Understanding Communication

• Communication involves expressing, interpreting, and coordinating messages to create shared meaning, achieve social goals, manage personal identity, and maintain relationships.

Communication Perspectives

• Messages are verbal and nonverbal behaviors to which meaning is assigned.
• Encoding is translating thoughts and feelings into words and nonverbal cues.
• Decoding is interpreting another's message.
• Feedback indicates how a message was interpreted.
• Canned plans are mental scripts for creating messages based on past successes.
• Scripts are specific texts for particular situations.
• Communication context includes physical, social, historical, psychological, and cultural factors.
• Physical context involves location, environment like temperature/lighting/noise, and participant proximity.
• Social context is the nature of relationships between participants.
• Historical context is the background of previous communication.
• Psychological context includes moods and feelings of participants.
• Cultural context includes beliefs, values, orientations, assumptions, and rituals.
• Intrapersonal communication is internal and doesn't involve others.
• Interpersonal communication involves informal conversations among a few people.
• Small group communication occurs when participants solve a specific problem.

The Communication Process

• The Communication Process involves message production, interpretation, and interaction coordination to achieve shared meaning.
• Channels are routes for transmitting messages.
• Face-to-face communication uses verbal and nonverbal cues.
• Online communication uses verbal and some nonverbal cues, lacking movement, touch, and gestures.
• Media richness refers to the amount and types of information transmitted via a channel.
• Synchronicity is the immediacy of feedback allowed by a channel.
• Interference, or noise, disrupts shared meaning physically or psychologically.
• Physical noise includes environmental distractions.
• Psychological noise includes internal thoughts/feelings.
• Semantic noise involves symbol-caused distractions.
• The Model of the Communication Process illustrates communication between two people:
• Sender encodes messages based on experience.
• Receiver decodes messages based on their experience.
• Feedback indicates message understanding.
• Context permeates the process.
• Noise can occur at any point, affecting meaning.
• The process is more complex with more people.

Communication Principles

• Communication enhances self-image.
• Communication fulfills social needs.
• Communication develops relationships.
• Communication allows information exchange.
• Communication influences others.
• Communication is a continuous process.
• Communication is irreversible.
• Communication is situated within contexts.
• Communication is a measure of emotional temperature.
• Trust is reliance, dependence, and faith in a partner's goodwill.
• Intimacy is emotional closeness, acceptance, and disclosure.
• Spontaneous expressions are spoken without much thought.
• Scripted messages are learned from past experiences.
• Constructed messages are carefully thought out.
• Culture shapes beliefs, values, symbols, and behaviors of a group.
• Culture significantly impacts perception, verbal, and nonverbal processes.

Nonverbal Communication

• Nonverbal communication uses body, voice, space, time, and appearance.
• Nonverbal communication emphasizes, substitutes for, or contradicts verbal messages.
• Nonverbal communication is inevitable.
• Nonverbal communication conveys emotions.
• Nonverbal communication is multi-channeled.
• Nonverbal communication can be ambiguous.
• Kinesics interprets body motions.
• Gestures convey or replace verbal messages and can be illustrators/emblems/adaptors.
• Eye contact/gaze indicates how we look at others.
• Facial expressions communicate emotions.
• Posture indicates body position.
• Haptics interprets touch, which varies by preference/family/culture/context.
• Paralanguage is the non-verbal part of speech, including pitch/volume/rate/quality/intonation/pauses.
• Proxemics is the use of space: personal, territorial, and acoustic.
• Chronemics is the interpretation of time usage, involving monochronic or polychronic orientations.
• Physical appearance communicates through clothing, body art, and grooming.
• Individuals form first impressions based on appearance.
• Mediated Communication and Media Richness involve transmitting information through channels.
• Face-to-face communication is the richest channel because it allows for verbal/nonverbal cues and physical context.
• Leaner channels increase misunderstanding.
• Nonverbal messages should be consciously monitored, aligned with purpose, adapted to situations, and free of distractions.
• Interpret nonverbal cues considering individual, cultural, and situational differences.
• Consider each message in context, and use perception checking.

Organizing Your Speech

• Identify main points as complete sentences that present the central ideas of the speech to develop the body.
• Limit main points to help audience retention.
• List ideas relating to the goal and group related points together.
• Eliminate complicated ideas or those already understood by the audience.
• Select a main point pattern from time/narrative/topical/logical order options.
• Write a one- or two-sentence thesis statement that summarizes the speech and previews the main points.
• An effective introduction is 10% of the speech length and includes:
  • Attention-getting with startling statements, rhetorical questions, stories, jokes, personal references, quotations or actions.
  • Suspense generates uncertainty.
• Establish relevance and credibility.
• State the thesis.
• The conclusion should summarize the goal and main points.
• A clincher statement provides a sense of closure using vivid imagery or a call to action.

Delivery

• Public speaking apprehension is fear experienced when anticipating or giving a speech.
• Symptoms vary and include physical/emotional/cognitive reactions.
• Anxiety occurs during the anticipation, confrontation, and adaptation phases.
• Managing apprehension involves Communication Orientation Motivation (COM) where the speaker focuses on the content; visualization, systematic desensitization which gradually exposes speakers to increasingly frightening events, cognitive restructuring which utilizes positive self-talk, and skills training.
• Use a conversational style to connect with the audience.
• As a speaker, vary pitch/volume/rate/quality to be intelligible and expressive.
• Articulation - shaping vocalized sounds to produce a word.
• Pronunciation - the form and accent of the syllables of a word.
• Accent - articulation, inflection, tone and speech habits.
• To be vocally expressive, use vocal variety while avoiding monotone deliveries and use pauses effectively.
• When speaking consider audience, topic, purpose, as well as avoiding extremes.
• Display careful posture with a controlled poise.
• Maintain eye contact to concentrate and gauge audience reaction.
• Use facial expressions to appear personable and sincere.
• Use gestures to emphasize words.
• Use purposeful motion.
• Delivery methods include: Impromptu (unrehearsed), Scripted (memorized or read), and Extemporaneous (researched and planned).
• Adapt to face-to-face/virtual environments using technology
  • Consider multiple and even unintended audiences.
  • Chose careful aids
  • Become proficient with technology.
  • Practice fundamentals.
• Rehearse by practicing the speech aloud
• Prepare notes by developing a keyword outline with delivery cues.