Overview
This lecture covers fundamental principles of communication, its integration into all life spheres, the needs it fulfills, its processual and learned nature, cultural influences, and its ethical implications.
Communication in All Areas of Life
- Communication is present in academic, professional, personal, and civic spheres, with significant overlap among them.
- Integrative learning connects communication skills to coursework, career goals, and civic responsibilities.
- Academic success is linked to communication skills like listening, presenting, and interpersonal interactions.
- Employers highly value communication abilities such as listening, concise messaging, and feedback.
- Communication forms, maintains, and ends relationships, requiring vocabulary and concepts for deeper understanding.
- Civic engagement depends on communication for participating in community and society, essential for democracy.
How Communication Meets Human Needs
- Communication addresses physical needs (well-being), instrumental needs (achieving goals), relational needs (relationships), and identity needs (self-presentation).
- Good communication skills enhance mental health, stress adaptation, and overall life satisfaction.
- Instrumental communication includes influencing others and compliance-gaining tactics like rewards, threats, expertise, liking, debt, altruism, and esteem.
- Relational communication helps initiate, maintain, and end relationships.
- Our identities are constructed and altered through communication with others.
Communication as a Process
- Communication is a continuous, dynamic process without clear beginnings or ends.
- Messages can be sent intentionally or unintentionally, and vary in conscious thought.
- Communication is irreversible; once sent, messages cannot be taken back.
- Communication is unrepeatable; contexts change so encounters cannot be exactly recreated.
Culture, Context, and Learned Communication
- Communication is influenced by cultural values and social context, affecting style and interpretation.
- Communication is learned and symbolic; meanings are assigned, not inherent in words.
- Rules and norms shape routines such as phatic communion, which establishes social bonds through scripted exchanges.
- Communication patterns differ by culture, language, and situation.
Communication Ethics
- Communication ethics involve reflecting on right and wrong actions in context.
- Ethical communication includes truthfulness, fairness, integrity, and respect for others.
- Ethical choices are often situational and not always clear-cut.
- Codes of ethics, like the NCA Credo, guide ethical practices across different contexts.
Key Terms & Definitions
- Integrative learning — Connecting learning across disciplines and life areas for practical understanding.
- Instrumental needs — Communication needs for accomplishing tasks and goals.
- Relational needs — Needs related to initiating, maintaining, or ending relationships through communication.
- Identity needs — The need to present oneself favorably to others.
- Phatic communion — Routine verbal exchanges intended to establish social bonds, not exchange meaning.
- Compliance gaining — Communication aimed at persuading others to act in a specific way.
Action Items / Next Steps