Interpersonal communication, and what is it?

We know that communication, that ability we have to communicate our ideas, as well as what we think and feel, is the basis for human interaction. For this reason, for its better study, it has been divided into three large groups:

1. Intrapersonal communication: what each person does with himself.
2. Interpersonal communication: the one that occurs between two people, physically close.
3. Group communication: between three or more people, and the one that uses technical means to reach thousands or millions of people.

In this article, we will focus on interpersonal communication.

In interpersonal communication, you use a wide range of actions, verbal, and non-verbal expressions (touch, eye contact, proximity, gestures, posture, the manner of dress, and facial expressions), and physical expressions to communicate with another person. Thus, a bilateral message with questions, answers, and affirmations is generated.

What do you use communication for? Essentially, to act:

• Inform: there is an exchange of informative elements between the receiver and the sender. This is what.
• Give an instruction: with this exchange of data an action takes place on the part of the receiver. It is how to act.
• Motivate: with this type of message; the issuer helps to produce in the receiver a variation in any of the values or objectives of their choice. This is why.

Interpersonal communication is present in your life from the first steps. From a very young you are already part of it because with gestures and other nonverbal elements you start to communicate with the people around you. Thus, you will realize that, from the most important and transcendental decisions of your life to the most trivial ones, they always revolve around a long conversation, a council, or a short dialogue with another person.

Now, communication is not always fluid and assertive. Some barriers can prevent it from developing in optimal conditions. Some of them are:

Verbs: Vices acquired in the way of speaking, for example, the speed or lack of coherence in sentences. It can also be a barrier that people speak a different language, or even within it can not be understood by social class difference, age, or level of education.

Environmental: They are impersonal elements that surround us. They generate discomfort, which can be physical (heat, cold, an uncomfortable seat), visual distractions, noise (telephone, bell, music, cough, buildings), or interruptions.

Interpersonal: There can always be an assumption (something taken for granted) or perception (what a person sees and listens, from their point of view) different in communication between two people, which creates a barrier to proper understanding.

You can avoid these barriers, either as a sender of the message or as a receiver. The essential point is that your words match the gestures your body makes and that the message is reinforced by all possible means of expression.

If you can learn assertive communication skills, your messages will always be more explicit, and more concise and communication with other people will be a pleasant process. This will serve you so much for your relationship with friends, colleagues, and family, as well as teachers, bosses, and other talented people in your daily life.

Communication element:

There are many channels to convey a message, such as air and paper, among others.

All communicative process, agrees to limit, it is composed of a series of factors, that is:

Issuer: The one that issues the message, that is, the one that sets in motion the communicative mechanism. An emitter, except in certain monodirectional contexts (in which communication flows from one side to the other only), does not usually play only that role, but alternates it with that of the receiver: it is spoken, for example, and then it is listened to

Receiver: Similarly, the receiver is the one that receives the transmitted message and decodes it to rescue the information inside it. In the case of the speech act, it is equivalent to the listener. Again, a receiver never remains purely passive but alternates with the issuer positions.

Channel: The physical medium used to transmit the message. It can be the air through which the sound waves travel; it can be the paper on which the message is printed or any other means. For communication to occur, the channel must be clear of obstacles or barriers and available for use

Code: Every message has an encoding, that is, a key to understanding and ordering their senses. To these keys, for example, in the verbal language, we call them languages or languages: a conventional, social ordering of the signs that make up a word. Thus, the code of the message must be handled by both sender and receiver, so that the communication occurs.

Message: In this context, the news is the content of the information, that is, what is wanted to be transmitted to the receiver, whatever it may be.