Communication Skills (1+0)

2.1.5.Verbal Communication

The basis of communication is the interaction between people. Verbal communication is one way for people to communicate face-to-face. Some of the key components of verbal communication are sound, words, speaking, and language. At birth, most people have vocal cords, which produce sounds. As a child grows it learns how to form these sounds into words. Some words may be imitative of natural sounds, but others may come from expressions of emotion, such as laughter or crying. Words alone have no meaning. Only people can put meaning into words. As meaning is assigned to words, language develops, which leads to the development of speaking.The actual origin of language is subject to considerable speculation. Some theorists believe it is an outgrowth of group activities such as working together or dancing. Others believe that language developed from basic sounds and gestures.Over 3,000 languages and major dialects are spoken in the world today. The development of languages reflects class, gender, profession, age group, and other social factors. The huge variety of languages usually creates difficulties between different languages, but even within a single language there can be many problems in understanding.Through speaking we try to eliminate this misunderstanding, but sometimes this is a very hard thing to do. Just as we assume that our messages are clearly received, so we assume that because something is important to us, it is important to others. As time has proven this is not at all true. Many problems can arise is speaking and the only way to solve these problems is through experience.

Speaking can be looked at in two major areas: interpersonal and public speaking. Since the majority of speaking is an interpersonal process, to communicate effectively we must not simply clean up our language, but learn to relate to people. In interpersonal speaking, etiquette is very important. To be an effective communicator one must speak in a manner that is not offending to the receiver. Etiquette also plays an important role in an area that has developed in most all business settings: hierarchical communication. In business today, hierarchical communication is of utmost importance to all members involved. The other major area of speaking is public speaking. From the origin of time, it has been obvious that some people are just better public speakers than others. Because of this, today a good speaker can earn a living by speaking to people in a public setting. Some of the major areas of public speaking are speaking to persuade, speaking to inform, and speaking to inspire or motivate.

Every communication situation involves certain elements.

Communication models are visualization of the communication process. There are different models seeking to explain the process of communication. These models differ with each other. None can be said to be completely right or perfect. Some may be more useful than others. Some of the models are:

1)Aristotle, who gave a model of communication that includes three steps:

He emphasized the audience and suggested that the speech should be at the level of the audience.

2. Harold Hosswell, a political scientist has given a paradigm to communication in which he has summarized the whole field of communication in a nutshell to understand the following steps of communication.

Who say?

What?

Through which channel?

To whom?

With what effect?

‘who’ is related with communicator, ‘what’ is related with message or subject matter, the ‘channel’ indicates media, ‘to whom’ indicates the receiver and with what effect denotes change in behavior due to communication.

3. Shannon and Warren Weaver, presented a model of communication in mathematical formula to measure information flow and both of them emphasized that noise distracts the flow of information. They said that the ingredients in communication include:

4) Schramm gave a model - when he was working on mass communication and its effects on audience. He emphasized the senders and recivers experiences. His field model looked as follows. His emphasis was on how communication works

Sender’s field of experience

Here he introduced encode and decode as an important items in communication.

5)Berlo’s model - emphasized on persuasion that through communication we can persuade people as follows.

Encoding deficiency, gatekeepers, and interference are terms used with the S-M-C-R Model to describe some basic problem areas that are inherent in communications.

• Encoding deficiency relates mostly to the sender’s lack of communication skills and knowledge of the audience. This might involve using words or examples the receivers do not understand. A sender might refer to apiculture when beekeeping would have been understood. He or she might speak with a nasty, scolding tone that confuses the audience.
• Gatekeepers are people that control the media or other access to communication channels. For instance, an extension worker might have an important message about a livestock disease that threatens his district, but a warning message can only be broadcast on the radio if the radio station programmer allows it. Similarly, newspaper editors control what’s published in their newspaper.
• Interference is often a more physical problem to reaching a target audience. If an extension agent is allowed to voice an announcement over a local radio station, the receiver may not receive the message because of radio interference, or a baby crying so loudly that the farmer can’t hear the message.

6)Westty and Machean Model – This model has five elements:

Here the sender encodes the message which is passed through a channel and then decoded. Its meaning is drawn out after which the message is clear to the receiver.

7.Leagan’s Model – Leagan says that for a complete communication process six elements are essential. These are as follows:

8.Rogers and Shoemaker(1971). It is also called the SMCR model. It is an oversimplified, but useful model. It consists of:

An additional element, the ‘effects’ of communication could be added. The effects are changes in knowledge, attitude and oven behavior, as a result of technology.

9.Littererls Model

10.Dance’s Helical Model – The earliest model of communication were linear, their successors were circular, emphasizing the crucial factor of feedback in the communication process. Frank E.X.Dance in ‘A helical model of communication; (1967) commends the circular model as an advance upon the linear one but faults in on the grounds that it suggests that communication comes back full, circle, to exactly the same point from which it started, an assumption which is manifestly erroneous’. The helix or spiral model combines the desirable of the straight line and of the circle while avoiding the weakness of either.