communication

Communication (from Latin communicare, meaning "to share") is the act of developing meaning among entities or groups through the use of sufficiently mutually understood signs, symbols, and semiotic conventions [协议, 协定].

semiotics [Origin: semeiotikos 'looking at and understanding signs', from semeion 'sign']

The main steps inherent to all communication are:

1. The formation of communicative motivation or reason.
2. Message composition (further internal or technical elaboration on what exactly to express).
3. Message encoding (for example, into digital data, written text, speech, pictures, gestures and so on).
4. Transmission of the encoded message as a sequence of signals using a specific channel or medium.
5. Noise sources such as natural forces and in some cases human activity (both intentional and accidental) begin influencing the quality of signals propagating from the sender to one or more receivers.
6. Reception of signals and reassembling of the encoded message from a sequence of received signals.
7. Decoding of the reassembled encoded message.
8. Interpretation and making sense of the presumed original message.

The scientific study of communication can be divided into:

• Information theory which studies the quantification [定量; 量化], storage, and communication of information in general;
• Communication studies which concerns human communication;
• Biosemiotics which examines communication in and between living organisms in general.
• Biocommunication which exemplifies sign-mediated interactions in and between organisms of all domains of life, including viruses.

The channel of communication can be visual, auditory, tactile [触觉]/haptic [触觉] (e.g. Braille [布莱叶(盲文)] or other physical means), olfactory [嗅觉], electromagnetic, or biochemical. Human communication is unique for its extensive use of abstract language. Development of civilization has been closely linked with progress in telecommunication.

Some animals and insects produce chemicals called pheromones which affect the behaviour of other animals and insects of the same type.

pheromone Origin: pherein 'to carry' + English -mone (as in hormone)]

Nonverbal communication explains the processes of conveying a type of information in a form of non-linguistic representations. Examples of nonverbal communication include haptic communication, gestures, body language, facial expressions, eye contact etc.

六级/考研单词: entity, suffice, mutual, convention, inherent, motive, compose, farther, elaborate, digit, data, gesture, medium, propagate, reception, interpret, presume, quantify, organism, domain, virus, physics, biochemistry, abstract, insect, affection, convey