What Is Communication?

Part 2 of 6 — Presentation and Communication Skills for working professionals

Previous: Presentation Skills: Where Knowledge Meets Communication

What Is Communication?

*Meaning, Importance & Types*

Before examining what makes communication effective, we need to understand What is Communication? It is a term used so casually in daily life that its precision is easy to lose sight of.

Defining Communication

Communication is the process of sharing information, ideas, thoughts, or feelings with another person or group in a manner that creates shared understanding. The operative phrase is “shared understanding.” Communication is not simply the act of transmitting a message; it is the successful transfer of meaning. If a teacher explains a concept and the class remains confused, transmission has occurred, but communication in the fuller sense has not. Similarly, if a student’s response is misread by the evaluator, a gap exists between intended and received meaning, regardless of how many words were exchanged.

Communication, then, is best understood as a combination of two processes working in tandem: expression (encoding and conveying an idea) and comprehension (the receiver accurately decoding it).

Why Communication Warrants Deliberate Study

Communication underlies nearly every functional activity in academic and professional life:

• Sharing information and ideas
• Expressing thought and emotion
• Issuing and receiving instructions
• Resolving doubts
• Building professional and personal relationships
• Working through problems collaboratively
• Persuading and influencing
• Functioning within teams
• Presenting knowledge to an audience

In academic and workplace contexts specifically, the expectation shifts: it is not enough to possess knowledge, one is expected to demonstrate, explain, and defend it.

Three Principal Types of Communication

1. Verbal Communication

Communication conducted through language, spoken or written.

• Oral communication: classroom discussion, meetings, interviews, presentations, telephonic or video conversation. Oral communication is shaped as much by paralinguistic features like tone, pace, pitch, and pauses as by the words themselves. The sentence “That was interesting” can convey genuine appreciation, doubt, or sarcasm depending entirely on delivery.
• Written communication: letters, emails, reports, assignments, applications. Since the reader cannot seek immediate clarification, written communication places a heavier demand on precision, structure, and correctness.

2. Non-Verbal Communication

Meaning conveyed without words, facial expression, posture, gesture, eye contact, physical proximity, and appearance. Non-verbal cues frequently reinforce verbal content, but can just as easily contradict it, producing a credibility gap the audience senses even when they cannot articulate why.

3. Visual Communication

Communication through images, diagrams, charts, graphs, and other visual representations. A well-constructed graph frequently communicates a statistical trend more efficiently than an equivalent paragraph of prose, a principle with direct relevance to presentation design.

An Integrated View

These three forms rarely function in isolation. In a presentation specifically, verbal content carries the substantive argument, non-verbal behaviour carries credibility and confidence, and visual material carries clarity and retention. A weakness in any one channel can undermine the overall communicative effect, even when the other two are executed well.

Having established what communication is and the forms it takes, the next article examines how a message actually moves from one mind to another, a more structured process than everyday experience suggests.

References

Berlo, D. K. (1960). The process of communication: An introduction to theory and practice. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.