1.5 Forms of Communication

The four scenarios at the start of this chapter cover communication in a variety of forms, so let’s systematically lay out what these forms can be. One way to sort them is by the size of the audience:

Mass Communication, which we’ll explore in Chapters 18 and 19, is communication from a person or organization to a large number of listeners/viewers, using technology. The technology can vary from television to a printed book to music to social media. Although the use of mass communication has increased dramatically in the last century, forms of it existed thousands of years ago, such as architecture (pyramids, statues, temples) that sent a message to all passersby. And while it’s possible for communication intended for just a few recipients to “go viral” and be distributed on a mass scale, the term “mass communication” usually refers to messages intended for a large audience. Another feature of mass communication is a clear delineation between the source and the audience, although social media has broken down that distinction in some ways.

Public Communication, which we’ll look at in Chapters 13 and 14, implies an audience of more than a dozen people or so (usually in physical proximity to the speaker), but less than thousands. A politician giving a stump speech at a rally, a CEO addressing employees, a bridesmaid giving a speech at a wedding, a religious leader preaching to a congregation, and a protestor speaking through a megaphone are all examples of public communication. Usually some technology is required, although Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg address (“Four score and seven years ago…”) is an example of public communication before microphones or cameras existed.

Group Communication includes small group discussions, such as students working together on a classroom project, a hiring committee evaluating applicants for a job, or a jury reaching a verdict. Typically, all group members speak, although not necessarily equally. The study of group communication has focused on issues such as decision-making, conflict, leadership, power, and teamwork (Chapters 16 and 17). The field of organizational communication has focused on many of the same topics, although on a broader scale, looking at issues such as how new employees learn the culture of the company they are joining, rivalry between departments in an organization, or how a company can successfully implement a change.

Interpersonal Communication is focused on romantic relationships, friendships, and family relationships. Commonly studied topics include attraction and relationship formation, the navigation of opposing needs (in line with Baxter’s relational dialectics, discussed earlier), conflict management, and how relationships fall apart. No chapters in this book are explicitly focused on interpersonal communication, although lessons from many chapters apply to those relationships.

Intrapersonal Communication is about self-communication. Do you talk to yourself? While this has sometimes been associated with mental illness, the answer is “Of course you do, constantly, although not usually out loud.” Contrary to the stereotype that talking to yourself means you are mentally ill, learning helpful and constructive self-talk methods is essential to mental health. For example, one key to overcoming public speaking anxiety (covered in Chapter 14) is to learn how to break the habit of berating yourself (“I sound so stupid! This speech is bombing”) and replace those “head bullies” with more positive and optimistic messages (“I have something valuable to say”). Although scholars have recognized the importance of self-talk, it has not received much attention in the field of communication studies, largely because it is difficult to study. We won’t focus on it here.

We can also make distinctions based on the channel of communication:

Face-to-Face verbal communication refers to situations where two or more communicators can hear each other, and are communicating by spoken word, not relying on technology.

Nonverbal communication refers to all the forms of communication that do not depend on words, ranging from facial expressions to gestures to clothing to touch to all the ways we communicate by using space and time. In terms of spoken messages, nonverbal communication refers to aspects other than the words themselves, including tone of voice, speech rate, volume, and vocal expressions such as sighs and grunts. See Chapter 12 for more on this.

Written communication means all forms of communication that depend on the written word, whether it be on paper, an electronic screen, or elsewhere. One thing that distinguishes written communication from other forms is that it is not time-dependent: we can still read words written by authors from thousands of years ago.

Mediated communication can mean any communication that relies on any form of technology (which could overlap with written communication), although the term is usually reserved for electronic media, including radio, television, film, and social media (Chapters 18 and 19). It also typically denotes channels of communication that can convey several different forms of information at once, such as visual images, sounds, and words.

Artistic/expressive communication is the term we can use for all the different forms of art, crafts, and expression: painting, sculpture, music, acting, dance, figure skating, expressions of sexuality, graffiti, home decoration and landscaping, and countless others. Although these are vital to human experience and count as communication, they fall outside the scope of this book. Scientists have, by the way, observed that these forms of expression are not restricted to humans: frogs “singing” in a pond, birds performing mating rituals, wolves howling at the moon, and dogs marking their territory are all forms of communication that humans can borrow and adapt.

This book will only offer a glimpse into what you can learn about these forms of communication. A college with a sizable Communication Studies department typically provides dozens of courses that span all of these domains except the last one (but you can often take those classes from other departments). The next chapter attempts to draw boundaries around what is and is not included in the academic field of communication studies, and explains why that’s not easy to do. A recurring theme of this book is that everyone is a student of communication — a process that affects virtually every other human endeavor.

Not all forms of communication involve speaking, but I’d like to end with an in-depth exploration of just how remarkable the act of speaking is.