1.3: Communication Principles

1. Academic

Improving your communication skills by studying the content presented here can help you maximize your grades in this class and there are other academic advantages of achieving this.

• Better communicators typically prepare better written documents and presentations in other courses.
• As better communicators, you will likely be able to enhance your relationships with colleagues and professors — that is, to network more effectively while in school. This may lead to employment opportunities or opportunities for advancement in the future.
• Students who take communication courses typically have higher grade point averages and are less likely to drop out of school. This significant correlation is one of the main reasons that most college and university programs make taking at least one communication course a requirement for graduation.

2. Professional

The National Association of Colleges and Employers has found that employers most desire good communication skills in the college graduates they may hire (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2010, p. 25). Countless studies and articles published since confirm this, as do the focus group meetings organized each year at Fanshawe College (see the Introduction to this textbook for more information on the latter). Desired communication skills vary from career to career and this textbook provides a foundation onto which you can build communication skills specific to your industry/field.

Employers appreciate good listening skills and the ability to communicate concisely because efficiency and clarity are often directly tied to productivity and success in terms of profit or task/project completion. In our competitive job market, being able to document that you have received advanced communication instruction and training from communication professionals can give you the edge needed to stand out from other applicants or employees.

3. Personal

While many students know, from personal experience and from the prevalence of communication counseling on television talk shows and in self-help books, that communication forms, maintains, and ends our interpersonal relationships, they do not know the extent to which that occurs. They may lack the tools to examine that phenomenon analytically and to make sure they apply what they discover to future interactions.

Those tools can be acquired by developing a foundational knowledge of communication concepts and theories, so we can master the vocabulary needed to name the communication phenomena we experience, to then note their prevalence, and to take a systematic approach to improving them. This is, again, part of engaging in metacognitive learning which is an approach to these phenomena that increases our ability to consciously alter our communication to achieve our goals, avoid miscommunication, and analyze and learn from our inevitable mistakes. Once we get further into our course content, the personal implications of advanced communication strategies and techniques will become increasingly clear.

4. Civic

Civic engagement refers to working to make a difference in our communities by improving the quality of life of community members, by raising awareness about social, cultural, or political issues or by participating in a wide variety of political and nonpolitical processes (Ehrlich, 2000, vi). The civic part of our lives is developed through engagement with the decision making that goes on in our society at the small-group, local, state, regional, national, or international levels. Such involvement ranges from serving on a neighborhood advisory board to sending an e-mail to our MP, to the Premier of our province, or to the Prime Minister. Discussions and decisions that affect our communities happen around us all the time, but it takes time and effort to become a part of that process. Doing so, however, allows us to become a part of groups or causes that are meaningful to us, which enables us to work for the common good. This type of civic engagement is crucial to the functioning of a democratic society.

Although younger people have tended not to be as politically engaged in terms of voting as other age groups, the current generation of sixteen to twenty-nine-year-olds, known as the millennial generation, is known to be very engaged in volunteerism and community service. In addition, some research has indicated that college students are eager for civic engagement but do not always find the resources they need on their campuses (Jaschik, 2012). The American Association of Colleges and Universities has launched several initiatives and compiled many resources for students and faculty regarding civic engagement. Whether you are part of the millennial generation or you are over thirty, I encourage you to explore their website at the following link and try to identify some ways in which you can productively integrate what you are learning in this class into a civic context: http://www.aacu.org/resources/civicengagement.

1. Physical Needs

Physical needs include needs that keep our bodies and minds functioning; communication has substantial effects on our physical body and well-being:

• At the most basic level, communication can alert others that our physical needs are not being met (e.g., babies cry when they are hungry or sick to alert their caregiver of these physical needs; we might ask our friends if we can stay at their house if something happens and our former residence can no longer meet our physical needs for shelter).
• There are strong ties between the social function of communication and our physical and psychological health. Human beings are social creatures, which makes communication important for our survival. In fact, prolonged isolation has been shown to severely damage a human (Williams & Zadro, 2001). The social isolation rules we all had to follow as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic have made this need for communication much more obvious.
• People with good interpersonal communication skills are better able to adapt to stress and have less depression and anxiety (Hargie, 2011, p. 2).
• Communication can also be therapeutic, which can lessen or prevent physical problems. A research study found that spouses of suicide or accidental death victims who did not communicate about the death with their friends were more likely to have health problems such as weight change and headaches than those who did talk with friends (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006, p. 421).

Satisfying physical needs is essential for our physical functioning and survival. But, in order to socially function and thrive, we must also meet instrumental, relational, and identity needs.

2. Instrumental Needs

Instrumental needs include needs that help us get things done in our day-to-day lives and achieve short- and long-term goals. Common instrumental needs include influencing others, getting information we need, or getting support (Burleson, Metts, & Kirch, 2000, p. 247).

To meet instrumental needs, we often use communication strategically. Politicians, parents, bosses, and friends use communication to influence others in order to accomplish goals and meet needs. There is a research area within communication that examines compliance-gaining communication, or communication aimed at getting people to do something or act in a particular way (Gass & Seiter, 1999, p. 205). Compliance gaining and communicating for instrumental needs is different from coercion, which forces or manipulates people into doing what you want.  Open communication, free from constraint and pressure, is an important part of an ethical society. Compliance-gaining communication is different from persuasion, however. While research on persuasion typically focuses on public speaking and how a speaker persuades a group, compliance-gaining research focuses on our daily interpersonal interactions. Researchers have identified many tactics that people typically use in compliance-gaining communication (Gass & Seiter, 1999, p. 205). As you read through the following list, I am sure many of these tactics will be familiar to you.

