# Lecture 1: Understanding the Communicative Environment – I

**Channel:** Soft Skills Development
**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSitkLEFg2A
**Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/mSitkLEFg2A

## Chapters

- 0:21 — Course Overview and Soft Skills
- 4:22 — What Communication Really Means
- 10:09 — Channels Ambiguity and Interpretation
- 15:47 — Models of Communication and Feedback
- 20:47 — Filters Barriers and Closing Summary

## Transcript

**[0:21]:** Hello friends today we are starting with the first talk of our course soft skills development and we will be focusing on understanding the communicative environment and uh the reason for that is because uh this is a very very important component of the course I'll tell you about that in a few minutes from now but uh let's have a look at uh the overview in the next 30 minutes or so we'll be looking at uh the following areas and uh I'll be explaining the the details of these to you but more important than that before we begin the course there are a few things about the course that I will ask you to listen to very carefully the first point is that uh please refer to the discussion forum again and again because that is where the various activities the quizes the surveys the interactions will be taking place and the vital links for those will

**[1:25]:** be also provided there in our course surveys will play very important role and it is expected that uh you will be taking some of these surveys okay and uh they have a certain amount of weightage in terms of marks along with uh your quid questions weekly quid questions then you have quizes of course and we will have uh as I promised a number of other social media activities and uh these uh we will be announcing in the discussion forum from time to time and when it comes to the uh the various other aspects of the course please refer to the introductory video and also to the the written uh course components which have been already provided in order to identify what we are going to do periodically each week but as I told you right at the beginning the first week our focus is going to be on communication the same is going to happen

**[2:25]:** in the second and the third week as well in fact uh focusing on some of the aspects which have been highlighted right here in this PowerPoint is something which is going to be very very important uh for the first few weeks of the course now let me share quickly with you the relationship between soft skills and communication in some sense soft skills uh can be considered a super set and communication a subset of that set and uh as you can see if you go for a quick definition of what soft skills are you look at social graces which which means etiquette the way you interact with people and the various kinds of emotional and cognitive traits that you display these constitute social graces communication abilities refer to your abilities to communicate through various channels like uh verbal non-verbal uh visual auditory and we still discuss that in a detail way at a later point of

**[3:25]:** time language skills um do not need much explanation but the other things obviously are a part of soft skills but as I have highlighted over here these are some of the important soft skills which relate to communication and we are going to do that in the first couple of weeks in a very detailed way now if you want to Define soft skill as opposed to hard skills soft skills are difficult to measure difficult to quantify because they refer to your qualitative traits uh your personality your emotions the way you display them and all that whereas hard skills are measurable for instance how good you are as a computer programmer or let's say how good a mechanical engineer you are or how good are you at editing something now these are skills which are easy to measure and quantify so having differentiated between the two and highlighted the significance of uh uh communication in the context

**[4:22]:** of soft skills now let us begin with uh the fundamental question what is communication now there are certain questions uh which are very easy to answer in one sense and very difficult to answer in another sense for instance if I ask you a question like what is life then it is probably very easy to answer in a certain sense you'll have a wide range of definitions but then again because of that it is very difficult to answer so instead of trying to identify what exactly communication is let us try to explore it and look at some of its components and probably will get a better idea and a grip of what communication basically means the first point I would like to point uh present or indicate is we must differentiate between communication where somebody intends to communicate as opposed to communication where somebody doesn't intend to communicate now this is going to be very very

**[5:19]:** significant as we move on to certain aspects of non-verbal communication body language because these get linked to telling lies telling truth and we would hope hopefully have some very enjoyable games related to that as we proceed with this course but uh overt is explicit covert is something which you don't want to communicate but nonetheless you manage to communicate somebody feels angry doesn't want to se it but it gets reflected on his face now that in a certain way would be covert communication the way we want to understand it in this particular context cover communication can also mean communicating secretly with somebody that's all also a possibility where you are communicating explicitly with a group of people but secretly with another category of people but that is not our Focus over here here unintentional communication is something which is considered very significant because in day-to-day social behavior very often we communicate things we don't want to

