Boru Simanjuntak

The importance of Human Communication

Many of us would like to be able to communicate effectively across several different situations. According to numerous research studies, for your entire life you have spent about 75 percent of each day engaged in communication. Therefore, you may be wondering why you need to study communication in the first place. There is a good reason: Quantity is no guarantee of quality. Given the number of divorces, unhappy workers, and ruptured parent-to-offspring relationships, quantity and frequency of communication are clearly no measure of how effectively people communicate with each other.

Among other things, communication has been linked to physical well-being. Stewart (1986) indicates that socially isolated people are more likely to die prematurely; divorced men die at double the normal rate from cancer, heart disease, and strokes, five times the normal rate from hypertension, five times the normal rate from suicide, seven times the normal rate from cirrhosis of the liver, and ten times the normal rate from tuberculosis. Cancer occurs five times more often in divorced men and women than in single men and women. Also, poor communication skills have been found to contribute to coronary heart disease, and the likelihood of death increases when a marriage partner dies.

Communication is also closely associated with one’s definition of self. Rosenberg (1979) relates the story of the “wild boy of Aveyron” who was raised by wolves. He developed no identity as a human being until he began to interact with humans. Individuals gain a sense of self-identity by being paid attention to and getting feedback from others. Also, a sense of identity and worth develops from comparing ourselves with others.

Social needs are also satisfied through interaction with others. Haslett (1984) found that infants and children have a strong motivation to communicate, and an innate capacity to understand interpersonal interaction, because they recognize that communicating is a means of establishing relationships. The child learns primarily from the mother how to interact and to adapt.

On-the-job communication is constantly cited as one of the most important skills in “getting ahead.” Muchmore and Galviri (1983) found that in a wide range of organizations, specific aspects of communication were indicated as having greatest importance. In the area of “speaking skills” they were: using words understood by others, pronunciation and grammar that do not alienate listeners; phrasing questions so as to obtain accurate information; explaining requirements to others; and organizing messages so others can understand them. In the area of listening skills they were: understanding directions; obtaining factual information; identifying important points when given oral instructions; understanding questions; and distinguishing facts from opinions. And in the area of “human relations” they were: working cooperatively in groups; resolving conflicts; recognizing others’ feelings; maintaining friendly relationships; and asking questions to obtain cooperation.

WHAT IS HUMAN COMMUNICATION?

Communication has been broadly defined as “the sharing of experience,” and to some extent all living organisms can be said to share experience. Let us say that human communication is the process of creating a meaning between two or more people.

MODEL OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION
Since human communication is an intangible ever-changing process, many people find it helpful to use a tangible model to describe that process.

Communicator 1
According to Tubbs and Moss, communicator one and two are simultaneously sending and receiving all the time. Communicator’s 1 senses are continually bombarded by a wealth of stimuli from both inside and outside the body. All that he/she knows are experiences. It is like a raw data input which means all the stimuli both past and present, that give us our information about the world.

Messages
- Verbal Messages is any type of spoken communication that uses one or more words. Most of the communicative stimuli we are conscious of fall within the category of intentional verbal messages; these are the conscious attempts we make to communicate with others through speech. Undoubtedly, the most unique aspect of human communication is the use of verbal symbols. It is somewhat a miracle that we can look at ink marks on a piece of paper or listen to sounds carried on air waves and be able to create images in each other’s brains. In fact, the process works so well that we often are surprised when problems occur. Unintentional verbal messages are the things we say without meaning to. Freud argued that all the apparently unintentional stimuli we transmit¬ both verbal and nonverbal-are unconsciously motivated.
- Nonverbal messages cannot be described as easily as verbal messages, probably because the category is so broad. They include all the nonverbal aspects of our behavior: facial expression, posture, tone of voice, hand movements, manner of dress, and so on. In short, they are all the messages we transmit without words or over and above the words we use. Let us first consider intentional nonverbal messages, the nonverbal mes¬sages we want to transmit. Sometimes we rely exclusively on nonverbal messages, sometimes we use them to reinforce verbal messages. For example, you can greet someone by smiling and nodding your head, or you can say “Hello” and also smile or wave. At times we deliberately use nonverbal messages to cancel out a polite verbal response and indicate our true feelings: The verbal message may be positive, but the tone of voice and facial expression indicate that we mean something negative. Much of what we are as a person “communicates” itself every time we behave. Much of this behavior is unintentional. Some writers on the subject go so far as to assert that what we communicate is what we are. Unintentional nonverbal messages are all those nonverbal aspects of our behavior transmitted without our control. For example, one of the authors once told a student speaker to relax. “I am relaxed,” the student replied in a tight voice, trembling, and speaking over the rattling of a paper he was holding Controlling nonverbal messages is a very difficult task. Facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, hand gestures-what some writers have called “body language”-often give us away.

Channel : Sensory Organs. hearing, sight and touch Organizational Communication: company newsletters, bulletin boards, and memoranda. In Mass communication: newspaper, film, radio and television.

Interference or noise that is anything that distorts the information transmitted to the receiver or distracts him or her from receiving it. There are two kinds of interference: technical which refers to the factors that cause the receiver to perceive distortion in the intended information or stimuli. Semantic interference occurs when the receiver does not attribute the same meaning to the signal that the sender does.

Communicator 2:
Another critical aspect of message reception is listening. Listening covers attention, hearing, understanding and remembering.

Feedback
It is the return to you the behavior you have generated (Luft,1969). It is an essential characteristic of relationship as well as an important source of information about yourself.

Time
The time of interaction is represented by a circle.

(Taken from: Human Communication by Tubbs and Moss)