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Definitions of communication

The central thrust of human communication concerns mutually understood symbolic exchange. This entry considers the purpose and form of definitions, and the function of message, source, receiver, and channel considerations in defining the term communication. It discusses the consequences of different definitions of communication for the meaningful use of the term.

Characteristics of Definitions

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Broad Versus Narrow

The term communication is commonly used in both broad and narrow senses, from simple human contact to technical uses as in information theory. Defining communication broadly, perhaps as the transfer of information, provides the advantage of including most or all the possible instances that the term communication might ever be used to reference. This large number of possibilities will also include many actual instances that the user likely neither intended nor had in mind. Overly broad definitions are not “wrong,” but in many cases their breadth precludes their utility in delineating the area under study. Related problems are encountered when definitions become too narrow, thereby excluding portions of what is actually under study. To be useful, definitions in any scholarly area need to describe what is actually studied and to represent accurately the manner in which the term is used in practice in the discipline.

Inherent Meaning Versus Human Creations

One form of definition states “Communication is . . .” and lists its defining characteristics. This form assumes that words have fixed or relatively fixed meanings and that the function of definitions is one of discovery of the correct meaning of a term. The concept of fixed definitions implies that there are correct definitions and meanings that are inherent in objects—that all tables possess a form of “tableness,” for example—where tableness is conceived to be a known, preexisting, and relatively permanent property of nature. It also presumes that the definitional process involves seeking out this inherent preexisting meaning and then phrasing this meaning accurately in the definition. Alternately, definitions can be regarded as human creations that are changeable over time, context, sociocultural language group, and purpose. The definitional process in the second approach is seen as a search for utility of usage wherein definitions can be discarded or changed according to that utility. This second approach suggests “Let us use the term communication to mean . . .” rather than “Communication is. . . .” The human creation approach involves evaluating definitions according to their ability to further the purposes of the persons involved in the communication transactions in question and is often more useful in studying communication.

Clear Boundary Versus Central Thrust

Definitions can also be used in an attempt to place all events qualifying as communication in one box and all events not so qualifying in another. The goal of such clear boundary definitions is to create certainty as to what is and what is not included in the defined term. An alternative goal of definitions is represented by the central thrust approach, wherein the major properties of the defined concept are stated and concern for boundary conditions is left for those instances that require such clear delineation when employing the definition in practice.

Characteristics Affecting Definitions

The Message: Signs and Symbols

Charles Peirce uses the term sign as an overarching category in his system of semiotics, with indexical, iconic, and symbolic signs as principal subdivisions. Each of these subdivisions is intended to overlap with other subdivisions in Peirce’s system and is purposely ambiguously defined. For example, a defining characteristic of symbols in Peirce’s system is the need for symbols to be learned. Yet both his indexical and iconic signs also require learning, as none are innate. For the purpose of defining communication, a more useful system may be provided by regarding signals as the overarching category, where signals are all stimuli normally detectable by humans through any of their five senses. Two nonoverlapping and clearly defined subdivisions of signals then become signs and symbols. Signs in this method are detectable stimuli characterized by a direct, fixed, physical connection to their referent, while symbols have only an arbitrarily defined connection to their referent. Thus symbols require some form of prior agreement between the communicating parties specifying the relationship between symbol and referent. Signs require learning, but not prior agreement, since they have a physical connection to their referent. Icons in this system are simply symbols that attempt to employ some form of resemblance to some property of their referent in the construction of the representation used to denote them. Any such resemblance must be specified through prior agreement in creating the intended symbolic usage, and that usage can be changed and manipulated in the same way as with all other symbols. Thus icons do not require a special category. They are symbols. And signs and symbols are each unique categories that taken together cover the domain of perceived signals.

Language is one way of providing prior agreement. A language provides one or more definitions of detectable sound, light, odor, taste, and/or touch patterns that will be used as symbols to represent ordered symbolic events within a message. While signs, as defined, can represent only physical events, often only in the here and now, symbols can be used to represent any form of event: physical, phenomenological, the dreamed of and hoped for, unreal ideas and conceptions, the here and now, or the not-here and the notnow. Symbols also allow for great latitude in lying, where the ability to lie may itself be treated as a defining characteristic of human communication. Some animals and plants use signs as determined by their DNA in order to disguise, deceive, and mislead. But a direct conscious deliberate lie so intended by an individual requires some involvement with symbols.

