The nature of communication process

Language is one of the means of communication, the process by which people exchange information or express their thoughts and feelings. Real-life communication is always situational. It happens under certain conditions, at a particular time in a particular place and includes verbal (language) and non-verbal (eye contact, body language, gestures, mime, and face expression) medium. Communicators’ activity connected with the verbal medium of communication is called speech activity. Communicators or interlocutors involved in communication process (at least two) exchange their ideas in a certain situation, with a certain motive or reason why to start and/or continue communication, choosing the appropriate channel of communication - spoken and/or written.

The first interlocutor has to initiate communication, to start it having some message in his/her mind. This message is produced either orally (as an utterance) or in a written form (as a text). If the production is oral, the sender of the message is the speaker, who has something to say/ask/inform another interlocutor. If the production is written, the sender of the message is the writer, who initiates communication via writing a letter, SMS, e-mail, note, article, etc. with the purpose of information, sharing ideas, conveying their thoughts, asking somebody about something. Both the speaker and the writer produce speech, thus the skills of speaking and writing are called productive. While producing the message they have in their mind, both the speaker and the writer have to encode it into some language code, in this sense the two initiators of communication may be called encoders.

The second interlocutor has to decode the message sent after receiving it, to react on something that was heard or read. He/she should share some common assumptions of the world with the sender (the same language code, appropriate level of language proficiency, acquaintance with cultural surroundings and the subject matter of the message, etc.) The receiver of the oral information is the listener, whereas a written text is received by the reader. Thus, listening and reading skills are called receptive.

Modern methodology subscribes to the idea that message comprehension is as much active process as message sending. The receivers’ job used to be considered a passive one, when the listener or the reader should only open their minds and let the meaning of the text comprehended pour in, in other words, they soak up the information given like a sponge. In reality the process is much more complicated. Not all the meaning in the text actually gets into the reader’s / listener’s mind. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the receivers will understand everything they listen to or read as it depends on their experience, motivation, language competence on the one hand, and the senders’ ability to be clearly understood, on th e other.

Communication is a two-way process, which is based on the cooperative principle. Without cooperation, human interaction would be far more difficult and counterproductive. As phrased by Paul Grice, who introduced the principle, it states, "Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged." The cooperative principle can be divided into four maxims, called the Gricean maxims, which are the guidelines for how to communicate successfully. The presumptions state what we as listeners/readers can rely on and as speakers/writers exploit.

The first maxim is the maxim of quality. It contains a demand to be truthful in your messages and responses and not to say anything for which you lack adequate evidence. The second is the maxim of quantity with its demand to make conversation/communication just as informative and clear as required, correlated with the current purposes of the exchange. The third principle is the maxim of relation. The participant’s contribution should be relevant to the interaction and indicate any way that it is not. The fourth principle is the maxim of manner. People should avoid obscurity and ambiguity in their communication, be clear understood, brief and orderly. In this way the communication will be interesting and memorable for the interlocutors.

Grice’s theory is often disputed with the argument that cooperative conversation, as with most social behaviour, is culturally determined. Therefore, the Gricean maxims and the cooperative principle cannot be universally applied due to intercultural differences. However, it is a big advantage for English language teaching as it depicts how people should normally behave in English conversation and in interaction as a whole.

Дата добавления: 2017-01-13