Cherith C- Student's Choice #3

We had a class discussion on communication and what it really means.  There were different definitions that we went over.  Claude Shannon, and engineer, thought of communication as the transmission and reception of information.  Richards, a philosopher, said that communication was the generation of meaning and that meaning is personal.  Griffin, a communications scholar, defined communication as the management of messages for the purpose of creating meaning.  Dictionaries do not prescribe meaning, but they describe it objectively.  Meaning is subjective so communication is subjective as well.  This was an interesting lecture because I only thought of communication in the most basic way, and three very different educated people had their own subjective interpretations of the definition of communication.  Understanding what communication means to me and what it means to others will help to improve the way I communicate with people because I know my purpose for communicating.