First Blog - The Communication Model

Before taking this class, I had no idea about the Communication Model. I never knew that a lot of specific things came into play when communicating with someone, especially when dealing with context. The communication model is a model used to explain the human communication process. It’s a process where a sender, the person who’s speaking, sends information to a person or crowd, known as the receiver. It’s the receiver’s job to decode the information sent, however they must understand each other’s context or else the information will be misunderstood. In the journal article, “An Enhanced Communication Model” by Per Flensburg, he states that the context is important when trying to transfer knowledge to another person. Just like what was stated in the lecture, without the receiver understanding the context the information sent by the source will be misunderstood. Flensburg brings up the point that, “Despite the fact we have no match in context we have enough in common to create an understanding and thus knowledge.” Each person’s context is different because we base our own context on what we have experienced. This is important to remember when trying to communicate because it tends to be overlooked, especially when I talk to a lot of my friends. I grew up in many different states and countries because of my father’s job in the Air Force. So, when talking to a lot of my friends I would misinterpret some of the things they were talking about. Also this would happen vice-versa as I would talk about my experiences in Asia and they would misinterpret things I’m saying. I never knew the difference it made of setting up a basic understanding of your context. Setting up a basic understanding of a person context can be done through redundancy and body language. By using those two to help build an understanding of where each person is coming from allows the conversation to start going more fluidly. I never thought that speech could be so in depth but with what we have been learning in class has started to reveal a new level of speech. I wish I knew more about this when traveling when I was living with my parents. I knew the dos and don’ts of certain cultures, but I never had the basic knowledge of their culture like I should have. Communicating with someone from a different culture goes a lot smoother when you have a better understanding of their background. This is another thing that is overlooked. However, I was able to learn more about these different cultures and the perspective they see the world. Context is definitely important part of communicating that I believe is overlooked. Being able to have the skills to create a basic understanding of each other’s context is important, especially when apply to jobs as it shows you have great communication skills. The communication model showed me that there’s more depth to communication instead of stating sentences to someone.

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