Communication 101

Elements of Human Communication

• Human beings have developed a complex system of communication that is open and combines symbols freely.
• Animal communication is limited to specific situations and conditions, while human communication has unlimited potential.
• Communication is not exclusively linguistic, and different cultures use various nonverbal communication systems such as proxemics, kinesthetics, gestures, and personal presentation.
• Sciences, with the aim of helping individuals and governments or for scientific purposes, have studied social communication and the ways in which individuals use it.
• The circuit model of communication, which indicates the communicative circuit and its participants, was developed more than 100 years ago and has been subject to criticism for its simplicity.
• The circuit of communication consists of the sender, receiver, channel, code, message, situation/context, and effects.
• The sender is the person, group, or institution that emits a message and employs some type of code to produce it.
• The sender can also become a receiver when they become passive and listen to messages.
• The receiver is the agent that decodes the message based on the code used.
• Other elements of communication include the channel, which is the physical medium through which a message is transmitted, and the code, which is the system of signs or signals used to transmit a message.
• The message is the content of the transmission, while the situation/context is the extralinguistic environment where the communicative act takes place.
• The effects of communication are the consequences of what messages do or do not do to the receiver, such as informing or misinforming them.