Communication has many different meanings. At one extreme a narrow sense is limited to the media of information; only, at the other, a very wide meaning embraces any means whereby a message passes from one person to another, including face-to-face and even non-verbal com­munication. The scope of the term was to include anything which might be considered part of national communications, as a resource of the com­munity.

This would clearly include radio and television facilities, the press and books, film and cinema and such innovations as video-cassette, and satellite communication, postal, telephone and telegraph services, if not included as such, could not be omitted entirely especially from long-term planning considerations, where a telecommunication and a broadcasting department might need to agree on the shared use of facilities.

Communication depends upon our understanding what the speaker means by the words he uses, as well as his understanding what the words will mean to us. We must then have some knowledge of the person who is speaking as well as some knowledge of ourselves in terms of how words affect us. If we are conscious of the fact that our words may have different meanings for other people, we are more apt to be careful about our choice of terms.

As symbols of events, words take on meaning, but in addition each word is shaded with meanings by the person using it, his personality, his experience, and his perception. A single common definition for each word could go far in establishing understanding among people and eliminating disagreements caused by misinterpretations of another’s words, but word meanings cannot be dictated or legislated and as long as people are different, different meanings will exist.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

The term communication originates from the Latin word ‘communize’ which means common. Hence communication is having common ex­perience with other people. It is an act by which a person shaves the knowledge, feelings, ideas, information, etc.; in ways such that each gains a common understanding of the meaning, intent and use of the message.

The Sociologists, the educationists and the psychologists have defined communication in various ways and according to the discipline to which they belong. A few definitions of these definers are given below:

(a) Leagons:

“It is a process by which two or more people exchange ideas, facts, feelings or impressions in ways that each gains a common understanding of the message. In essence it is the act of getting a sender and a receiver tuned together for a particular message or series of messages.”

ADVERTISEMENTS:

(b) Colemn and Marsh:

“all educational and action programme,’ in agriculture are communication.”

(c) Schramn:

“Communication occurs when two corresponding systems -coupled together through one or more non-corresponding systems assume identical status as a result of a single transfer along the chain, we are trying to establish commonness.”

ADVERTISEMENTS:

(d) Loorais and Beegle:

The process by which information, decisions and directions pass through a social system and the ways in which knowledge opinions and attitudes are formed or modified.”

(e) Warren Weaver:

“all the procedures by which one mind can effect another.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

(f) Howland:

”Communication is the force by which an individual communicator transmits stimuli to modify the behavior of other individuals.”

(g) Gist:

“When social interaction involves the transmission of meanings through the usages of symbols it is known as, communication.”