**[6:20]:** don't intend to or we are misunderstood or we miscommunicate and hence this becomes a very very significant aspect of communication sleeping now the next point is that can you think of a situation where somebody is not communicating anything and the thing which immediately comes to our mind is that somebody is sleeping but the very fact that somebody manages to communicate that she's sleeping means that communication still works over here then you might argue that well what about death somebody is dead we can always say that uh at least we are able to identify that this person is dead the person who is sleeping might be dreaming so in some sense although is's not communicating with us he is in some sort of a communication with herself or himself in case of death the person is no longer in a position to communicate with us but at least we get to know about his State of

**[7:19]:** Affairs so his body or his lack of life and uh the the static body does manage to communicate something to because so again that's very very significant and we need to be aware of it now one of the interesting things when we talking about cover communication or communication where we don't intend to is uh the example of let's say detective stories as in case of stories of Cel homes you see a part of the evidence a part of the communication is presented but somewhere you find that the lines have been erased so the detective's job is to kind of put the erased lines in place to complete the erased lines so that uh the communication process is complete at the end of the story you find the detective very often explaining whether it is s Holmes or herul poo uh explaining how he has been able to identify the missing link so you find that

**[8:18]:** uh even in when we're looking at uh the context of uh fun or exciting Adventures uh other than day-to-day life we find that uh communication whether implicit or explicit is something with which we play around and it is very very important especially covert communication because there is always a challenge to find out something when people don't want to communicate to you now that is a very very interesting aspect of communication and we will discuss some of it as we proceed now what communicates what is it that communicates the body communicates accents non- accents the lack of action we talked about a dead body they communicate wordss communicate silence also communicate somebody is angry doesn't speak silence also communicates dress communicates the environment the various things that are around they communicate images and things communicate music communicates you can in fact sit down to make a list of various things that communicate and uh You' be

**[9:22]:** surprised to probably find that uh there is hardly anything which doesn't communicate if you look around yourself right now now you'll find probably that everything that is there manages to provide some information to you okay and in that sense uh every object or lack of object in for that matter has the potential of communicating within a particular context and these are things which uh we will discuss as significant because by now probably you have already realized that uh communication is not simple communication is complex and we will just touch upon some of these complexities and relate it to soft skills and why they are significant in the context of soft skills now to begin with

**[10:09]:** uh we have we talked about multiple channels of communication I talked about channels of communication without defining it a little earlier what they mean basically is that communication can take place in various ways let's say that the body can be considered as a channel for communication your voice your speech your text in a similar way let us say that your facial expressions if you're looking at the electronic medium somebody typing that can be considered as a Channel of communication so when we looking at the channels of communication there can be many okay and uh sometimes they can be in Union they can be compatible some other times they can act in a way which are contradicted to one another let's say that you are smiling but you're not happy so there are two channels okay you saying words which are harsh but you are smiling or you are saying things which are polite but you

**[11:03]:** look angry so there are two channels and they are in conflict with one another so as I told you a little earlier your communication can be difficult ambiguity ambiguity is something where communication is not very clear now if you're looking at this uh particular short poem known as a haiku a Japanese form by Jack kok you find that uh the lines are difficult to understand snow in my Sue abandon Sparrow's Nest unless unless you contextualize it unless you understand what let us say a highq is supposed to do the meaning of the poem is ambiguous one of the possible ways that you can interpret the poem is by saying something like this that when one looks at this snow which is in the so right now it looks like a abandoned sparrows Nest so there is a metaphor there is sudden striking resemblance between the two that has been discovered by the poet and depicted

