User:Disembodied Poetics/Communication

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Communication (from Latin communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is "an apparent answer to the painful divisions between self and other, private and public, and inner thought and outer word." As that definition indicates, communication is difficult to define in a consistent manner, because it is commonly used to refer to a wide range of different behaviors (broadly: "the transfer of information"), or to limit what can be included in the category of communication (for example, requiring a "conscious intent" to persuade). John Peters argues the difficulty of defining communication emerges from the fact that communication is both a universal phenomena (because everyone communicates), and a specific discipline of institutional academic study.

One possible definition of communication is the act of individuals or groups through the use of sufficiently mutually understood signs, symbols, and semiotic conventions.

History of Communication

Many histories of the study of communication, particularly ones that emerging from the rhetorical tradition, begin in Ancient Greece, evidenced succulently in Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg's introduction The Rhetorical Tradition, in which they argue that the development of rhetoric began in the 5th century inside of Greek democracy and probate courts. However, other scholars note that communication, rhetoric, and explicit reflection on how one communicates is evidenced in the work of Enheduanna, the Sumerian Priestess and Poet, who also has the distinction of being "the first named historical author." Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Brinkley argue that the focus on Greece as the starting point of the study of communication evidences a Western bias in understanding the history of communication, and functions to devalue the contribution of non-western sources.

Etymologically, the word "communication" emerges out of latin, was taken up by scholars translating the Bible into latin, and emerged as a major concept in its contemporary sense after it was passed into English in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Types of communication

Visual Communication

Digital Communication

Communication as academic discipline

Applied communication

Communication education

Electronic and digital media

Health communication

International and intercultural communication

Interpersonal communication

Family communication

Legal communication

Mass communication and media literacy

Mediated and dispute resolution

Organizational communication

Performance studies

Political communication

Public address

Public relations

Rhetorical criticism

Small group communication

Visual communication

Barriers to communication

Communication (originating from Latin commūnicātiōn-, commūnicātiō, referring to the act of sharing or imparting), and its etymological history connects it to concepts like "common", "commune", and "community"

is the collaborative process of constructing meaning between self and/or others within cultural contexts. (is this plagiarism? the definition offered in the book is "communication is the collaborative construction of meaning between self and others as it occurs within cultural contexts")

In Claude Shannon's and Warren Weaver's influential model, human communication was imagined to function like a telephone or telegraph. Accordingly, they conceptualized communication as involving discrete steps:

1. The formation of communicative motivation or reason.
2. Message composition (further internal or technical elaboration on what exactly to express).
3. Message encoding (for example, into digital data, written text, speech, pictures, gestures and so on).
4. Transmission of the encoded message as a sequence of signals using a specific channel or medium.
5. Noise sources such as natural forces and in some cases human activity (both intentional and accidental) begin influencing the quality of signals propagating from the sender to one or more receivers.
6. Reception of signals and reassembling of the encoded message from a sequence of received signals.
7. Decoding of the reassembled encoded message.
8. Interpretation and making sense of the presumed original message.

These elements are now understood to be substantially overlapping and recursive activities rather than steps in a sequence. For example, communicative actions can commence before a communicator formulates a conscious attempt to do so, as in the case of phatics; likewise, communicators modify their intentions and formulations of a message in response to real-time feedback (e.g., a change in facial expression). Practices of decoding and interpretation are culturally enacted, not just by individuals (genre conventions, for instance, trigger anticipatory expectations for how a message is to be received), and receivers of any message operationalize their own frames of reference in interpretation.

The scientific study of communication can be divided into:

• Information theory which studies the quantification, storage, and communication of information in general;
• Communication studies which concerns human communication;
• Biosemiotics which examines communication in and between living organisms in general.
• Biocommunication which exemplifies sign-mediated interactions in and between organisms of all domains of life, including viruses.

The channel of communication can be visual, auditory, tactile/haptic (e.g. Braille or other physical means), olfactory, electromagnetic, or biochemical. Human communication is unique for its extensive use of abstract language. Development of civilization has been closely linked with progress in telecommunication.