The communication Consists of the sending and receiving messages between two or more people or animals. Those who communicate seek to contribute and obtain information About a certain matter.
It is known as communicative process , therefore, to the set of activities linked to this exchange of data. Saying process requires at least one transmitter and of a receiver . The issuer sends certain signals (a written text, words, a gesture) to spread a message ; when these signals reach the receiver, it must decode them to interpret the message . The process contemplates a "return" of the message, through which the receiver will become a sender, and vice versa.
Within the framework of this communicative process, the sender and the receiver share a code (a combination of rules and signs that allow the realization of communication) and appeal to a channel to transmit the message (the physical medium: from the air to a paper, through a digital medium). If the process is hindered for any reason, it can be said that there is a noise in the communication.
The most complex communicative process is the one developed by Humans . In this case, communication begins with a psychic activity: the message arises from thought and it is reflected through language . In the development of communication, the psychosocial abilities of the individual to communicate come into play.
An example of a communicative process is carried out when a man take the phone and call a friend to wish him a happy Birthday . The caller is placed, in the first instance, in the sender role and uses the telephone as a channel. When the receiver hears and answers, it becomes the sender. Thus, throughout the communicative process, both people will exchange their roles on numerous occasions.
He context It is one of the main elements of the communicative process, although its importance is often overlooked. These are all those events and circumstances that may affect the sender and the receiver when the message is being issued or interpreted, with the consequent alteration of its meaning.
Context components are the messages that have taken place before the current one and the following ones (which together are called linguistic context ), time, space and sociocultural circumstances in which communication takes place, that is, education and culture of the interlocutors as well as any event outside the communicative process that may affect it in one way or another and that determines the proper interpretation of the message.
In other words, it is not possible to isolate a message from its context , since it affects it before its creation, during its issuance and when it is interpreted. Certain issues that were not addressed in public a few decades ago due to social prejudice are part of today's most common conversations, and can be understood thanks to socio-cultural progress and tools that we receive in the daily exchange of information, unlike what would have happened in that past time.
It should be noted that the communicative process depends on more factors than its constituent elements. The type of relationship that exists between the sender and the receiver, the interest of both parties in the issues to be discussed and the will that each one has in carrying out their role effectively. In the same way, communication can evolve and go through different phases when the results are satisfactory: a message that begins being oral can give rise to a gestural, sound, visual or written one, and transcend time and space.