**[12:03]:** there now that is how haikus actually are supposed to express a moment's realization a moment's deep realization or surprised realization or wonderful realization but unless we get the context unless we know this background we are in a position not to make sense out of it now poems in general are ambiguous because you can interpret it in different ways for instance I interpreted it in a particular way not but there is always a possibility that you would interpret it in a different way in your own way you are free to do that with poems and that brings us to the third thing which we are talking about interpretation what does exactly uh interpretation mean in the communicative context interpretation is making sense and when we make sense of things or messages within a communicative context then a number of other things play a significant role in determining how we understand the message that is interpretation we

**[13:02]:** will talk about interpretation a little later and uh uh here uh we give an example of that in the J tradition in the Indian tradition we have a very well-known story of uh six blind men who wanted to discover or to Define experience what an elephant was like obviously they touched different parts of the elephant and came up with different answers to what it was like so their definition is very somebody said it's like a tree somebody else like a snake or a wall depending on which part of the body they touched or hard and pointed somebody touching the tusks or like a saucer touching the ears or like the roof touching the belly of the elephant so you see that uh this is interpretation now very often uh although it's uh it's an exaggerated example very often when you are looking at the any any object in any context any message in any context

**[14:01]:** uh unless it is very def def very definite there can be maybe more than one possible interpretations and uh the interpretations will also vary from Context to context the same object when let's say put in one context would give rise to one way of looking at it in a different context it would look different for example a glass uh in light and the same glass in darkness or semi- Darkness are presented presenting two different visuals of the same thing so the interpretation the experience of the two visuals would be very very different so interpretation is going to play a very significant role especially in the social cultural contexts when we have transactions with people when we interact with people when we have group dynamics coming into play assessing guessing what somebody means so this is a key term which will come in again and again as we proceed we have already talked about Channel channel

**[14:58]:** of communication here are illustrations of the channels that I was talking about okay words could be spoken written nonwords could also be channels like sounds colors light images and objects body environment even digital signals okay these could or the way that fiber optic line which is communicating this or the wireless which is communicating anything through which a message can get communicated is to be considered a channel so if I'm using sign language for de and dum people okay that also happens to be a Channel of communication so anything if I'm using a painting then that becomes a Channel of communication all these can be defined as channels of communication now I know that uh it

**[15:47]:** might look a little imposing but you see that for pretty long time people have been trying to create models of communication so we will not go into the details of these models but a quick look would suffice the first the basic most rudimentary is where you recognize that in any kind kind of a communication there is a sender and a receiver but that is not good enough you must have a message so and a channel a medium through which this message is to be communicated if you're talking about let's say telephone then wires if you're talking about two people talking to one another than the sound of their voices that is the channel and whatever the articulate is the message and then we move on to transactional models where the interaction it's not just one way going from one direction to the other but it's a process uh process where two people are interacting so

**[16:42]:** there is a this way and that way communication that comes in and more recently we have constructionist model golman many other theorists including linguists talk about noise decoding encoding Channel feedback and we will look at some of these issues in a moment from now WR so this is a very simple uh example of the process of communication where we have a sender and we have a receiver but you see that you can always reverse the process the receiver can become the sender and the sender can become the receiver in this way you see that uh a linear uh mode becomes a transactional mode of communication because if I'm speaking to you then you are responding to me then it no longer is a linear process of communication for for instance today now you're listening to my talk this is in some sense a linear communication because I am the sender of the message and you

**[17:36]:** are the receiver of the message I'm the speaker and you are the listener but the moment we have a discussion then it becomes nonlinear because you are responding to the various things I have done I am trying to respond to your queries and it becomes nonlinear mode of communicating the infinite model kind of captures this and um this um humorously uh has certain implications you see that if we start looking at why people started to communicate then we find that uh people started communicating to make things easier to make life easier communication is a process of cooperating in many instances that is the initial reason why we communicate to make things happen if I'm not able to do something somebody else does it for me we collaborate and for doing all these things for a society to be built up for a civilization to be built up communication becomes essential but in the process if

