Introductory Models

Forms of Communication

How many different ways do we use communication during the day? Here are some:

• You were woken up by the alarm clock
• You thought, 'Oh, no! Another day at college!'
• You said Hello to your parents
• You shouted at your sister to get a move on and get out of the bathroom
• You listened to the news on the radio
• You chatted with your circle of acquaintances while waiting for the bus
• During the bus journey, you made a list of the things you'd got to buy during the lunch hour
• You rang up your mother during the lunch hour
• You word processed a letter in the afternoon, then put it in the post
• You read the paper when you got home in the evening

The whole area of Communication Studies is vast, so we find scholars who specialize in:

	Mass Media Communication (you listening to the radio or reading the paper)
	Interpersonal Communication (you shouting at your sister or chatting with your friends)
	Intrapersonal Communication (you communicating with yourself by writing a shopping list)
	Extrapersonal Communication (you communicating with machines - the word processor in this case)

There are various subdivisions of those, too, such as the study of non-verbal communication, which is concerned with the way we use bodily signals to communicate, and is a subdivision of interpersonal communication. And others don't really seem to fit into any of those categories - using the 'phone, for example, is neither just communicating with machines, nor just interpersonal communication.

As you can see, then, the study of communication is a vast area. If you are interested in a more detailed discussion of the field of communication studies, please click here.

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