WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?

A gentleman orders a coffee in a crowded cafe. The young woman in line behind him shoots a withering look at the rambunctious toddler tugging on her coat. From the radio blares an advertisement for a one-day sale at the mall. At a nearby table, a deaf couple signs to each other, while a teenager in the corner busily texts a friend on his cell phone. These situations all have one thing in common. They all involve in communication!

Communication is the act of conveying information for the purpose of creating a shared understanding. It’s something that humans do everyday. The word “communication” comes from Latin word “communis” meaning “to share,” and includes verbal, non-verbal, and electronic means of human interaction. Scholars who study communication analyze the development of communication skills in humans and theorize about how communication can be made more effective.

            Humans convey information through a variety of methods like speaking, telephones, email, blogs, TV, art, hand gestures, facial expressions, body language, and even social contexts. Communication can occur instantaneously in closed, intimate settings or over great periods of time in large public forums, like the Internet. However, all forms of communication require the same basic elements of speaker or sender of information, a message, and an audience or recipient. The sender and recipient must also share a common language or means of understanding each other for communication to be successful. As such, a study of communication often examines the development and structure of language, including the mathematical language used in computer programming.