Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elycefeliz/3224486233/

After reviewing the communication process, I understand that communications are for a reason and be it important or not; there would bound to be some miscommunications and interference. Arguments and misunderstanding usually evolves from bad communication when both parties and more are unable to decode or understand each other. Everyone communicates and different types of people communicate differently. I have learnt that communication is a process and such contains many elements susceptible of defect.

Diagram 1.2- Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/osterwalder/242636313/

I personally feel that communication is like a daily activity to do no matter if I’m in school or at home. I need to communicate to my family, friends and even strangers who I interact with. Communication has become a part of my life to get ideas and comments across to the other parties involved. From the diagram 1.2 above, it shows that for communication to be present there should be a speaker and a listener; speaker being the one who voices out the comments and ideas and the other end being the listener, receiving the comment or idea suggested.

Also, I am aware that there are many ways to communicate between each other and to communicate, channels or rather means of communication is needed. Examples would be like face-to-face conversation, emails. Posters, short messages, advertisement…Etc.

The other model of communication I found while researching:

Schramm’s Models

Wilbur Schramm’s 1954 model expands on this thinking by emphasizing the process of encoding and decoding the message. Schramm envisioned this process as a two-way circular communication between the sender and receiver. Where the Shannon-Weaver model is a more mathematical and technological one, Schramm incorporates the study of human behavior in the communication process.

In addition to the six elements above, Schramm has included these concepts:

Feedback – information that comes back from the receiver to the sender and tells him how well he is doing.

Diagram of Schramm’s feedback loop:

Field of Experience – an individual’s beliefs, values, experiences and learned meanings both as an individual or part of a group.

Diagram of Schramm’s field of experience:

Dr. Schramm suggests that the message can be complicated by different meanings learned by different people. Meanings can be denotative or connotative. Denotative meanings are common or dictionary meanings and can be roughly the same for most people. Connotative meanings are emotional or evaluative and based on personal experience. A message can also have surface and latent meanings. Other characteristics of messages that impact communication between two individuals are: intonations and pitch patterns, accents, facial expressions, quality of voice, and gestures. The successful transmission of a message depends on whether this message will be accepted over all the competing messages.

Schramm’s model of communication also allows for the process of interpreting the message. This process is influenced by the presence of both physical (phone, tv, sirens, etc.) and semantic (distractions, age, attitudes, etc.) noise.

Dr. Schramm believed that all of these elements were important functions of communication in society. He felt that people in a society need information on their environment and methods of communicating in order to make decisions. Most importantly we need “places to store the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of a society and this is why we have libraries” (Schramm, 1963, pg. 14). Within a library, all of these elements of Wilbur Schramm’s communication model are useful in addressing problems with conducting a reference interview. This model provides the rationale to solve the problem presented in this project.