An Introduction to Intercultural Communication. Fred E. Jandt
or firms doing business with the county that could reasonably tend to influence you in the performance of your duties or give the appearance of influence.”
At an interview with a Chinese couple and their children in early October, the mother offers you a wrapped gift. You say you cannot accept a gift. She insists, saying it is a mooncake. You bring the interview to a close and escort the family out of your office, putting the gift back in her hand on the way out. That night you look up “mooncake” on the Internet and learn that in a Chinese family mooncakes are shared as a symbol of unity. But some also give them as part of the guanxi custom.
1 Should you violate laws to accommodate another's cultural behavior?
2 Should you have handled the situation differently?
3 The couple is coming in for another interview. Do you say or do anything about the gift?
Berlo was interested in using communication to solve problems such as finding more effective ways of communicating new agricultural technologies to farmers and communicating health information to the peoples of developing countries. He drew from engineering to conceptualize communication as a process of transmitting ideas to influence others to achieve the communicator’s goals. Even though Berlo emphasized that communication is a dynamic process, as the variables in the process are interrelated and influence each other, overall his conceptualization of communication can be labeled machinelike or mechanistic. Communication was conceptualized as one-way, top-down, and suited for the transmission media of print, telephones, radio, and television.
Components of Communication.
Because the transmission models of communication clearly identify components in the communication process, they are particularly useful in beginning a study of communication. You are better able to understand communication when you understand the components of the process (DeVito, 1986). The components of communication, shown in Figure 1.1, are source, encoding, message, channel, noise, receiver, decoding, receiver response, feedback, and context.
Figure 1.1 Ten Components of Communication
Source.
The Source is the person with an idea she or he desires to communicate. Examples are CBS, the White House, your instructor, and your mother.
Encoding.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), humans cannot share thoughts directly. Your communication is in the form of a symbol representing the idea you desire to communicate. Encoding is the process of putting an idea into a symbol. The symbols into which you encode your thoughts vary. You can encode thoughts into words, and you also can encode thoughts into nonspoken symbols. Tobin and Dobard (1999), for example, have shown how messages were encoded in quilts made by slaves.
Message.
The term Message identifies the encoded thought. Encoding is the process, the verb; the message is the resulting object.
Channel.
The term Channel is used technically to refer to the means by which the encoded message is transmitted. Today, you might feel more comfortable using the word media. The channel or medium, then, may be print, electronic, or the light and sound waves of face-to-face communication.
Noise.
The term Noise technically refers to anything that distorts the message the source encodes. Noise can take many forms:
External noise can be the sights, sounds, and other stimuli that draw your attention away from the message.
Internal noise refers to your thoughts and feelings that can interfere with the message.
Semantic noise refers to how alternative meanings of the source’s message symbols can be distracting.
Receiver.
The Receiver is the person who attends to the message. Receivers may be intentional—that is, they may be the people the source desired to communicate with—or they may be any person who comes upon and attends to the message.
Decoding.
Decoding is the opposite of encoding and just as much an active process. The receiver is actively involved in the communication process by assigning meaning to the symbols received.
Receiver Response.
Receiver response refers to anything the receiver does after having attended to and decoded the message. That response can range from doing nothing to taking some action or actions that may or may not be the action desired by the source.
Feedback.
Feedback refers to that portion of the receiver response of which the source has knowledge and to which the source attends and assigns meaning. You as a reader of this text may have many responses, but only when you respond to a survey or send an e-mail to the author does feedback occur. Feedback makes communication a two-way or interactive process.
Context.
The final component of communication is Context. Generally, context can be defined as the environment in which the communication takes place and helps define the communication. If you know the physical context, you can predict with a high degree of accuracy much of the communication. For example, you have certain knowledge and expectations of the communication that occurs within synagogues, mosques, and churches. At times, you intentionally plan a certain physical environment for your communication: You may want to locate your romantic communications in a quiet, dimly lit restaurant or on a secluded beach. The choice of the environment, the context, helps assign the desired meaning to the communicated words.
In social relationships, the relationship between the source and receiver may help define much of the meaning of the communication. Again, if you know the context, you can predict with a high degree of accuracy much of the communication. For example, knowing that a person is being stopped by a police officer for speeding is enough to predict much of the communication. Certain things are likely to be said and done; other things are very unlikely.
Culture is also context. Every culture has its own worldview; its own way of thinking of activity, time, and human nature; its own way of perceiving self; and its own system of social organization. Knowing each of these helps you assign meaning to the symbols.
Not everyone agreed with the Berlo (1960) model. For example, semanticist S. I. Hayakawa (1978) noted that decoding—or listening—seems to give the receiver a subordinate role to the source. When someone speaks, others stop what they are doing to listen. Therefore, it would seem that the source is viewed as more active and as more important in the process. Hayakawa’s observation makes it clear that cultural beliefs affect how the process of communication is defined.
The Berlo model can lead you to think of communication as consisting of an active source and a passive receiver. Speaking may be considered a more noble activity and may demand that others cease other activities to listen. Indeed, in many cultures, listening does place one in a subordinate role to that of the source. In other cultures, where the group’s history and knowledge are told and retold verbally, the role of the listener who accurately remembers is critical. The story is told that the Puritans, believing themselves to have been called to save heathens, preached to the American Indians. The Indians affirmed conversions to Christianity