Intro to Communication

Did anyone ever play the "silent treatment" game as a child? You know the one:  Friend A doesn't like something you did or said, so Friend A (with help from Friend B or C maybe) vowed never to speak to you again.  I remember getting the silent treatment from my older siblings when I was a child. That was the WORST POSSIBLE TORTURE they could dole out. At first I tried really hard to ignore it--to act indifferent. But it wasn't long before a wider range of emotions took over. Sadness, anger, betrayal, loss...grief--and every emotion in between. I remember getting the silent treatment from a group of girls in elementary school. The pain I felt on the playground I still feel today when I think of it.    Adults (as well as children) have used the silent treatment in virtually every society as a powerful TOOL to express displeasure and to gain control.  Senator John McCain writes about the "silent treatment" when he was a Navy Pilot. He was shot down over North Vietnam and held as a POW for over 6 years, often in solitary confinement. He describes the importance of communicating:

"The punishment for communicating could be severe, and a few POWs, having been caught and beaten for their efforts, had their spirits broken as their bodies were battered. Terrified of a return trip to the punishment room, they would lie still in their cells when their comrades tried to tap them up on the wall. Very few would remain uncommunicative for long. To suffer all this alone was less tolerable than torture. Withdrawing in silence from the fellowship of other Americans..was to us the approach of death."




Class today was an introduction to basic communication principles. Isn't it interesting how we communicate in different ways? What is a strength to some is a weakness to others -  And isn't it interesting that when pressure is applied (your grade depends on it, you only have 3 minutes to complete, etc), how communication sometimes breaks down when you need it to be the most clear? 

I was thinking about the basic human needs we all learned when we were in 5th grade science: 1. Food. 2. Clothing. 3. Shelter. We all took one human need for granted--it didn't even make that list. The fourth need is our absolute need to communicate.

We need communication to SURVIVE, not just THRIVE.

I'll give you another poignant example: Frederick II, (emperor of Germany from 1196 to 1250), wanted to know what language was innate in humans, so he took 100 infants from his kingdom away fro their mothers (can you imagine?!), roughly the same age--and used them in what one medieval historian called "one of his most significant, if inhumane, experiments."

"He bade foster mothers and nurses to suckle the children, to bathe and wash them but in no way to prattle with the, for he wanted to learn whether they would speak the Hebrew language, which was the oldest, or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perhaps the language of their parents, of whom they had been born. But he labored in vain because all of the children died. For they could not live without the petting and joyful faces and loving words of their foster mothers."

ALL of our basic needs are either directly connected to, or facilitated by communication. The ability to forge relationships is fundamental for human survival and success. It's as vital as the water and food our bodies must have in order to live.

According to a popular university Interpersonal Communication university textbook "Looking Out, Looking In," Medical researchers have identified a wide range of health threats that result from a lack of close relationships:

• A lack of social relationships jeopardizes coronary health to a degree that rivals cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, bloop lipids, obesity, and a lack of physical activity. 
• Socially isolated people are four times more susceptible to the common cold than those who have active social networks.  
• Social isolates are 2-3 times more likely to die prematurely than are those with strong social ties. 
• Divorced men die from heart disease, cancer, and strokes at double the rate of married men. Three times as many die from hypertension; five times as many commit suicide; 7 times as many die from cirrhosis of the liver, and 10 times as many die from tuberculosis. 
• The rate of all types of cancer is as much as 5 times higher for divorced men and women, compared to their married counterparts.  
• The likelihood of death increases when a close relative dies by more than five times greater.

Personal communication is essential for our well being. Our need to communicate, and our effectiveness at it can determine so many things. It can enhance our physical health. It can maintain our emotional well-being. It shapes our self-concept. It satisfies our need for attention and affection.


I have a theory - that there is a spiritual component to this need to communicate. In the spirit world, we lived with families, with our Father in Heaven...when we remove that communication, our spirit could literally die.  

Consider this scripture: When Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden, what was the first thing God said? Genesis Ch 2:18 - "And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone." What I used to think that meant was that men were just no good without the women in their lives. :-) Now while that may be completely true (and I'll be glad to provide you with empirical examples...), it goes deeper than that. Man (meaning all of us) was created to communicate with others. We need others to survive and thrive.


All basic needs are either directly connected to or facilitated by communication.  The ability to forge relationships is fundamental for human survival and success. 

