The Art of Communication

The Art of Communication

Communication is a vast subject that cuts across the tenets of verbal and non-verbal skills, listening and presentation skills, analysis and evaluation, identification of audience's needs, platforms and modes of transferring or passing on the information.

This therefore brings us to the question of whether communication is an art or it's a science? In layman's terms an `art' can be defined as a refined or a perfected skill; on the other hand a `science' can be referred to as the act of doing. This therefore shows that there is a close relationship and a strong correlation between these two concepts. Though most of the times neither of the two concepts, is completely exclusive of the other, therefore I choose to stick with communication as an art.

From the basics of communication, there must be a sender, a recipient, a

message/ information and a mode or platform. The mode/ platform is used to pass on the message. There is normally the process of coding and decoding. The sender codes the message and the recipient is supposed to decode the same upon receiving the message, upon which there is a slight vacuum between the sender and the recipient and is normally depicted as `noise'. This is because when you look at the broad scope of consciousness and information theory, people communicate in a variety of ways which are not limited to the formal arts.

The vacuum dubbed noise, represents perceptual concept. Perception refers to the way the recipient of information translates, understands and internalizes the message received. Upon internalizing the recipient becomes aware consciously and reacts to his/ her perception of the message. I tend to stand by communication as an art because the whole process of coding the message by the sender and sending it to the recipient involves a skill of collecting the information (by the sender) from different sources, then he / she clusters it accordingly. Before sending it he / she has to analyze and evaluate the content of the message so as to make sure it is free of error. By error, I mean he/ she tries to make sure that the intended information is well understood by the recipient.

This illustration therefore clarifies the fact that the sender makes sure that the intended message is well understood and interpreted accordingly by the recipient. This strikes us to concluding that through communication people create relationships, so as to allow free flow and correct understanding of the intended message.

As this happens the information has to be presented through different modes, either jointly or exclusively. This therefore portrays communication characteristic as both being subjective and objective in nature. Subjective means facts cannot be drawn and allows room for opinion, whereas objective is purely drawn on facts. This brings us to another question of how can we improve the quality of communication? To answer the question, we know that the intention of communication is to strike a balanced perception in the mind of the recipient. The perception is generally created within the awareness realm of the recipient. Therefore perceptions can be said to be common denominators of ideas. This is so because; ideas trigger upon our perceptions under different modules. The communicator may be objective on his message; the recipient on the other hand may understand the intended message otherwise, thus creating confusion which definitely leads to misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the information receieved. This therefore portrays a case where the intended meaning has already been altered.

This alteration therefore impedes the quest to improve the quality of communication across different modes of communication. The alteration of the meaning as discussed above presents a scenario whereby the recipient interprets the message in conformance to his/ her own believe systems, attitudes, experiences, principles and values inscribed within his/ her own conscious - awareness world.

This brings us to another concept of what happened versus what we think it means. Communication is a two way process that engages two or more people with an aim of creating a common ground of understanding the underlying message. Thus people differ in the manner they decipher messages; this is brought about due to the innate subjective and objective factors within a person's world of perceiving things. Facts are objective in nature and are usually taken down as points of references because they tend to standardize a message. But in essence these facts lack credibility due to lack of evidence and because people always tend to agree to different meaning of events.

The freedom to choose how to interpret life or information draws a clear picture of why people have a problem in finding a common platform when it comes to discussing meanings, theories and evaluations under varied conditions. Therefore communication draws its precepts upon direct experiences and symbolic meanings.

On the other hand our actions create facts of our direct expression, thereby giving rise to our being in the world as persons. Thus creating our own world within the framework of our consciousness that we choose to align our concepts, theories, values, feelings, attitudes to name but a few, in a definitive and highly subjective way. This therefore on the other hand creates our comprehension of our perceptions and actions we choose to make