THE PROCESS OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is  a process between at least two people that begins when one person wants to communicate with another. Communication originates as mental images within a person who desires to convey those images to another.

 Mental images can include ideas, thoughts, pictures, and emotions.

The person who wants to communicate is called the sender.

·         To transfer an image to another person, the sender first must transpose or translate the images into symbols that receivers can understand. Symbols often are words but can be pictures, sounds, or sense information (e.g., touch or smell). The process of translating images into symbols is called encoding.

·         The receiver, the individual to whom the message is directed, attends to and perceives the incoming patterned information, identifying it as a specific language message. The receiver then decodes the message by constructing his or her own interpretations of the conventionalized meanings of the symbols.

·         As a result of interpretations, the receiver is influenced in some way.
And the last step in the process of communication is the is an intra-personal act .

 

·         The next level in the communication process is to transmit or communicate the message to a receiver. This can be done in many ways: during face-to-face verbal interaction, over the telephone, through printed materials (letters, newspapers, etc.), or through visual media (television, photographs). Verbal, written, and visual media are three examples of possible communication channels used to transmit messages between senders and receivers. Other transmission channels include touch, gestures, clothing, and physical distances between sender and receiver.

·         When a message is received by another person, a decoding process occurs. Just as a sender must encode messages in preparation for transmission through communication channels, receivers must sense and interpret the symbols and then decode the information back into images, emotions, and thoughts that make sense to them. When messages are decoded exactly as the sender has intended, the images of the sender and the images of the receiver match, and effective communication occurs.

·         The message is then transmitted – spoken or written so as to cross the space between the sender and receiver as a signal of patterned information.