Download Lecture 2: How do we communicate? The previous lecture

Aradhna Malik (PhD) International Business Communication Assistant Professor National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Phase II) Vinod Gupta School of Management Ministry of Human Resource Development Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Government of India Lecture 2: How do we communicate?
The previous lecture focused on the meaning of communication and how it has been
studied and used as a concept over time.
The following lecture will focus on how researchers have explained the process of
communication in different situations.
Models of Communication
Various models have been proposed by theorists over centuries to describe the process
of communication.
Aristotle (330 B.C. )
One of the earliest models that explains how we design what we say, was proposed by
Aristotle in 330 B.C. with reference to public speaking. To put it very simply, Aristotle
proposed a somewhat linear explanation for the process of communication. He said that
the Speaker designed a Speech for an Audience according to an Occasion with the
intention of Effecting a change in the thought and/ or behavior of the audience
(Sosnoski, undated).
i.e.
Occasion
Speaker -- Speech ----------------Audience  Effect on the audience
Aristotle emphasized that a balance between ethos, pathos, and logos resulted in the
desired effect on the audience. Ethos according to Aristotle, referred to the character or
basic value system of the speaker, which became evident in what the speaker said and
how he said it. Pathos, according to Aristotle, referred to the audience, and what they
felt and experienced during the speech, and what the speaker understood about what
the audience felt and experienced during the speech. Logos, according to Aristotle,
referred to the content of the speech, and highlighted the impact the words used by the
speaker had on the situation or occasion.
A perfect example demonstrating the Aristotelian model of communication is Mark
Antony’s speech in the Shakespearean epic, Julius Caesar.
“ANTONY
Friends,
Romans,
countrymen,
lend
me
your
ears;
I
come
to
bury
Caesar,
not
to
praise
him.
The
evil
that
men
do
lives
after
them;
The
good
is
oft
interred
with
their
bones;
So
let
it
be
with
Caesar.
The
noble
Brutus
Hath
told
you
Caesar
was
ambitious:
Aradhna Malik (PhD) International Business Communication Assistant Professor National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Phase II) Vinod Gupta School of Management Ministry of Human Resource Development Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Government of India If
it
were
so,
it
was
a
grievous
fault,
And
grievously
hath
Caesar
answer'd
it.
Here,
under
leave
of
Brutus
and
the
rest-For
Brutus
is
an
honourable
man;
So
are
they
all,
all
honourable
men-Come
I
to
speak
in
Caesar's
funeral.
He
was
my
friend,
faithful
and
just
to
me:
But
Brutus
says
he
was
ambitious;
And
Brutus
is
an
honourable
man.
He
hath
brought
many
captives
home
to
Rome
Whose
ransoms
did
the
general
coffers
fill:
Did
this
in
Caesar
seem
ambitious?
When
that
the
poor
have
cried,
Caesar
hath
wept:
Ambition
should
be
made
of
sterner
stuff:
Yet
Brutus
says
he
was
ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man. ….”
Source:
http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/julius_caesar/10/.
Retrieved September 26, 2012.
And the speech goes on with repetitions of “Brutus is an honorable man” timed to
perfection!
A videographic representation of this speech can be found in the following clips from the
movie, Julius Caesar.
The
clips
have
been
downloaded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aO89Elkcx4&feature=relmfu,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNWvgEaMJ9g&feature=relmfu.
from
and
In this speech, Mark Antony (Shakespeare through Mark Antony’s character) builds
ethos, and uses logos to play on pathos in the audience. And the result is that, in a
matter of minutes, the very audience that was convinced that Brutus killed Caesar
because Caesar put his own ambition before the safety and stability of the Roman
empire, turn around, and become convinced that Brutus was a traitor, and that Caesar
died a noble death as a martyr for Rome! Such is the power of a balance of ethos,
pathos, and logos in public communication.
In 1927, Harold Dwight Lasswell proposed another model of communication that was
very similar to the Aristotelian model of communication.
Aradhna Malik (PhD) International Business Communication Assistant Professor National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Phase II) Vinod Gupta School of Management Ministry of Human Resource Development Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Government of India Lasswell’s model of communication
Lasswell proposed a simplified linear model of the process of communication. Lasswell
suggested that especially in the case of political propaganda,
"Who says what in which channel to whom with what effect?" (Lasswell, 1958) is what
determines the impact of a propaganda event.
The primary reason why this model was not considered complete was because it did not
take into account the role of noise on the impact of the message or the role of feedback
on future messages.1
In 1948, Shannon and Weaver proposed a mathematical theory of communication.
Source: Shannon, C.E. (July, October 1948). A mathematical theory of communication.
The Bell System Technical Journal, 27. 379-423, 623-656.
This model addressed one of the main limitations of the model proposed by Lasswell.