Source and Receiver Considerations

Plants, Animals, and Machines

Broad divisions of source and receiver include humans, animals, plants, and machines. Machines communicate through simple information transfer, as in radio transmission and computer functions. Machine communication differs from the simple physical contact of objects. Information about course and position relative to an approaching vessel obtained by a ship’s radar and sent to an autopilot is clearly of a different order from contact between the hulls of the two vessels. Physical contact may produce knowledge if it is detected by a communicative system, but the phenomenological information thereby produced is of a different nature from the physical contact that produced it. This distinction recognizes the difference between the physical and phenomenological planes on which humans exist. Communication ultimately concerns the phenomenological plane, involving knowledge, beliefs, and feelings and the relationship of information in this plane to the physical.

Human communication differs from the signaling behavior of plants and animals by transferring information in a way that fundamentally defines human communication: Human communication occurs through the use of at least some mutually understood symbols and may include other forms of information transfer as well. While human symbols are completely arbitrary, requiring prior agreement among the parties for communication to occur, no such agreement is required by animals and plants. Animal and plant message systems are signlike, essentially determined by DNA. Plants and animals employing these message forms cannot alter them or their meanings at will. Humans can and do alter forms and meanings and can carry their arbitrarily defined symbols with them rather than lugging along the objects or bringing forth the concepts they represent. This apparently minor distinction—the ability to change the meaning of symbols by agreement—is the basis for all human knowledge, stored symbolically within the human brain, libraries, and hard drives. It is also the basis of human communication.

Intent of the Source

Human communication can be defined either with or without the involvement of intent on the part of the source. In the study of persuasion, knowledge of the intent of a source regarding the desired effect of a message on a receiver is needed in order to determine the relative success of a persuasive message. Aside from the evaluation of the efficacy of persuasive messages, intent is not required as a definitional requirement for human communication unless unintentional messages, such as in much of nonverbal behavior, are specifically intended to be ruled out of consideration.

One Cannot Not Communicate

Related to the definitional consideration of intent is Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, and Donald Jackson’s suggestion that one cannot not communicate. To accept this suggestion requires an exceptionally broad and unusual definition of communication. This broad usage implies that communication occurs whenever any human is simply present, regardless of whether the person is alone or whether any communicative actions are taken or avoided by the human. In the narrower original sense, the phrase refers to the inability of any potential source or situational actor to stop a potential receiver from making inferences about the potential source’s actions or lack thereof. Nonverbal cues can always be interpreted by a receiver regardless of whether the source actually did or did not emit the cues, did or did not intend to emit the cues, or was asleep or deceased. A more direct phrasing of one cannot not communicate might suggest that people will invariably make inferences about the behavior of another person, though they may be incorrect in those inferences and though the behaviors that may have led to the inferences may have been imagined by the receiver rather than emitted by the source. Nothing in the phrase one cannot not communicate implies the need for symbolic or signlike behavior by a source, the existence of a message, the existence of a communicative interaction, or the existence of any degree of source–receiver shared meaning. Rather, communication is judged to exist whenever an observer creates meaning. The phrase operates heuristically concerning how the term communication might most usefully be defined. If communication is defined only as meaning creation by one person through observation of anything about another person, then we could conclude that one cannot not communicate. With other definitions of communication, it is quite possible to not communicate.

Considerations Related to Channel

A third consideration in defining communication, beyond those of the message and source– receiver considerations, involves the channel. The term communications is often used in reference to the media or channels of communication. Three principal issues relevant to defining human communication concern nonverbal communication, intrapersonal communication, and the extent of completion of the transmission–interaction process.

