Form of communication
   is a way of communicating such as speaking or writing or drawing.
   Forms are distinct and separate from one another in so far as they have their own system for putting the message across. So, when marks are made on paper according to certain rules (such as those of grammar and spelling), then we create words and the ‘form’ of writing.
   As a generalization, many of what we would call ‘forms’ are ways of communicating which we control directly, such as non-verbal communication (gestures, facial expressions, etc.).
2. Medium of communication
   is a means of communicating which combines different forms.
   A medium often involves the use of technology that is beyond the control of most of us. So, for example, a book is a medium which uses forms of communication such as words, pictures and drawings.
3. The media
   are those examples of mass communication which have come to be a distinct group of their own.
   We are going to discuss these in chapter 5, and say something about what they have in common and how they communicate with us. Examples of these are radio, television, cinema, newspapers and magazines.
   These media are also distinctive in the way that they may include a number of forms of communication. For example, television offers words, pictures and music.
   Again, the term ‘media’ often identifies those means of communication which are based on technology that makes a bridge between the communicator and the receiver.
   
   

Comment

Some qualities of forms or media of communication are ‘built in’. So, something like speech is necessarily transient. There is no permanent record of what is said. A magazine, on the other hand, has the quality of storing what it communicates: there is a permanent record on the page and we can go back to the commmunication any time we want to.

Some qualities of forms or media of communication are imposed. For example, cartoons, whether in a newspaper or on television, would probably be described as funny, but they don’t have to be. Serious cartoon films have been made. Commercial interests and film-makers have imposed a habit of using the medium in a particular way.

To take another example, we tend to think of radio as a broadcast medium. But this quality is also imposed, and is not a natural consequence of the technology of radio. Setting aside problems of crowded airwaves, there is no technical reason why radio should not be used by us for exchange of messages, as much as for transmission. Radio telephones are of course such a use, but we think of them as telephones not as a form of radio.

All forms or media of communication extend the power of our senses. All the communication that we give or receive must pass through our five senses, especially those of sight and hearing. This is true even when we use some piece of technology to aid our communication. A public address system extends the range of the human voice. A tape recording extends our ability to communicate over distances, or even through time. It can be carried from place to place and can be kept for many years. Computers are interesting because they are also extending human powers such as that of memory. A computer never forgets what it has been ‘told’, and can do the same job over and over again.

Most means of communication are intentional. That is to say, someone created them with the intention of communicating a message. This could include even unusual examples such as a church spire. It can be argued that this is intended to draw attention to the building, to its function and to a religion.

However, it is important to recognize that messages and meanings can also be understood in some cases where the means of communication is used unintentionally. For example, every day we deal with a flood of messages about our environment. Neighbours may not intend to tell us about their activity when they are using a lawnmower. But of course we do take a message about what they are doing and where they are from the sound of the lawnmower.

In chapter 2 we will see that this question of intention can be particularly important when understanding people’s non-verbal messages. They may send these to us unintentionally.

1.2 Communication makes connections

In everyday experience we find that communication is something which makes connections.

The connections are made between one person and another, or between one group of people and another. Sometimes the connection is immediate, as when we talk face to face. Sometimes it is ‘delayed’, as when advertisers communicate with us through street posters. But still a connection is being made, mainly through what we have called forms or media.

What flows through the connection are the ideas, beliefs, opinions and pieces of information that are the material and the content of communication. Our television set links us with the world at large through news programmes. Speech links us with each other.

But bear in mind the fact that being able to speak to someone doesn’t mean that we can get across what we want to say. Having made the connection, we then have to learn how to use it to the best of our ability.

1.3 Communication is an activity

We experience communication as an activity.

It is something that we do, something that we make, and something that we work on when we receive it from others. In this sense, communication is not just about speech, but about speaking and listening; not just about photography, but about photographing and viewing photographs.

When we are talking to someone, we are actively engaged in making sense of what the other person is saying, as much as talking ourselves. For the same reason, it isn’t true to say that watching television is passive. On the contrary, just as a group of people have been actively engaged in putting a programme together, so we are actively engaged in making sense of the programme.

1.4 Communication is learnt

Communicating is something that we learn to do.

In fact, we not only learn how to communicate, but we also use communication to learn how to communicate. This is what is happening in schools and colleges at the moment. It is what is happening as you read this book – we hope.

Our earliest experiences as babies include others talking and gesturing to us. We learn how to do the same thing, by practice and trial and error. There are some people who believe that we are born with some basic skills which help us learn how to talk and to understand what we see. Nevertheless, most of our co...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures and Table
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: What Is Communication?
• Chapter 2: Interpersonal Communication
• Chapter 3: Communication In Groups
• Chapter 4: Communication In Organizations
• Chapter 5: Mass Communication
• Chapter 6: Communication and Media Skills
• Glossary of Communication Terms
• Resources List for Communication Studies