Video Transcript: What is Communication?

Welcome, my name is Professor Steve Elzinga. And I will be with you the next  12 weeks, or however long it is that you take this class as the beauty of online  classes. It's the communication class. And I don't know if you've ever taken a  class like this before, but this could possibly change your whole life.  communication affects your relationship to God, your relationship to your  spouse, your relationship to children, if you have any relationship to friends,  extended family, your relationship to work, your relationship to your community.  It affects every thing. Before we begin, I want you to imagine for a minute that  you can't see. In fact, I want you to imagine that you've never been able to see  you've never seen a sunset or a sunrise. You've never seen your mother or your father, your brothers, your sisters, you've never seen a friend, you've never seen an animal, you've never seen your house. You've never seen your you've never  seen anything in your entire life. And then I want you to imagine that you've  never heard anything, either your ears don't work, you've never heard the sound or running water. You've never heard the sizzle of something. frying in a fry pan.  You've never heard your name being called, you've never heard the voice of the  people that you love and care about. This was true about Helen Keller. She was  both deaf and blind. Never saw anything never heard. And so the only thing she  can do is smell. She can smell the food around her. She could taste and she  could feel. And that was can you imagine that kind of world. You wouldn't know  that people exist. You felt your parents you felt the food that you would eat. You  can smell that food, you can taste that food, but but you'd have no connection to it, you would have no way of thinking about things, you know. And when we sit  for a while we close our eyes, we can just we can think about we can think  about yesterday we can think about today or what we're going to do or we can  have some memory. But we're using words. Helen Keller didn't have any words.  She had smell she had taste. She had feeling this would feel like this and that  would feel like that. But she had no way to put any word to those things. Then,  Anne Sullivan, a teacher decided to help her. And she worked hard at trying to  get her to understand that the little shapes that she was forming in her hand.  Because, you know, she couldn't show her words on a page. There weren't  letters to learn, associate or form the letters with her hands. So all Helen Keller  could do is feel feel that someone is doing something with her hands. That's it.  And then somehow, different feelings would represent different things. And  Helen Keller had a hard time getting that. It's like one feeling relates to another  feeling because that's all she had she could feel water, and then she could feel  Anne Sullivan making a different feeling in her hand. There are two totally  different feelings. Why would one thing represent the other. Eventually, Helen  Keller understood that this represents this. That this feeling in my hand  represents this other feeling water in my hand and from there, all of a sudden,  words became alive. And because words became alive, concepts became alive  and Helen Keller actually became a brilliant speaker. Well, not a speaker but a 

signer. She could understand incredibly complex things, just by this feeling,  representing that feeling. it's a miracle, isn't it? It's absolutely amazing. The gift  of communication is one of the most amazing gifts that God has given us as  human beings. And when you start to think about it, it almost blows your mind.  Well, let's look at what this communication thing is. Three questions that we're  going to look at in this course. Number one, we're going to look at what is  communication? What is communication? How would you define it? Secondly  Why is it worth studying? Why are we going to take 12 weeks to study this thing  called communication? And finally, how can learning how to communicate,  change your life for the better and it will the more you learn about how to  communicate, the more it will change your life for the better. So what is  communication? Communication is a two way process of reaching mutual  understanding in which participants not only exchange, encode and decode  information, okay, that's what Helen Keller was doing. We first encoded this  feeling means this and then we decode it when the other person understands it.  New news ideas feelings, but also it creates shared meaning in general  communication is a means of connecting people and places. communication  from the latin communicare meaning to share, is the act of conveying intended  meanings from one entity or group to another through the use of mutually  understood signs and semiotic rules. So I can use the word house in English.  But if you don't speak English, you won't understand what I'm saying. I just got  back from Ecuador, or they will say casa, CASA is a different symbol, a group of  symbols, that mean the exact same thing that in English, the word house means three parts to communication. First of all, there's the, the message giver, I want  to communicate something to you, then there is the message, there's what I  communicate. And then there's the message receiver, there's a message  problem. Okay, there's the giver of the message, there's the receiver of the  message, and in the middle is the message. The problem is, with the message, I am saying something to you, but you're not hearing what I am saying. There's  the Whisper game, it's called. And if you're with a group of friends, you can try  this. One person whispers something to someone else. They whisper, maybe  what they did that morning, you know, I got up this morning, and I dressed in a  blue shirt, and I went to the store and I said this thing to a certain person, okay,  then that person has to whisper it to the one person, then that person has  whispered to the next guy and the next guy, the next guy, the next girl. And as it  goes around the room, people forget details and they add details. And finally, at  the end of the game, the last person says what supposedly the first person said, and you'll be amazed at how different it is. Because little nuances get lost along  the way. And that's the problem with all communication. I want to say something, but you're not hearing what I'm saying. It's the basis of all the brokenness we  see in the world. It's the basis of husbands and wives not getting along. It's the  basis of parents. I told you this, and the kid didn't hear that he does something 

else. And then the parent is upset because the kid didn't do what he was told to  do. Or if you're a boss and you're telling your workers to do something, and then you come back and they did it all wrong. And you're going like well, how can this be I explained this, but they heard something different than what you thought  

