Barriers to Effective Communication

513 Words3 Pages
The process of communication consists of many parts that involve more than one individual, with the intent of exchanging information. The term communication is an extremely complex term to define as there are so many different meanings for the term. As stated by I.A. Richards, 1928, “Communication takes place when one mind so acts upon its environment that another mind is influenced, and in that other mind an experience occurs which is like the experience in the first mind, and is caused in part by that experience.” This definition is referred to as both rough and general at the same instance and corresponds to almost all forms of communication (Wallace & Roberson, 2009). No matter the definition used the three main elements of communication are that it is not an isolated even but a process, it must involve at least to individuals, and that its primary function is informational. Some of the components are entropy, which can distort communication, negative entropy which can clarify it as can redundancy. Entropy was once considered a source of noise but is now considered a principle derived from physics. According to the text entropy is analogous to visual or audio static, which basically means it distorts communication whereas negative entropy may blur the communication but the general message is still received (Wallace & Roberson, 2009). Redundancy itself repeats elements within a message, it makes communication take on less of an understanding failure as most of spoken and written communication consists of redundancies. The process that communication goes through in order to be considered such is transmitting an idea, sending it through a medium like speaking or writing, receiving the message, understanding it, and providing feedback to the originator of the message. These steps must all be present and uninterrupted if the message is going to be understood (Wallace
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