Interpersonal Communication

Abstract

Introduction Communication today is increasingly seen as a process through which the exchange and sharing of meaning is made possible. Commtinication as a subject of scientific inquiry is not unique to the field of mass communication. Mathematicians, engineers, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, anthropologists, and speech communicators have been taking an interest in the study of communication. This is not surprising because communication is the basic social process of human beings. Although communication has grown into a well developed field of study, Muslim scholars have rdrely hcused on the study of communication. Thus, a brief introduction to the widely used communication concepts and a framework for the study of communication within the context of this paper is provided. In 1909, Charles Cooley defined communication from a sociological perspective as: The mechanism through which human relations exist and develop - all the symbols of mind, together with the means of conveying them through space and preserving them in time. It includes the expression of the face, attitude and gesture, the tones of the voice, words, writing, printing, railways, telegraph, and whatever else may be the latest achievement in the conquest of space and time. In 1949, two engineers, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, defined communication in a broader sense to include all procedures: By which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speeches, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and, in kct, all human behavior. Harold Lasswell, a political scientist, defines communication simply as: A convenient way to describe the act of communication is to answer the following question: Who, says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect? S.S. Stevens, a behavioral psychologist, defines the act of communication as: Communication occurs when some environmental disturbance (the stimulus) impinges on an organism and the organism does something about it (makes a discriminatory response) . . . The message that gets no response is not a commnication. Social psychologist Theodore Newcomb assumes that: In any communication situation, at least two persons will be communicating about a common object or topic. A major function of communication is to enable them to maintain simultaneous orientation toward one another and toward the common object of communication. Wilbur Schramm, a pioneer in American mass communication research, provides this definition: When we communicate we are trying to share information, an idea, or an attitude. Communication always requires three elements-the source, the message, and the destination (the receiver).