From the foregoing meanings, sense and definitions of the communication, we can draw the following conclusions and the fundamental ingredients forming its collective sense.
Advertisement
1) That Communication is a fundamental social process, as started by Edward Sapir. The act and process of communication cannot exist and take place in void. He recognizes communication as the fundamental social process. It derives its entity from the society and nourishes on the social norms. It keeps the bonds of human groups and communities and even the international community on sound and firm structure.
Communication essentially co-exists with the human beings and is sub-servient to the ebbs and tides of human progression. To quote Edward Sapir, “It is highly intricate network of partial or complete understandings between the members of organizational units of every degree of size and complexity, ranging from a pair of lovers or a family to a league of nations or that ever-increasing portion of humanity which can be reached by the process, through all its transnational ramifications.” —- Edward Sapir.
2) Besides being a social process, the idea of communication involves a cycle of transfer of information, inter-change of ideas, knowledge, thoughts and message.
3) Though the above-said meanings and definitions apparently and widely differ in terminolgy, yet all hinge on the purport of the transfer of information.
4) Above definitions essentially distinguish between the inter-change of ideas, knowledge, thoughts and messages and the transfer of more material things. All point towards the basic fabric that important ideas have no use unless they are properly and effectively communicated; whereas the skill in communication has no use without important and worthwhile ideas.
5) The purpose of communication is to transmit or transfer or convey an idea or feeling from a source to a reciever; to bring about desired effects in the form of alteration of some idea,a change in attitude toward the idea, or the change in overt behavior.
6) Today all activities of the individuals, state revolve around the practical swing of communication. The failure and successes in individual’s life, commercial field, political arena, economic struggles, diplomatic somersaults, in short all multi-purpose activities are basically attached to communication. Today communication is used in diverse sense and meanings as it presupposes a social context and bearing.
7) Communication commands the broadest and the widest currency in the present age. It has effectively permeated into the public and private life; shattered the privacy of houses and lent new meaning, a new dimension to the human life.
8) It will be worthwhile to study a quotation from James C.Mecroskey, where in he observes, “The word communication is applied in only two basically different ways. It may refer to the process of transferring message from one place to another or it may refer to the process of one person stimulating meaning in the mind of another by means of a message. Telephone communication is an example of the transmission of messages from one place to another.
The primary characteristic of this type of communication is that it is concerned with messages rather than with meaning. If a message is picked up by an instrument, carried over a wire to another instrument, telephone communication has been successfully established.”
In our world of journalism, we are mainly concerned and interested in one aspect, that is “It may refer to the process of one person stimulating meaning in the mind of another by means of a message.