you explained to them. Symbols, the message is communicated and understood by the use of symbol. A symbol is something that points to something else for  example, a ring, I'm wearing a ring. This is my wedding ring, I lost my original  wedding ring. And my grandfather lived to be 100 years old, and he died at 100  years old. And this was his ring. So I took his ring as my wedding ring. So I have this wedding ring, and it stands for my faithfulness to my wife and stands for my  marriage. Now, this ring is not my marriage. It only stands for my marriage, it's a  symbolic expression of my marriage, but it's not the marriage itself. That's what  words do a word a spoken word or a written word, a language, nonverbal, face,  hand body, all these things stand for something else. If I were to take my hand  and go like this okay, it's just a hand going through the air, but it communicates  something to you, if you were coming towards me and I went like this, it means  to stop. Or if I said, if I did this, it means to come that my hand is just making  movements, but you interpret these movements as meaning something and you  react accordingly kinds of communication spoken or verbal communication face  to face or phone. So we speak our words we say things verbally. non verbal  communication, is language is dressed gestures it's how we dress, all these  things, communicate something written communication, letters, emails, books,  messaging. So, we've spoken we have non verbal, we have things that are  written down. visualizations, graphs, charts, maps, logos, the whole world of  media, right now, you're maybe you're on your phone, and you're watching this  video, you're seeing images and these images communicate something to you  kinds of communication you can kind of think of this five senses that we have,  you can see things you can hear things you can feel things smell things taste  things, what is communication actually do communication actually connects us  to one another. It also sorry, it also disconnects us, communication can bring us  together, we can talk about things we can agree on things. I say some  encouraging things to you, you feel good about it, you end up liking me,  communication can build relationships. But communication can also destroy  relationships. I can say harsh things to you can say mean things to you, I can  criticize you and it can create distance between us. Alright, what are the basic  forms of communication? There's the spoken word. As I mentioned before,  there's the written word, there's the electronic word, that we have a lot of that  today. Let's just think about the spoken word, the spoken word is accessible to  all if you speak my language, I can speak to you and you can understand it, we  can all use it. It's easy. You don't need a computer, you don't need a phone, I  just opened my mouth and say something, you have ears you hear it, it can be  powerful. Because I'm speaking, you can see the emotion, you can hear the 

emotion, you can see the way or you can hear the way on putting my words  together. You can see my facial expression, if I'm frustrated or angry, if I'm happy or if I'm smiling. You can see all that's my whole body language. My very  presence. Now you're watching this as a video you're looking at a phone and the small thing, but if I was face to face, see I'd be right there, and it's very powerful  or it can be very powerful. It's personal. It's me talking to you. And and and we  have to be there together to make it happen. It's limited exposure. Now, because this is an electronic communication. It's unlimited exposure you can watch this  over and over and over and over again. But If we were face to face, we have a  conversation and it's done. We don't get to do it again, the rest of the world  doesn't get to see what we're doing or how or what we're talking about. It's very  temporary. So most conversations that we have with people are very temporary.  We have a conversation, and then it's gone. And a week later, we're wondering  what we said, or where we might be confused about what we said. All right, the  written word, the written word is accessible to readers and writers. You have to  be able to read or write to, to do something with the written word. And much of  the world doesn't know how to read or write. Words must do what body  language and voice inflection cannot do. So if you're reading a book, and  someone is angry, you can't see that they're angry. So the words have to convey so when you're writing, you have to be you have to be more colorful with your  words to communicate, what you want to communicate, is I'm speaking, I don't  have to have exactly the right words, because a lot of who I am I expressing  how I feel. But in writing and reading, it has to be very expressive just with the  words. It can be personal, depending on how well you write, or it can be very  distant because the author is somewhere else you're reading what someone  wrote, but you don't get to, you don't get to meet the author. You don't know his  background, and you can't feel what he's maybe feeling. It's unlimited exposure,  once you write it down. 1000 years later, someone could read what you wrote.  And it can be permanent. You write it down, and it might be permanent. Now  most of what we write down will be lost or burned, who knows or destroyed, but  who knows, maybe something you write will be read by somebody 1000 years  from now, the electronic word, okay, the electronic world word is what you're  participating in right now, electronic word is by all electronic mails, and emails  and messaging. And even the phone that we use is electronically. digitize this  video that you're you're watching the movies that we watch, the media, the  Googling, all these things are part of the electronic world that we live in. And it's  accessible to all connected to the web. It's amazing. I mean, I don't know where  you're listening. You know where in the world you are, as you're listening to this,  but you, you can be on the other side of the world for me. This can be 10 years  later. And here you are watching it as I'm talking to you right now. It's the the  whole electronic world is changing everything. And it's accessible to not just the  one person that you might be talking to, but it's accessible to everyone. The 

whole world. Words must do what the body language and voice inflection  cannot. So if it's a written electronic thing, again, you have the problem of trying  to be expressive with written words. It can be personal, it can be distant. It has  unlimited exposure. And here's the thing, you have to realize that when you put  things on the web, you have no control of it, number one, and it can be  permanent. So this is what communication is. On the next lecture, we're going to ask what it really does