BBA Business Communication Study Media of Communication : BBA December 2019 1st Semester Business Communication Exam Most Important Notes Study Material in English.
After Studying This Chater You are Able to Understand:- Introduction, Man’s Compulsive Instinct to Verbalize, Content Words vs Function Words, The Living Dynamic Nature of Language, Words and Dictionaries, The Contribution of the corporate World, The American Influence, The Importance of English, Three Crucial Factors Regarding The Use of Words,
BBA
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
STUDY MATERIAL
KEY POINTS
MEANS/MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION:
IMPORTANCE OF VERBALIZATION
OR USE OF WORDS
- Man is superior to other species because he communicates through language that consists of words. Other species don’t use words.
- Man has intense desire to communicate for which he use words. Expression through words is called verbalization.
- There are two kinds of words-content words and function words.
- Language is a dynamic phenomenon.
- The number of words in English has been growing fast.
- The corporate world has contributed a large number of words to English vocabulary.
- The American influence on English language, especially in business communication, is very important.
- English is the most wide used language in modern world.
- Words in themselves do not mean anything. Their meaning is determined by what we intend to convey, denotation vs. connotation, and context.
BBA
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
STUDY MATERIAL
INTRODUCTION
MEANS/MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION:
IMPORTANCE OF VERBALIZATION
OR USE OF WORDS
In the very beginning of post it has been said that communication is a process in which a communicator or participant in a communication event sends or transmits a message/ information to another communicator (the receiver) through a mutually understood set of symbols. This mutually understood set of symbols is the means or medium through which the sender encodes his message and the receiver decodes or understands it with, of course, varying degrees of success of effectiveness. A lot has been written about the media or the set of symbols used in this process. Anthropologists, psychologists, linguists and researchers in related areas have been giving serious thought to it. For humans the most commonly and effectively used medium is language. Other species have their own system or set a signal that serves its own limited purpose. But it cannot be called language because the other species do not use words. Only the human beings use words, the production and combination of which language. However beings do often use animal-like sounds and signals along with language. In fact a human being has a vast range of symbols at his command that can be simply mapped as follows:
BBA
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
STUDY MATERIAL
MAN’S COMPULSIVE INSTINCT TO VERBALIZE
MEANS/MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION:
IMPORTANCE OF VERBALIZATION
OR USE OF WORDS
As has been pointed out above, man is different from and superior to other species in the sense that he has words at his command. He is interested in the world around him. He is also interested in himself. He has a whole lot of thoughts and feelings about the world around and about himself. And he is driven by an irrepressible desire to express his thoughts and feelings. He has a compulsive instinct to share these thoughts, feelings, ideas, and reactions with others. In order to express his thoughts and feelings he has to find, or coin suitable symbols. All words are just symbols to express or represent the object or the phenomena that man sees or thinks about. In this way man is the only specials that verbalize i.e. expresses anything in words. This is also the reason why all serious or formal communication is in words. There is, no doubt, a lot more non-verbal communication. But that will be discussed later on.
BBA BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
STUDY MATERIAL
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
STUDY MATERIAL
CONTENT WORDS VS FUNCTION WORDS
MEANS/MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION:
IMPORTANCE OF VERBALIZATION
OR USE OF WORDS
Without going into the details of linguistics it is worth while mentioning here that there are two kinds of words-content words and function words. It is the content words that form the bulk of the language in question. In our case it is English, for English dominates the world or business as we shall discuss later. Regarding the content words it is necessary to know that they represent or symbolize the objects, activities, phenomena the number of which has been increasing along with the march of civilization. Any new invention or discovery made, any new product, any activity-anything has to be given a name or suitable represented in words. Such words are content words, and they are an open system. There is no limit prescribed for them. But the function words, on the other hand, are a closed system. They stand for grammatical relationships. There are certain fixed patterns that govern the system of the language. Violation of the rules governing these patterns these patterns will not be acceptable or, in other words, will lead to miscommunication. One has, therefore, to be careful with function words:
For illustration, let us look at the following sentence:
“There are a number of useful books in my library.”
Every word in the sentence has its own importance, its own suitable or rule-ordered place. They also have their own hierarchy of importance. If we look at it a little carefully we will see that the most important word in the sentence is ‘book’. Next in importance come the words ‘my library’, ‘useful’, ‘a number of’ and so on. ‘Book’ and ‘library’ are the content words. ‘there are’ and ‘in’ are the vitally important function words that give this group of words its meaningful structure. Without these function words the structure of the sentence will collapse. In the same way, without the content words ‘books’ and ‘library’ the most vital information will be lost. So one must be familiar with the increasing number or open system of content words and the ‘binding factor’ or ‘rule-ordering’ nature of function words.