**[18:31]:** we look carefully we find that at no point of time has communication come down or diminished the more we communicate the more there is the need to communicate I remember a time uh almost 20 years back or 18 years back when I joined the IIT system when uh I used to write uh letters postcards drop a postcard two postcards a day to maybe my parents to some of my friends now we have a situ situation where on an average uh we at least receive 50 to 25 to 50 emails a day and respond to at least 10 to 15 of them and we have SMS we have telephone so if you're looking at the amount of communication we are doing in 20 years it has really grown so if you're looking at communication to simplify things well that hasn't actually worked but uh that kind of illustrates the infinite model that is being displayed on

**[19:24]:** the screen so in the infinite model what we're looking at is is a sender and a receiver but as we have already discussed the receiver becomes the sender and unless somebody dies unless for some reason the communication Network breaks down this process is an infinite process it goes on endlessly what are barriers barriers are things which stop communication let us say that uh I'm talking to you and the signals uh or weak or I'm talking to you that the interconnect internet connection is not there that's the barrier to communication encoding takes place in various ways at a very basic level the language that I'm using is a language which let's say somebody who is from a rural setup in odisha or West Bengal may not understand so he doesn't manage to decode this language so at a very simple level I'm encoding in the English language and you are decoding in the English language but

**[20:22]:** if somebody doesn't know the language then the person is not able to decode it that also is a barrier not being able to decode encoding and decoding also takes place at a digital level because you are able to get the signal uh digital uh signals and they create they create an analog image for you that you can see so that's again encoding and decoding responses acknowledgements feedback this is the entire process of transaction that we were

**[20:47]:** talking about and filters is something which is very significant and I would like to highlight that uh in a moment because a little earlier we talked about interpretations and filters are things which help us with interpretations or rather the way that we construct meanings the way we understand things depend to a great extent on what are known as filters so the things which affect communication which disrupt or modify communication have to be understood as filters and barriers and filters can be any of these things like knowledge stat culture emotions context gender age all these can act as filters let's take an illustration uh this word qu can be interpreted when you are filtering it through these seven or eight things in different ways like uh it can be understood knowledge about where Coke is made what does it consist of and what are the chemical components Coke WEA I mean your social status is affected

**[21:58]:** by your drinking Coke culture in which cultures youth cultures maybe young kids cultures Coke is encouraged there are certain cultures where Coke is probably not encouraged emotions Cooks excite kids may not excite elderly people context you're feeling thirsty or it's hot you want Coke gender you might uh uh be influenced to drink something else depending on whether you a man or a woman age many aged people don't feel like having it so you see that the same object or the same stimuli in this case which happens to be the same stimulus which happens to be in this case the word Coke and the image of Coke can elicit different kinds of responses and uh the various components that we have outlined on the left hand side are very going to be very very significant in the generic context of soft skills as well because they play very influential role in how you are perceived whether

**[22:57]:** you perceiv positively or negatively how you perform when it comes to being good at soft skills or not now talking about barriers I have already shared with you what barriers are let us say that uh you start off with the assumption that you don't have anything to learn about soft skills now this is a kind of a bias now if you have this kind of a bias then you would not be interested in listening to this talk you would switch it off so it acts as a barrier when we talking about emotions you are Disturbed or you extremely happy you are not focused you may not feel like listening to anything so that acts as a barrier Medium as I told you this medium may break down at any particular point of time external things uh or the language is a huddle you don't know the language that can create a problem noise and interference

**[23:49]:** we have already Illustrated now at the end of uh this brief introduction uh we will look at at the summary of key points because they were going to help us for each of the talks that I'm going to give you we'll have a brief summary of key point that you can always quickly look at to juggle your memories and uh it's important to realize that U communication or an introduction to communication doesn't end here because there are different categories of communication different uh uh ways that we communicate channels of communication which we have not elaborately discussed until this point of time so we should be looking at those issues in the talks to follow and the Talk That is supposed to follow is again about communication because as I told you it's very relevant in the context of soft skills and I would like to illustrate some of the relevant points related to that thank

**[24:51]:** you