The Human Communication Process

When thinking about the communication process, we usually tend to think about a simple process in which one person speaks and another listens. However, literature on the issue has shown that this sort of thought is completely wrong and that human communication processes are in fact quite complex and ever-changing phenomena. But, why are these processes as complex? How does communication really work? Answering to these questions is the main aim of this topic.

For this purpose, I will divide my topic into four main sections: firstly, I will provide a general overview of the communication process by means of giving a definition to the concept and pointing out its most salient features and the different types of communication one may find. Then,

For this complexity and in order to provide an accurate definition for the term, communication has been approached from many different disciplines, such as anthropology, psychology or sociology among others. Yet, from a linguistic perspective, the communication process has traditionally been understood as the exchange and negotiation of information between at least two individuals. However, it is important to point out that the information we try to communicate is never fixed; it is constantly changing and qualified by different factors such as the context or the choice of language forms and non-verbal behaviour. For this reason, we may find different types of communication, among others, verbal and-non-verbal, written and oral, formal and informal, or intentional and unintentional

Informal communication is commonly defined as casual and spontaneous type of communicating which is usually vulnerable to being deceptive and imprecise in its casualness, consciously or unconsciously. In fact, it comes from communication events that occur outside those formally learned through discipline. On the contrary, formal communication is more thought-out and prepared from learned experiences. Hence, more accountability and reliability is commonly expected. Thus, an example of informal communication would be a conversation between us and any of our friend and of formal communication we would use any official letter sent to the