CHAPTER ONE
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY COMMUNICATION
INTRODUCTION
Communication has always been an important feature of life. All human beings engage in communication to sustain and improve on their existence on earth. Communication being the nerve centre of the society cuts across cultures. There is no society where communication does not exist. It is the basis for all human existence. We find ourselves either consciously or unconsciously faced with-the urge to give or receive information, express our feelings, share ideals with others. Research findings have shown that the average human. Being spends no less than 80% of his life engaged in one form of communication or another every day. Communication is therefore a social affair. It is the means by which man can function within a social framework since it is not possible for human being to exist in isolation from others.
The term communication is derived from a Latin word ‘Communis’ which means commonness i.e. to share to make common. In communication what is shared is not seen but virtually abstract. It is psychological activity and it has to do with the mind building a bridge between or across two minds. Meaning is what we have in common in the sense that the symbols that are used in encoding the message must be understood by the interlocutors. In other words, for a particular message to be meaningful, there has to be ‘mental connectivity’ between the encoder(s) and the decoder(s) of that message when what we say is correctly or fully understood by our listener, we say there is effective communication.
Therefore, communication is effective when the speaker and the listener share the same meaning. Communication breakdown on the other hand occurs when the listener misinterprets or gets a different meaning from that intended by the speaker.
The ubiquitous of combination technical devices like the fax, telephone, radio, computer internet etc have further enhanced and consolidated the relevance of communication in the society. All these various device have tremendous impact in making communication between individuals and people as easy and convenient world and as fast as possible. The world has become a global village as we now say, because of the free access everyone has to information from any part of the world.
MEANING
As important as communication is, scholars have defined it from different perspectives inspired by their different professions. Some of such definitions are given below.
According to Chappell and Reed (1974), “communication is any means by which a thought is transferred from one person to another”. In the opinion of Eyre in Sybil et al (1995) “communication is not just the giving of information, it is the giving of understandable information and receiving and understanding of the message”, it is the transferring of a message to another party so that it can be understood and acted upon.
In the words of Cooky, he described communication as “a mechanism by which human relations exists and develop”.
Peter Little (1985) defines communication to be “the process by which information is passed between individual and/or organizations by means of previously agreed symbols.