Page 42 - Effective group discussion theory and practice by Adams, Katherine H. Brilhart, John K. Galanes, Gloria J

Human Communication Processes in the Small Group Context 25

Principles of Communication
Different authors emphasize different communication principles, but the following
five are the ones generally accepted by scholars and to us seem particularly important
for understanding communication in small groups.

1. Human communication is symbolic.
This is the most widely accepted and probably most important principle of
communication. We do not send our meanings directly to people; rather, our
messages have to be interpreted because messages are symbolic. Symbols are Symbol
arbitrarily created by people to represent experiences, objects, or concepts. An arbitrary, human
This arbitrariness means that there is no inherent or automatic reason why we creation used to
call a collection of people a group. Our languages are systems of words or represent something
symbols and the rules for their use and can be used to identify who is in a with which it has no
particular linguistic community and who is not. While obvious on the surface, inherent relationship;
people often forget the implications of the symbolic nature of communication all words are
when they assume everyone has the same meaning for a word or when they try symbols.
to freeze meaning and deny its changing nature. The mutual understanding
group members seek is complicated and requires careful attention as it is
negotiated. Members can end up laughing about misunderstandings. The
comedian George Carlin, famous for his ability to play with the symbolic
nature of our language, entertained us with sayings like, “Have you ever
noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone going
faster than you is a maniac?” However, misunderstandings can be deadly. For
example, the ground controllers of an Eastern Airlines flight were concerned
about its loss of altitude and asked the plane’s crew, “How are things comin’
along up there?” The pilots, thinking that “things” referred to their landing
gear rather than their loss of altitude, responded with “okay”; seconds later
they crashed, killing 99 people. 12

2. Communication is personal.
The symbolic nature of communication renders communication arbitrary and
thus very personal. The same word can have different meanings to different
people, and different words can mean the same thing. Moreover, those meanings
change as the world changes. We poke fun at linguistic arbitrariness to make our
point: Remember when a window was something you hated to clean and a ram
was a male sheep? Meg was the name of your sister, and gig was a job for the
night. Memory was something you lost, CD was a bank account, Blackberry was a
fruit, and backup happened to your toilet. Now they all mean different things and
that really mega bites! The symbolic and personal nature of communication
makes perfect understanding impossible. Your backgrounds, experiences, and the
cultures from which you identify all affect the meanings you give to the words
you use and the way you understand those of others. Even the selection of which
language to use in group work influences the group. The language globalized
work teams choose as their preferred language to use in their group affects their
teamwork and whether or not some members feel ostracized from the group. 13

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