Communication cannot exist without certain medium because if we use the metaphor of sending messages, getting message across, getting message to our partner or addressee, then this metaphor presupposes some medium, some instrument, some channel through which we get it. And you may use other metaphors to describe it. Two important concepts when discussing medium of communication are the audience and technology. Because of course, there is a lot of technology now, especially in the 21st century communication technologies are developing very fast and mediums may be different. And this difference in technology, purely technical, at the same time, influences the message and the communication process in general, not to say anything about social networks or mobile communication. Even simpler things also make difference. One thing is conversation over the phone, another is conversation face to face. And various cultures prefer different mediums for communication. Again, we need to specify the context. For instance, as an example, in the business context, Russians rely more on written communication than oral communication. This is already an example of cultural preferences in medium. Speaking about medium, about delivering messages, about getting them across, we actually talk about communication as a transactional process; and in fact it is. By transactional process we understand a process in which two or more people exchange roles. So, if we talk about roles of speaker and listener, or sender and receiver -- these different metaphors behind this -- they exchange these roles. The way they exchange it, how -- this is what differentiates various models of communication processs, transactional or interactional; and we come to this a little bit later. But at this moment, I only want to make point that communication in a way is a transaction when behavior of each person is dependent on and influenced by behavior of the other. And the exact model of a role exchange may differ in various communication theories. But the very fact of exchanging roles and passing something from one side to another and then back is what makes the essence of transactions. The most typical and physically understandable transaction is an instance of buying and selling things, when we exchange goods and money. A couple of other important concepts that are usually involved in describing communication are feedback and noise. These are highly contextual concepts because feedback can be very different, for instance, in a situation of a person listening to a friend and nodding like that and saying, mm-hm, mm-hm. Or by feedback we also understand a written report given by a manager to his or her employee. Noise, the same thing about noise. It can be physical noise that prevents you from listening me, I hope it doesn't happen now, you can hear me well. But it also can be psychological noise, a feeling of distress that prevents a person from understanding actually what is being said to him or her. It can be cultural noise, the screen that, again, prevents a person from getting the message correctly, understanding all the meanings behind it, cultural meanings even if you know them. So, both feedback and noise are highly contextual concepts. And again, we hit into this central for our topic, for our course, the concept of what is context, what is communication context? Looking at communication from the functional point of view, we approach the idea of communication functions. Can we actually figure out what function such a basic, such an all-embracing aprocess of human interaction involves, what functions we can talk about? Well, probably we can point to some most important and what it gives us, why would we need this. We would need this because maybe in different types of communication functions we will see some different ways how the message is shaped, how it is interpreted, how the meaning is constructed. So, from the functional point of view, the first what we see when we discuss communication is trying to achieve goals, goal achievement as the first communication function. And this type of function has two aspects, so to say: informational aspect, exchanging information; and task orientation which is especially important when we talk about communication in organizational contexts, professional contexts. So, communication helps us to solve the tasks, to achieve certain goals that we put for ourselves, or others put for us in professional, organizational and business and other types of context. The second function that communication realizes, provides for, is control. Through communication, we can control actions of other people. We can be persuasive, and that is the perlocutionary aspect of communication -- when something that we say is being interpreted by another party, another side and it will influence this person's attitudes and will lead to certain behaviors. That's what understood under perlocutional aspect of communication and we will see this term later when we will discuss the theory of speech arts. And another aspect of control is status building. Through communication we achieve, we build, we edit, so to say, we correct and regulate our social statuses because communication involves everything; it's also an essay that you write and you get your grade and it makes your status as a student, for instance, in the class. But many other things, even within face-to-face, friendly communication we talk about status building. Remember how you first came to a new school or to a new company of friends where you had to show that you are someone who deserves attention. You are building your status through communication. And the third very important aspect or function of communication is related to affiliation. It is a relational, or emotional aspect of communications. Through communication, we built our relations with other people. We tell them, we show them whether we'll like them or not; we actually create bonding through communication; we become closer or we part through communication. And of course cultures differ; they differ not because they don't have this or that function. All cultures use communication in these three or other functions. But the exact mix of these functions in specific contexts of communication will create this unique cultural blend. For instance, what do Russians tend to take into account when they communicate? What kind of affiliation they will make? How they will deal with providing information? Is it somehow different from other cultures? Yes it is. And in what contexts? How will it be judged professionally? How persuasive you can afford to be in a social situation? Different cultures differ very much in this aspect and all this makes this cultural mix. If we look at some other communication dimensions, we could probably discuss it from the point of view of how formal or informal is communication in specific contexts and how we move from formality to informality and whether you move back on this scale. How communication differs if we look at small audiences, like two people or three people talking together, to large audiences. What will be changes that happen to the process of human communication when we move along this scale. How communication in certain cultures is different when we go from familiar situations to unfamiliar situations; what is being changed, how we get familiarized with people and how it is reflected in communication, in the actual linguistic form that this communication takes. And again, building on these dimensions, we could probably return to discussing certain formats of communication or communication areas like intrapersonal communication -- when we make our decisions, create our attitudes, express our own ideas within ourselves, preparing to talk or evaluating the experiences that we've got from the outer world. Intrapersonal communication will also involve, for instance, sometimes various roles that we play in the outer world, as a professional -- I am a teacher; as a family member -- I am a mother, I am a daughter, I am a wife, a sister, and so on and so forth. These different roles are also being played within my mind through intrapersonal communication. Then interpersonal communication which involves usually face-to-face communication between two people, but is actually more complex a definition than that. Group and team communication, organizational communication, public communication, mass communication -- all these things are called communication. They are all different depending on various scales according to which we could distribute them; and all of these formats or areas have cultural specifics. For instance, mass communication or mass media in various cultures reflect the social and political situation of this culture. Group and team communication in Russian culture very much depends on a complicated twist between individualism and collectivism characteristic of modern Russian culture, and so on and so forth. Difference in public communication are usually discussed and researched in communication studies. For instance, what is a political speech in the United States, in Israel, or in Russia? These are all very different things that address and that exploit cultural specifics of these countries. And the last but not the least, intercultural communication which, as we say, can kind of overlap all these areas and add additional intercultural or interdiscourse aspect to communication formats. To list communication processes -- because communication, and we use this word all the time now -- the situation of communication involves a lot of psychological, sociopsychological, and other processes that actually make this process of creating, constructing meaning, and interpreting it in a common effort between participants. It involves perceiving and understanding, engaging in verbal communication; engaging in nonverbal communication -- body language, gestures; paraverbal characteristics such as intonation and others; listening and responding; creating environment, the climate of a communicative situation; adapting to contexts, very important. And again, we're in the realm of context. What types of contexts we would probably point to at this moment? Already said, physical, relational, cultural. Cultural overlaps all of them. And then, we understand the context in a narrow and broad sense; because by narrow sense usually linguists understand context as something that is at the left side of what is being said and what follows on the right side of what is being said or written. This is the context in the narrow sense; and it is very important for us when we participate in the communication because we base our interpretations -- and we need these interpretations and inferences, as you remember, at every moment in communication -- so, we base these interpretations on what was immediately just said, that what immediately precedes the moment of discourse that we are now at. At the same, the wide understanding of the context can involve actually everything. It can be something that happened to us a few minutes before, something that we know about our partner in communication, general contexts. Sometimes we, sort of, immerse our messages in the broad context of our personal memories and inclinations and it also creates a context for the message. So basically, describing a context, we can say that, if there is a message, everything else around can be called a context. But this is a very broad understanding of it, and of course, not usually operational. We probably will speak about more specific understanding of context.