Shannon and Weaver’s model included the impact of noise in the manner in which the
final message was received and acted upon.
According to this model, The Information Source designs a message and transmits it
through a transmitter (or channel), after which the message is acted upon by the noise
in the environment. This combination of the message and the noise affecting it is
received by the receiver who further acts as a channel to transmit the message to its
destination. It is quite likely that the transmitter of the message lies within the
information source (vocal cords in the case of oral communication), and the receiver of
the message lies within the ultimate destination (auditory apparatus in the case of oral
communication). All this model highlights is the impact of external noise or
environmental interference or disturbance on the signal that is being transmitted.
Shannon and Weaver’s model, like Aristotle’s and Lasswell’s model, assumes
communication to be a linear process and does not take into account the role of
feedback in the design or transmission or interpretation of the message.
Aradhna Malik (PhD) International Business Communication Assistant Professor National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Phase II) Vinod Gupta School of Management Ministry of Human Resource Development Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Government of India Another model of communication that is relevant to the modern day study of
communication in management settings was proposed by Katz and Lazarsfeld in 1955.
Katz and Lazarsfeld Two-Step model of public influence
According to this model, the process of public communication had two stages. The first
stage dealt with the drafting of a message and transmission of the message to the mass
media. The second stage dealt with the reception of the message through the hubs in
these mass media, i.e., the opinion leaders. Katz and Lazarsfeld proposed that since
the opinion leaders formed the interface between the mass media and the common
public, the interpersonal relationship between the opinion leaders and the mass of
common people they represented and spoke to determined what effect a message had
and how much that message affected the people it was meant for. So, according to this
model, the interpersonal relationship between the opinion leader and the mass of
common people became a channel of communication instead of the medium that was
used to transmit the message (Katz, 1957). So, according to this model, the common
public will listen to whatever is being said, as long as someone they respect says it,
irrespective of the channel that is used to say it. They will believe a particular piece of
information only because a particular person is saying it, whether the person addressed
them over the radio, or in person, or (applying the model to modern day communication
channels) via the internet. e.g. well known media personalities are invited to serve as
experts in specialized forums they may not have had very much formal training in.
Lasswell’s model of communication
H.D. Lasswell proposed a rather simplistic model of communication. Like Aristotle’s and
Katz and Lazarsfeld’s model, Lasswell’s model of communication too was linear.
According to this model, the impact communication has depends on





Who says? (Sender of the message)
What? (Content of the message)
Through which channel?
To whom? (Receiver)
With what effect?
This model attempts to map the path of communication. According to Lasswell,
communication effects the following:
1. “Surveillance of the environment
2. Correlation of the different components of society
3. Cultural transmission between generations”
Westley and Maclean’s model of communication
Aradhna Malik (PhD) International Business Communication Assistant Professor National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Phase II) Vinod Gupta School of Management Ministry of Human Resource Development Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Government of India Westley and Maclean addressed one of the major limitations in all the above mentioned
theories and proposed a conceptual model of communication. According to them, the
messages sent by the sender only serve to add to the environment the receiver of the
message is in. The receiver then decides what to respond to and what not to respond
to. Similarly, when the receiver of the message responds, this response sent by the
receiver of the initial message serves to add to environment of the sender of the initial
message. The sender decides what in the environment is worthy of being responded to
and how. So, in effect, the model proposed by Westley and Maclean builds exclusively
on the role of feedback from the environment (Westley & Maclean, 1955).
Berlo’s SMCR Model of Communication
In 1960, Berlo proposed a model of communication that focused on the importance of
context in the framing, transmission, and interpretation of messages. Berlo proposed
that the context surrounding the Source, Message, Channel, and Receiver determined
how a message was framed, what accompanied it, what it lost and what it gained during
transmission, and how it was received and finally interpreted at the receiver’s end
(Stead, 1972). According to this model, the communication skills, knowledge, attitudes,
social system and culture of the Source influence the way the message is encoded, i.e.
the tone of the message, the directness or indirectness of the message, the desired
goal of the message and so on. The Message thus encoded, acquires a unique shape
with respect to its content, elements, treatment of its elements, structure and code, i.e.
the language that is used, the words that are selected, the placement of the different
parts of the message, the buffers used between difficult parts of the message and so
on. This message, then travels through a Channel or medium of communication, i.e.
auditory, tactile, visual, olfactory or gustatory, and in recent times, digital. The channel
through which the message passes also adds some flavor to it in terms of the sender’s
perception of the effectiveness and appropriateness of the channel, and the receiver’s
interpretation of the same channel. The original content by now is loaded with all this
context it has passed through, and is now received, complete with the sender’s
attributes, the unique attributes acquired by the message during its treatment, and the
attributes of the channel it has passed through. The Receiver now receives the
message and interprets in within his/ her own context which involves, the receiver’s
communication skills, knowledge, attitudes, social system, and culture which determine
how the receiver perceives and interprets the attributes the original words that the
message has come with and the meaning the receiver attributes to the content that is
received.