MOVING ON.. let’s define communication. According to the Interpersonal Communication Textbook I referred to earlier, the "official definition" is that Communication is a transactional process involving participants who occupy different but overlapping environments and create relationships thru the exchange of messages, many of which are affected by external, physiological and psychological noise. 

Or as I would put it:  Communication is a process of exchanging messages.  

Let's visualize the following scenario & then put some vocabulary to this process.  A guy & a girl out on a date (not too hard to imagine here at BYUI). They're sitting at a table having dinner.  Think about ALL the different things that could be happening in this scenario, and how it could be impacting their communication!  The message or the information being transmitted could be anything from a non verbal look, to a "you look really nice tonight."  The sender/receiver is the guy and girl on a date. It could also be the waiter, and anyone else in this scenario.  The channel or the medium thru which the message passes could be a look, talking, a touch, or anything that can get a message across.  Noise is anything that disrupt the message transmission, and noise can be external (ie-loud music, cigarette smoke, kids interrupting, phones ringing, etc), physiological (biological factors-ie-illness, fatigue, hearing loss, etc), or psychological (forces within yourself.  Ie-prejudices, stress, etc).   The environment can be your physical location, or your fields or experience that affect understanding. However, environment is not just your physical surroundings.  More than that it is the individual realities.  We all live in different worlds.  We walk around in our own little “bubble,” made up of our past, our gender, our prejudices, our beliefs, etc.  Every message we receive and send passes through this bubble and is distorted by it. 

Example:  (to a guy).  Let’s say you and I are having a great conversation.  Except one problem:  You look just like a guy I dated in college, and he broke my heart—took it out and stomped on it.  So as I’m talking to you, I remember him.  No, that’s not true, but if it was, can you imagine how our communication might be affected?  Encoding and decoding happens throughout this whole process. When the sender of a message tries to put his thoughts into words that can be understood (Encoding: "Sally, I really like you."), the receiver of the message tries to make sense of the message received (Decoding: "He just said he really likes me? What does he mean by the word "like?" I mean, you can "like" your sister, is that what he's talking about?)

 

Each of us have our own special brand of communicating with others.  Dr. John Lund, a communication expert for decades once remarked that those who study the field only "get it right" about 40% of the time. If they're lucky. But it's still fascinating, and still worth studying. For all the things we don't get "right" all the time, here are some knowns about communication.

Communication Laws:   

1. Communication is continuous - it is constant.  
2. It is impossible not to communicate.   Take a moment and try not to communicate with me.  Go ahead, I dare you.  Go on!  Even when you are supposedly “not communicating,” you are speaking volumes.  You are using these things as your CHANNEL to try to NOT communicate with me.
3. Never assume someone is interpreting a message exactly the way you intend it. Communication is the science of “good enough.”  It is a very imprecise science. For example picture a dog in your mind. Go ahead. Ok, now this dog is in a house by a chair. Sitting by his master's chair. The chair is by the fireplace. Got those images in your mind?  Now let me get more specific. The dog? A chihuahua. The house is a 101 story apartment complex. The chair is a folding chair in a living room with a fireplace that hasn't been used in years. The master? A blind girl. How many times did your version of the dog, the house, the chair, and the master change?  Why didn’t we perceive all the same things?  We got the general idea right?  This is the science of “good enough.”  It’s not my words that determined what you envisioned…it was your own interpretations that you attached to it.  The exception to that rule is that when the Spirit is present – when the Holy Ghost is present, communication can be much more precise. 
4. Meanings are not in words, they are in people.  Words are merely symbols.  The meanings to those words are in us.  Consider how freely we use the word "love" for example. Do you really love football as much as your wife?  Of course not. The meanings are in the people who say them, and we become very good at interpreting what they mean.  
5. All messages have two dimensions:  CONTENT & RELATIONAL. Content:  The actual information being conveyed.  Relational:  the part that tells the listener how we feel about them, us, or the message.  This brings a HUGE gender difference:  Hey, I’m gonna help you all out here.  You are all gonna get a huge boost to your love life here, so pay attention!  MEN tend to pay attention to the content part of a message.  WOMEN tend to pay attention to the relational part of a message. 

Let it be a dance we do.
May I have this dance with you?
Through the good ties
And the bad times, too,
Let it be a dance.

Learn to follow, learn to lead,
Feel the rhythm, fill the need.
To reap the harvest, plant the seed.
And let it be a dance.

Morning star comes out at night,
Without the dark there is no light.
If nothing's wrong, then nothing's right.
Let it be a dance.

-Ric Masten