Michael Hole

Ball State University

The Center for Information & Communication Sciences
10/15/2013
The Complexities of Human Communication
Introduction

To the blind eye, communication would seem like a relevantly easy concept to define.

Most would imply and define human communication as talking to another person. However, that

only covers a minute part of human communication. I would define human communication as a

circular, irreversible, constant interaction of information, values, and ideas, verbally or

nonverbally, between two or more people.

The Process

First, communication is a process. According to Nitcavic (2013), “Communication is not

something that one person does to another. Communication is a continuous, ever-changing,

circular, process of interaction” (p. 7). This interactional process involves two or people, trying

to deliver a message through a channel in a certain context or environment. According to

Nitcavic (2013), the channel refers to the means by which the message gets from the sender to

the receiver. The context, or environment, is the place or situation in which the communication

occurs and includes the physical context, social context, the number of people involved,

relationship of participants, surrounding events, rituals, and the noise (pg. 10). There are two

main was to communicate a message. Verbal elements (content), but also nonverbal elements

(delivery), this means what the speakers says and how they say it effects how the message in

interpreted from the receiver.

Verbal Communication

Verbal communication is any message sent through language. The channel or medium of

the message does not matter. Verbal communication can be a face to face interaction, over the

phone, through email, and text message just as long as language is involved. Verbal

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communication is more of a straight forward form of communication, because the language you

use helps the receiver decode the message. However, the language the participants in the

interaction chose to use will shape the interpretation of the interaction. Language can be

arbitrary, for example if the participants are discussing a game of football and the receiver does

not know the names of the individual positions on the field, it would be confusing for the sender

of the information to use the actual position names. Instead of saying the Quarterback, the sender

of the information may choose to say “they guy that throws the ball or hands the ball off to other

players.”

Nonverbal Communication

The second way a message can be sent is nonverbally. Nonverbal communication is a

process that must be done in person and is constant. Nonverbal communication is based on the

body posture, gestures, face, smells, and anything that does not use language in human

communicates. It is constant, because our bodies are always in action, other people can look as

us to gain information about us. If a sender is trying to deliver a persuasive message in business,

but has droopy eyes, is wearing raggedy clothes, and smells bad, the receiver will not decode that

“persuasive” message as persuasive, due to the poor nonverbal communication. Also, nonverbal

communication may to help assist verbal communication. For example, if you are again trying to

describe the Quarterback on the field, you may point directly to the player in that position, or

when you say, “the guy that throws the ball or hands the ball off to other player,” literally do a

throwing motion to better emphasize the point.

The Complexities

This interaction communication process is complex due to sender and receiver, but also

the noise and environment in which the process takes place. According to Nitcavic (2013),

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“Noise is anything that interferes with the process. Noise, may be external or internal to the

receiver” (pg. 10). Having a business conversation at a concert, on a golf course, or in a

conference room will all be different even though it is still a business conversation. The

environment shapes the meaning and understanding of both participants. Every environment has

different psychological noise that determines the outcome of the interaction. Noise can be

external, such as temperature in the room, the lighting, décor, other individuals, etc. It can be

internal, such as the perception or goal the sender and receiver brought prior to the interaction.

Another example is if one of the individuals is feeling ill or is having troubles with their personal

life. All of these factors hinder the effectiveness of the message traveling across the channel. The

receiver must shift through all of the clutter of noise to receive the message, attaching meaning

and understanding to the message, and then communicate back to the original sender.

Conclusion

To the blind eye, communication is a simple concept. However, to an aware and educated

individual it is a very complex and difficult to fully understand its complexities. Human

communication is almost impossible to precisely define, because every interaction may be

completely different based on a number of factors. According to Affi, Anderson, and Guerrero

(2011), “Activity or inactivity, words or silence, all have message value: they influence others

and these others, in turn, cannot not respond to these communications and thus are themselves

communicating” (p. 13). The only true thing we can infer about communication is that the

process is continuous, ever-changing, interactional, irreversible, and based perception of the

communication participants.

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References

Afifi, W., Anderson, A., Guerrero, L. (2011). Close encounters: Communication in

relationships. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.

Nitcavic, R. (2013). Fundamental of public communication. Plymouth, Michigan: Hayden-

McNeil.