4.1 Defining Verbal Communication
When people ponder the word communication, they often think about the act of talking. We rely on verbal communication to exchange messages with one another and develop as individuals. The term verbal communication often evokes the idea of spoken communication, but written communication is also part of verbal communication. Reading this book, you are decoding the authors’ written verbal communication in order to learn more about communication. Let’s explore the various components of our definition of verbal communication and examine how it functions in our lives.
Verbal communication is about language, both written and spoken. In general, verbal communication refers to our use of words, while nonverbal communication refers to communication that occurs through means other than words, such as body language, gestures, and silence. Both verbal and nonverbal communication can be spoken and written. Many people mistakenly assume that verbal communication refers only to spoken communication.
However, you will learn that this is not the case. Let’s say you tell a friend a joke, and he or she laughs in response. Is the laughter verbal or nonverbal communication? Why? Because the sound of laughter would not be considered words, we would consider this vocal act as a form of nonverbal communication. For simplification, the box below highlights the kinds of communication that fall into the various categories. You can find many definitions of verbal communication in other literature, but for this text, we define verbal communication as an agreed-upon and rule-governed system of symbols used to share meaning. Let’s examine each component of this definition in detail.
A System of Symbols
Symbols are arbitrary representations of thoughts, ideas, emotions, objects, or actions used to encode and decode meaning (Nelson et al.). Symbols stand for or represent something else. For example, there is nothing intrinsic about calling a cat a cat. Rather, English speakers have agreed that these symbols (words), whose components (letters) are used in a particular order each time, stand for both the actual object as well as our interpretation of that object. This idea is illustrated by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richard’s triangle of meaning. The word cat is not the actual cat. Nor does it have any direct connection to an actual cat. Instead, it is a symbolic representation of our idea of a cat, as indicated by the line going from the word cat to the speaker’s idea of cat to the actual object.
Symbols have three distinct qualities: they are arbitrary, ambiguous, and abstract. Notice that the picture of the cat on the right side of the triangle more closely represents a real cat than the word cat. However, we do not use pictures as language or verbal communication. Instead, we use words to represent our ideas. This example demonstrates our agreement that the word cat represents or stands for a real cat and our idea of a cat. The symbols we use are a