Motivation for Communicating

1). What is the motivation for studying communication?

2). What benefits does an understanding of communication give you in your personal or professional life?

3). Which of the definitions below in Table 2.1 comes closest to your own personal definition of communication?

4). Explain why you chose this particular definition?

Table 2.1 Definitions of Communication

Definition 1: Communication is a process of acting on information

Definition 2: "Communication is the discriminatory response of an organism to stimulus."

Definition 3: "Communication... is an effort after meaning,' a creative act imitated by man in which he seeks to discriminate and organize cues so as to orient himself in his environment and satisfy his changing needs."

Definition 4: "Speech communication is a human process through which we make sense out of the world and share that sense with others."

Definition 5: "In the main, communication has as its central interest those behavioral situation in which a source transmits a message to a receiver(s) with conscious intent to affect the latter's behaviors."

Definition 6: Communication is a process whereby people assign meanings to stimuli in order to make sense of the world.

Definition 7: Communication is "the transmission of information,ideas,emotions,skills,etc.. by the use of symbols-words, pictures,figures, graphs,etc."

Definition 8: Spoken symbolic interaction is the process by which people use words and other symbols to create meaning and to affect one another.

Definition 9: Nonverbal interaction is the unspoken, often unintentional behavior that accompanies verbal communication and helps us fully interpret its meaning.