1. Input includes all the stimuli, both past & present, that give us information about the world

2. Verbal message

Intentional verbal messages are conscious attempts we make to communicate with others through speech.

Unintentional verbal messages are things we say without meaning to.

3. Non-verbal messages

4. Interference (noise) is anything that distorts the information transmitted to receiver or distracts him /her receiving it. Technical interference: factors that cause the receiver to perceive distortion: speech impediment, mumbling, loud music etc. Semantic interference when the receiver does not attribute the same meaning to the signal that the sender does.

5. Feedback is the return to you of the behavior you have generated: communication is effective when the stimulus as it was initiated & intended by the sender corresponds closely with the stimulus as it is perceived & responded to by the receiver.

6. Perceptual filters (culture-bound). Culture is afraid of reference.

7. Roles: work roles, student roles, gender roles, marital roles, etc.

8. An inference is a conclusion or judgment derived from evidence or assumptions.

The characteristic features of the communication process:

1. Inferential (we derive implicit meanings)

2. Intentional

3. Conventional

4. Jointly negotiated between speakers & hearers

5. Varied according to context & language user, according to the participants’ relationships

6. Involves commonsense knowledge

7. Is sequential (retrospective & prospective)

8. Is accomplished in real time & space

9. Is interpretative

The process of communication is organized, standardized & culturally patterned. It consists of 2 reciprocal processes: verbalization (speech production) & understanding.

Both processes can be viewed as multilevel activities.

Verbalization

It starts with the level of motive & intention. They emerge in a definite communicative situation as part of some practical activity. On the 2^nd level the sender’s thought is shaped first as a topic-comment structure & then as a propositional structure (functional relations between the sentences). On the 3^rd level the speaker chooses lexical & grammatical units which are combined with each other in the form of inner speech. On the 4^th level the utterance is finally shaped as a verbal expression of thought.

Understanding

It is also a set of levels, but in fact it does not take place in this way. Experiments proved that we process all types of information simultaneously. But for the purposes of some research we can identify the level of motivation, the level of initial text processing & the level of more profound text processing. Other scholars study the process of understanding as a series of strategies implied by the receiver. According to Lyons, the successful communication depends not only on the receivers research of the signal, but also in his recognition of the sender’s communicative intention & upon his making an appropriate behavioral or cognitive response to it.

Two kinds of language as objects for study:

1. One abstracted in order to study how the rules of language work.

2. The other one which has been used to communicate something & is felt to be coherent. This kind of language (language in use) is called discourse; & the search for what gives discourse coherence is discourse analysis.