MIDTERM STUDY GUIDE - I UNIT ONE Preliminaries to Human Comm A Comm The process or act of communicating The actual message or messages sent or received

I. UNIT ONE: Preliminaries to Human Comm. A. Comm.: • The process or act of communicating • The actual message or messages sent or received • The study of the process involved in the sending and receiving of messages B. Elements of Human Comm. • Comm. Context ° All Comm. takes place in a context that has at least 4 dimensions - Physical context  Tangible or concrete environment in which Comm. takes place.  Exerts some influence on the content of your message (What you say) as well as on the form (how you say it). - Social-psychological  Includes the status relationships among the participants, the roles, and the games that people play, and the cultural rules of the society in which people are communicating.  Also includes friendliness or unfriendliness, formality or informality, seriousness or humorousness of the situation.  Social face - Temporal  Time of day and time in history  How a message fits into a sequence of Comm. events - Cultural  Culture: the beliefs, values, and ways of behaving that are shared by a group of people and passed down from one generation to the next. • Sources-Receivers ° Each person involved in Comm. is both: - Source: speaker; any person or thing that creates messages. (i) A source may be an individual speaking, writing, or gesturing, or a computer sending an error message. - Receiver: listener; any person or thing that takes in messages. (i) Receivers may be individuals listening or reading a message, a group of persons hearing a speech, a scattered television audience, or machines that store information. ° Source-Receiver Encoding-Decoding - Encoding: the act of producing messages; the process of putting messages into code. (i) Ex. translating nerve impulses into speech sounds. - Decoding: the act of receiving messages; the process of extracting a message from a code (i) Ex. translating speech sounds into nerve impulses. - Encoders: speakers or writers; something that takes a message in one form (for example, nerve impulses) and translates it into another form (for example, sound waves). (i) In human Comm., the encoder is the speaking mechanism. (ii) In electronic Comm. the encoder is, for example, the telephone mouthpiece. - Decoders: listeners or readers; something that takes a message in one form (for example, sound waves) from which meaning can be formulated (for example, in vocal-auditory Comm.). (i) In human Comm., the decoder is the auditory mechanism. (ii) In electronic Comm. the decoder is, for example, the telephone earpiece. ° The compound term Encoding-Decoding emphasizes that you perform these functions simultaneously, at least in face to face Comm.. ° Source-Receiver Competence - Comm. competence: your knowledge of the social aspects of Comm.. • Messages: any signal or combination of signals transmitted to a receiver.