What is Communication?

Humans, like many other animals, are social creatures: we like to live in groups and work together. Because of this, humans are almost always communicating, sometimes without even knowing it.

In the previous chapter, we provided a general definition of communication, but let’s take a step back and look at some others.

In The Nature of Rhetorical Communication, McCroskey (2016) divides communication into three categories:

(McCroskey, 2016, p. 20)

In RCM 200 we are concerned with the third definition. As you will see, the material in this course focuses on the meaning of messages and not on the media efforts/tools of communications. Specifically, our goal is to help you develop your communicative judgement as you create various messages to be used in technical communication.

With that in mind, let’s break down that third definition even more. McCroskey (2016) identifies three types of communication that can fall under the third definition:

• accidental,
• expressive,
• and rhetorical communication.

How do these three types of communication impact our messages? How have they occurred in your own life? The followings sections will answer these two questions.

Accidental Communication

Has your communication ever gotten you in trouble by mistake? Do you sometimes feel like your communication is misunderstood (or misinterpreted) by your audience? Your communication may have some traits of what McCroskey identifies as accidental communication.  Accidental communication occurs “when one person stimulates meaning in the mind of another without having any intention of doing so and without necessarily knowing that he or she has done so” (McCroskey, 2016, p. 21).

“People communicate their interests, their needs, their backgrounds, and sometimes their weaknesses without having the slightest desire to do so, and often in spite of a definite desire not to communicate these things” (McCroskey, 2016, p. 21)Two words to associate with accidental communication are: unaware and unintended. Whenever a speaker uses this type of communication, they often do not realize the impact of the messages they are sending to their audience.

Think about the times when your words were taken to be more negative than you intended—perhaps there was a non-verbal element in your message’s tone that caused your audience to perceive you differently than what you intended.

Non-verbal communication can play a large role in accidental communication. For example, McCroskey (2016) discusses the impact of how some North Americans inadvertently expressed unfriendliness in a Latin American context, due to the cultural differences of what constitutes as personal space.

As you can see, our aim as professional communicators is to identify and avoid any accidental communication in our lives. It’s important you understand what this kind of unintentional communication looks like so that you can avoid it in your own professional life.

Expressive Communication

Expressive communication “arises from the emotional, or motivational, state of the individual” (McCroskey, 2016, p. 21). This definition tells us that this form of communication is primarily speaker-focused. As discussed in Chapter 1, there is a transactional element involved whenever we communicate, with the audience playing a key role in the communicative process. In expressive communication, the emphasis is more on the speaker, and less on the audience and how they receive the message.

As with accidental communication, we will want to avoid using expressive communication in our professional lives. Technical communication has both purpose and a connection to audience–both of which are missing in expressive communication.

Rhetorical Communication

“Rhetorical communication is the primary tool with which we influence and control the thoughts and actions of other people, as well as the environment in which we live” (McCroskey, 2016, p. 19).Rhetorical communication will be the primary focus of RCM 200. McCroskey (2016) defines rhetorical communication as “the process of a source stimulating a source-selected meaning in the mind of a receiver by means of verbal and non-verbal messages” (p. 21). The “source” is another term for the speaker; the “source-selected meaning” implies that the source has the intention to create a specific meaning in the mind of the audience. McCroskey’s (2016) definition of rhetorical communication emphasizes the need for meaning to be created in the mind of the audience. He writes that this type of communication is “goal-directed” (McCroskey, 2016, p. 22, emphasis in original) and that it’s always purposefully directed to an audience.

By the time you finish this course, you will see how rhetorical communication can help you in your career, as well know how to apply these principles in day-to-day job duties such as writing reports and giving presentations.

References

McCroskey, J. C. (2016). An introduction to rhetorical communication: A western rhetorical perspective. Pearson Education.