Chapter 1 Communication: Essential Human Behavior 11Communication Can Be Unintentional
Some communication is intentional, such as messaging a friend to let her know
you’ll be away from your computer and using a mutually understood code
(BRB!). Other communication is spontaneous and therefore unintentional (Buck,
1988; Motley, 1990). For example, you communicate a message when you
blush, even though blushing is an involuntary action. The distinction between
the two types of communication can be described as the difference between
giving information and giving off information (Goffman, 1967).
These distinctions are important: we tend to see involuntary messages as
more honest and reliable because the person giving off the information doesn’t
have the opportunity to censor it. However, most spontaneous messages are
ambiguous: Is your face red because you’re embarrassed? Because you’re angry?
Because you’ve had a hot cup of tea? Because you just ran up six flights of stairs?
Other surrounding cues may give us more clues to the meaning, but in the end
our final assessment can still be questionable. The most successful communica-
tors are sensitive to the fact that both intended and unintended messages exert an
impact on the people around them.
Communication Occurs Through Various Channels
Once, the only means of communication—the only channel—was face-to-face
contact. But as society became more sophisticated, other channels emerged.
Smoke signals, handwritten correspondence, telegraph, telephone, e-mail, and
text messaging are all examples. A channel is simply the method through which
communication occurs. We must have a channel to communicate.
Most people in technologically advanced societies use many channels to
communicate, though they are not always proficient at adapting communication
for the channel being used. Do you have a friend who leaves five-minute voice
mail messages on your cell phone as though speaking directly with you? Or do
you have a cousin who shares deeply private information with all of her six hun-
dred Facebook “friends”? We all need to identify the channel that will work best
for certain messages, at certain points in our relationships with certain people,
and then adapt our messages to that medium.
Communication Is Transactional
You may recall when CBS and Warner Brothers halted production of the hit
comedy Two and a Half Men after actor Charlie Sheen made many derogatory,
insulting remarks about the sitcom’s creator, Chuck Lorre (Carter, 2011). Lorre’s
refusal to continue the show in the aftermath of Sheen’s hostility carried a huge
financial loss for all parties, but nothing seemed possible to reverse the turn
of events and the show was only resumed after Sheen was replaced by Ashton
Kutcher. That’s because communication is a transactional process: it involves
people exchanging messages in both sender and receiver roles, and their messages
are interdependent—influenced by those of their partner—and irreversible.
Once a message has been sent (intentionally or not) and received, it cannot be
taken back, nor can it be repeated in precisely the same way. It is an ongoing
process that can be immediate (as in a real-time conversation) or delayed (as in
the case of a text message exchange).
Have you ever given off an
unintentional message that
was improperly decoded?
(For example, you yawn
during an argument because
you’re tired from work,
but your romantic partner
assumes you are bored and
uninterested.) What did you
do to clarify that message?
Was it effective?AND YOU?
CONNECT
Choosing the appropri-
ate channel for a specific
message is important,
particularly when conflict
is involved. As you learn
in Chapter 8, breaking up
with someone via Face-
book rather than through
a more personal chan-
nel (like face to face) can
worsen an already difficult
situation. Such channels
don’t allow for nonverbal
communication (tone of
voice, eye contact, etc.),
which helps you present
difficult news clearly and
sensitively.