Nonverbal Behavior and Nonverbal Communication

In 1904 a retired German schoolteacher owned a horse named Hans. The teacher spoke to the horse and taught the horse to send messages back to him using hoof tapping as the coding system. Hans could do simple numerical calculations when given the arithmetic problems orally and could encode words by converting letters into a number of taps. This implied that the horse had communicative ability since he could receive and apparently understand symbolic messages and could respond to them in a reasonable manner. This was truly remarkable for a horse, who was thus renamed Clever Hans. In fact, Hans could behave, but he could not communicate. Hans’s “communication” occurred solely in the minds of his human listeners. Hans could tell when his listeners wanted him to stop tapping through an awareness of their nonverbal behaviors. He wanted the rewards he received from them when he stopped but received the rewards only if he stopped when people wanted him to stop. This occurred when he reached a number of taps that had a specific mental significance for the people, significance not shared by the horse. Hoof tapping is nonverbal behavior, not nonverbal communication. The fact of meaning assignment occurring inside the heads of listeners with respect to the horse’s behavior does not provide a particularly useful definition of communication. No common meanings for the communicative behaviors of the horse were shared between the people and the horse. It may be useful to suggest that some degree of shared common meaning between a source and a receiver must occur before any behavior, verbal or nonverbal, is considered communicative.

Intrapersonal Communication

Intrapersonal communication, communication within a person or between a person and himself or herself, is a form or class of thinking, just as nonverbal communication is a form or class of nonverbal behavior. Intrapersonal communication cannot be identical to thinking or it would be nothing more than thinking. There would be no reason for its existence as a concept. It differs from thinking as a generic concept in its emphasis on the existence of a dialogue occurring within one person and its focus on the message-creation and meaning-creation processes. Intrapersonal communication is often conceived as involving a conversation or sharing of meaning between two positions or modes of thought within a person. It involves shared meanings between the dialogic entities. Unlike generic nonverbal behavior, thinking itself involves the use of symbolic forms. Thus its subsets such as intrapersonal communication inherently involve the symbolic transfer of meaning, possibly between two dialogic positions within a person.

The Transmission Process

Communication involves a sequence of communicative events that, individually, constitute insufficient conditions for its existence. The boundary conditions for the departure and end points of each event in the sequence are clearly elastic, with the ordering sequence of the events relatively but not absolutely fixed and the departure point for analysis within the sequence arbitrary. The following communicative events both specify a sequence and provide a template for considering the difference between attempts to communicate and communication. They assume a written message but are adaptable to all channels and are but one way of punctuating a communication situation. The question becomes, would a specific punctuated instance or sequence of events be communication or simply an attempt to communicate if the sequence progressed only to the first element of the sequence, to the second element, and so forth:

 1. The possibility of composing a message is considered.

 2. A message is considered and intended, but not composed.

 3. A message is intended to be sent and is composed, but is not sent.

 4. The message is composed, intended, and sent but not received.

 5. The message is composed, intended, sent, and received but not detectible as received by the receiver.

 6. The message is detectible, received with the source’s knowledge, but not opened.

 7. The message is received, recognized as such by the receiver, opened but not processed.

 8. The message is received, opened, and partially processed.

 9. The message is opened and processed, but not understood.

10. The message is processed and understood to an extent but with no measurable cognitive or emotional change in the receiver.

11. The message is understood to an extent with consequent phenomenological change, but without any externally observable response.

12. The message is intended, composed, sent, received, detected, recognized as a message, opened, processed, understood, and interpreted, with an externally observable response, but without a reply.

13. The message is composed and so forth, with an externally observable response, and sending a reply is considered.

And so forth.

This sequence is one way of segmenting a communication process. The lines between the given event segments could be drawn at other points, and different elements of the process could be selected for discussion. In this sequence of events, Event 13 is similar for the receiver to Event 1 for the source. The unstated continuation of the sequence through Events 14 to 25 if phrased similarly to Events 1 to 13 would complete the feedback loop, with Event 26 for the original source in the event sequence similar to Event 1 for that source, the possibility of composing a reply to the reply. Defining communication as any set of events that does not include at least Segments 1 to 11 would suggest that speaking to someone in language X who does not understand X is communication, rather than simply a communicative attempt.

Similarly, when an academic area concerns itself almost exclusively with message construction, as in Events 1 to 5 and little beyond, it may be more accurately named as an area concerned with one or more such forms of message construction rather than one of communication itself. Persons studying communication implicitly assume the existence of some or all these elements within the context of their work. Making the elements included in their work explicit may be useful in furthering the study of communication. As with all fields, that of communication is usefully informed by work in many areas of study that do not in and of themselves constitute the central thrust of communication, but are of fundamental importance to its understanding.

Thomas M. Steinfatt