3. Relational Needs

Relational needs  include needs that help us build, maintain, and (if needed) end social bonds and interpersonal relationships:

• To develop a relationship, we may use nonverbal communication to assess whether someone is interested in talking to us or not, then use verbal communication to strike up a conversation.
• Next, through the mutual process of self-disclosure, a relationship forms over time.
• Once relationships form, they need to be maintain through positive communication and behaviors that communicate our investment in the relationship (spending time together, frequent engagement through texts, celebrating accomplishments, etc.).
• Finally, communication or the lack of it helps us end relationships. We may communicate our deteriorating commitment to a relationship by avoiding communication with others, verbally criticizing them, or explicitly ending a relationship.

Communicating for relational needs isn’t always positive, though. Some people’s “relational needs” are negative, unethical, or even illegal. Although we may feel the “need” to be passive aggressive or controlling, these communicative patterns are not positive and can hurt our relationships.

4. Identity Needs

Identity needs include our need to present ourselves to others and be thought of in particular and desired ways. What adjectives would you use to describe yourself? Are you funny, smart, loyal, or quirky? Your answer isn’t just based on who you think you are as much of how we think of ourselves is based on our communication with other people.

Just as many companies, celebrities, and politicians create a public image, we desire to present different faces in different contexts. Goffman compared self-presentation to a performance and suggested we all perform different roles in different contexts (Goffman, 1959). Indeed, competent communicators can successfully manage how others perceive them by adapting to situations and contexts. A parent may perform the role of stern head of household, supportive shoulder to cry on, or hip and culturally aware friend based on the situation they are in with their child. A newly hired employee may initially perform the role of motivated and agreeable coworker but later perform more leadership behaviors after being promoted.

1. Communication Is Learned

Communication patterns are relative to the context and culture in which one is communicating, and many cultures have distinct languages consisting of symbols all of which are learnt (from caregivers, starting in infancy, and then through school, social interactions, work experiences, etc.).

Communication is symbolic — that is, the words that make up our language systems do not directly  and inherently correspond to something in reality; they point to something that is part of our reality as a matter of convention.

• The existence of different languages is obvious proof of this. For instance, “fish” translates into French as “poisson.” The words are not similar, and neither has any inherent relation to what we think of as fish. We know what the word refers to if we know the language.
• We also speak different “languages” based on the situation we are in. For example, in some cultures it is considered inappropriate to talk about family or health issues in public, while in others it’s common to do so. At another level, an astronomer and someone who does not specialize in the field would connect the word “star” to pools of knowledge of very different dimensions and levels of depth — and many words used by astronomers might be entirely unknown to most people. Finally, close friends often have their own inside terminology and expressions that would not make sense to anyone else.

2. Rules and Norms

As discussed earlier, whether verbal or nonverbal, mediated or interpersonal, our communication is guided by rules and norms.

Phatic communion is an instructive example of how we communicate under the influence of rules and norms (Senft, 2009). Phatic communion refers to scripted and routine verbal interactions that are intended to establish social bonds rather than to exchange meaning.

Communication Has Ethical Implications

Communication ethics deals with the process of negotiating and reflecting on our actions and communication regarding what we believe to be right and wrong.

Communication has broad ethical implications. Later in this book we will discuss the importance of ethical listening, how to avoid plagiarism, how to present evidence ethically, and how to apply ethical standards to mass media and social media. These are just a few examples of how communication and ethics will be discussed in this book, but hopefully you can already see that communication ethics is integrated into academic, professional, personal, and civic contexts.

While many behaviors can be more easily labeled as ethical or unethical, communication acts are not always easy to judge. Physically hurting someone is generally thought of as unethical and illegal, but many instances of hurtful speech, or even what some would consider hate speech, have been protected as free speech. This reveals a complicated relationship between protected speech, ethical speech, and the law. In some cases, people see it as their ethical duty to communicate information that they feel is in the public’s best interest. The people behind WikiLeaks, for example, have released thousands of classified documents related to wars, intelligence gathering, and diplomatic communication. WikiLeaks claims that exposing this information keeps politicians and leaders accountable and keeps the public informed, but government officials claim the release of the information should be considered a criminal act. Both parties consider the other’s communication unethical and their own communication ethical. Who is right?

Since many of the choices we make when it comes to ethics are situational, contextual, and personal, various professional fields have developed codes of ethics to help guide members through areas that might otherwise seem uncertain. Doctors take oaths to do no harm to their patients, and journalists follow ethical guidelines that promote objectivity and provide for the protection of sources. Although businesses and corporations have gotten much attention for high-profile cases of unethical behavior, business ethics has become an important part of the curriculum in many business schools, and more companies are adopting ethical guidelines for their employees. The following “Getting Critical” box includes information about the National Communication Association’s Ethical Credo and the International Association of Business Communicators’ Code of Ethics.

Let us also examine the principles promoted by the International Association of Business Communicators through their Code of Ethics:

• I am honest. My actions bring respect for and trust in the communication profession.
• I communicate accurate information and promptly correct any errors.
• I obey laws and public policies; if I violate any law or public policy, I act promptly to correct the situation.
• I protect confidential information while acting within the law.
• I support the ideals of free speech, freedom of assembly, and access to an open marketplace of ideas.
• I am sensitive to others’ cultural values and beliefs.
• I give credit to others for their work and cite my sources.
• I do not use confidential information for personal benefit.
• I do not represent conflicting or competing interests without full disclosure and the written consent of those involved.
• I do not accept undisclosed gifts or payments for professional services from anyone other than a client or employer.
• I do not guarantee results that are beyond my power to deliver

You can find this code and read more about this association at this link: https://www.iabc.com/about-us/purpose/code-of-ethics/

In upcoming chapters, we will link these principles of ethical communication to essential requirements of workplace communication such as clarity, cultural sensitivity, objectivity, accuracy in citing sources, honesty in describing our contribution, etc.