The following example illustrates how context can affect the interpretation of a
message.
A had just returned to India after spending several years in the United States. The
administrative staff at her workplace in India had many years of experience in their
respective areas of expertise. Their only limitation was that they had just started using
computers for communication after having worked exclusively with paper and handwritten documents for decades. Within a few days of joining, A completed all the
Aradhna Malik (PhD) International Business Communication Assistant Professor National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Phase II) Vinod Gupta School of Management Ministry of Human Resource Development Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Government of India formalities including approving the proof for her business cards. A month later, during
the visit of some guests to the Institute, A realized that she had still not received her
business cards. She attributed the delay to the festival season, and the workload
towards the end of the academic semester. She thought that calling up the person
responsible for getting her cards made, a Mr. V, would indicate a sense of great
urgency, which really was not the case. So, she decided to use email to send her
message. She drafted a very polite email to Mr. V, in which she included all the details
including the date on which she had approved the proof of the business cards and
requested that the status of the business cards be checked on. An hour later, she
received a phone call from Mr. V asking her if he could come over to her office. Mr. V
sounded very upset as a result of which A was confused. Five minutes later, Mr. V was
in A’s office, and quite visibly quite upset. When A asked him the reason, he said that
he had felt very uncomfortable because A had filed a complaint against him for such a
small thing. When A probed further, she discovered that Mr. V had perceived the email
as a form of written communication, which in turn was a permanent record against him.
He would have felt a lot more comfortable with something less threatening like a
personal visit or a phone call of which there would be no record. Now A realized that
drafting the message with all the details (to ensure that Mr. V would find it easier to
locate the paperwork associated with her request) and sending it through a channel that
she perceived as a means to give him a chance to respond at his own convenience
ended up being interpreted very very differently by Mr. V.
Dance’s Helical model of communication
In 1967, Dr. Frank E.X. Dance proposed a model of communication that added another
dimension to the models already being used to explain the process of communication.
Dance (1967) proposed that communication is an interactive, dynamic process. He
explained that the exchange of messages starts as a simple one on one transaction and
in and through the process of this exchange it grows and evolves into something much
larger than it was originally intended to be. The process of communication according to
Dance (1967) is continuous and dynamic, and in and through this continuity, the scope
of the message and its interpretation increases and covers a lot more ground than the
sender or receiver of the message originally intended (Dance, 1967).
Dance’s theory has been used extensively to explain the interactions between
customers and service providers where the impact of advertising and persuading
customers to buy products rests exclusively on the shape this helix takes and the
ground it covers both on the consumer’s and seller’s side (Anderson & Wanninger,
1996).
Conclusion:
The above mentioned theories illustrate how the study of the process of communication
has evolved over the years. The explanations provided above are neither exhaustive
nor absolute. They are only reflective of the diversity of research that has shaped
Aradhna Malik (PhD) International Business Communication Assistant Professor National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Phase II) Vinod Gupta School of Management Ministry of Human Resource Development Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Government of India modern day study of communication, and are intended to serve as food for thought for
those who are interested in probing more.
Questions:
1. Compare and contrast the different ways in which theorists have explained the
process of communication.
2. How do these theories relate to real life experiences in the field of management?
---------------------References
Anderson, C. & Wanninger, L. A. (1996). Computer mediated advertising: Consumers
and
brands.
Retrieved
September
30,
2012
from
http://misrc.umn.edu/workingpapers/fullPapers/1996/9603_080197.pdf.
Dance, F. E. X. (1967), Human Communication Theory, New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Katz, E. (1957). The two-step flow of communication: Up-to-date report on an
hypothesis. Anneberg School for Communication Departmental Papers (ASC).
Retrieved September 26, 2012, from http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/271/ .
Katz, E. (1987). Communications research since Lazarsfeld. Anneberg School for
Communication Departmental Papers (ASC). Retrieved September 26, 2012, from
http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/246/.
Lasswell, H. D. (1958). Communications as an emerging discipline. Audio Visual
Communication Review, 6(4). 245-254.
Lasswell, H.D. (1948) in E. Katz (1987). Communications research since Lazarsfeld.
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model.
Retrieved
September
http://communicationtheory.org/lasswells-model/.
26,
2012,
from
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Winston, Inc.
Aradhna Malik (PhD) International Business Communication Assistant Professor National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Phase II) Vinod Gupta School of Management Ministry of Human Resource Development Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Government of India 1
Lasswell’s model. Retrieved September 26, 2012, from http://communicationtheory.org/lasswells-model/.