ASSIGNMENT

Unit 1: Introduction to Business Communication

1. Define Business Communication?

Business communication is exchanging information in order to promote

an organization's goals, objectives, aims, and activities, as well as
increase profits within the company. It encompasses a variety of topics
including: consumer behavior, advertising, public relations, corporate
communication, research and measurement, reputation management,
and event management.
Business communication may also refer to internal communication: a
communications director will typically manage internal communication
and craft messages sent to employees.
Effective business communication is a sharing process involving two or
more parties sending a message that is easily understood by each
person. Effective business communication is how employees and
management interact to reach organizational goals.

2. Describe the importance of Business Communication.

The purpose is to improve organizational practices and reduce errors . It

can endear you among your peers, raise your value among your
superiors and cause you to be admired among those subordinate to you.
Going beyond job-related discussions, you should be using it in all forms
of communication.
A learned skill-set, effective business communication is something you
must familiarize your-self with and learn how to develop. Through
practice, your communication will strengthen and its effectiveness will
transfer into the jobs you do, making your work efforts effective too.
3. What are the principles of effective business communication?

1. Stop assuming: Many business relationships have unspoken rules with

assumptions at their core. This might work for a while, but it's better for all
sides to openly communicate needs and expectations. Assumptions often
cause misunderstandings, which can escalate into troublesome situations.
2. Teamwork: Effectively communicating with others who may have
different opinions and skill sets. In a business setting, this means putting
aside personal differences and working toward a common goal. For
teamwork to be successful, all parties must recognize that combined efforts
are worth more than individual contributions.
3. Learn to listen first. Quite a lot of the time, we are not really listening to
others in conversation, but thinking about what we plan to say next. The
biggest business communication killer is the failure to listen. Be open-
minded enough to hear the other side's feedback, absorb it and develop a
solution that combines what you want and what they want. Good listeners
use the techniques of clarification and reflection to confirm what the other
person has said and avoid any confusion.
4. Ask questions. Questioning is a crucial skill to ensure that you have
understood someone’s message correctly. It is also a very good way of
obtaining more information about a particular topic, or simply starting a
conversation and keeping it going. When you combine listening with asking
relevant questions, you've opened up powerful two-way business
communication.
5. Emotional Intelligence: No matter how dry the topic you’re
communicating about, a connection to people is critical to a huge part of
your market. Expressing emotion is important, but always be respectful. Be
aware of and understand your own emotions and be able to master them,
in order to understand and work well with others. Emotion is part of that
communication, but it shouldn't be the end of it.
6. Pay attention to nonverbal messages. Eye contact is one of the most
powerful forms of communication available in the business world. Don't
underestimate the importance of silence and making eye contact for at
least three seconds. Body language may be defined as passive, assertive, or
aggressive.
 7. Recognize and reinforce positive behaviors. People are more effectively
motivated by positive reinforcement than they are with negative
consequences. Sometimes all it takes is a simple positive comment or a
“thank you” that’s given immediately on the spot or soon afterwards.
8. Be patient and don't expect miracles. Good business communication is
not about winning; it's about strengthening relationships effectively.
Change doesn't happen overnight.
The process of effective communication is the best way to engage with
people in a way that accomplishes your business goals.
For the communication to be effective, you need to make sure the
completeness, correctness, conciseness and clarity of your message to be
delivered.

4. What are the principles of verbal communication?

Verbal communication is the use of words to share information with other

people. It can therefore include both spoken and written communication.
However, many people use the term to describe only spoken
communication.
The verbal element of communication is all about the words that you
choose, and how they are heard and interpreted.
There are a large number of different verbal communication skills. They
range from the obvious (being able to speak clearly, or listening, for
example), to the more subtle (such as reflecting and clarifying).
In order to communicate verbally effectively, verbal communication is
based on several basic principles that apply to all contexts of verbal
communication.
1. Language Has Rules

Language is a code, a collection of symbols, letters, or words with arbitrary

meanings that are arranged according to the rules of syntax and are used to
communicate (Pearson & Nelson, 2000).
The words themselves have meaning within their specific context or
language community. But without a grasp of the context in which the words
are used, it is sometimes difficult to understand. The words themselves only
carry meaning if you know the understood meaning and have a grasp of
their context to interpret them correctly.
There are three types of rules that govern or control our use of words.
a) Syntactic rules govern the structure of a sentence, usually including word
order, in a given language. Broadly, syntactic rules account for the
grammar, word order, hierarchical organization of sentences, structural
ambiguity, different structures with same meaning and the creative aspect
of language.

According to this rule, there are definite combinations of words that are
correct and incorrect in English. It is equally correct to say, “Please come to
the meeting in the auditorium at twelve noon on Wednesday” or, “Please
come to the meeting on Wednesday at twelve noon in the
auditorium.” But it would be incorrect to say, “Please to the auditorium on
Wednesday in the meeting at twelve noon come.”
The rules of how to order words help the language parts make sense.
Sentences often start with a subject, followed by a predicate (or just a verb
in the simplest sentences) and contain an object or a complement (or
both), which shows, for example, what's being acted upon.
b) Semantic rules govern the meaning of words and how to interpret them
(Martinich, 1996).

Semantic rules make communication possible. They are rules that people
have agreed on to give meaning to certain symbols and words. Semantic
misunderstandings arise when people give different meanings to the same
words or phrases.
The purpose of semantics is to propose exact meanings of words and
phrases, and remove confusion, which might lead the readers to believe a
word has many possible meanings. It makes a relationship between a word
and the sentence through their meanings.
c) Contextual rules govern meaning and word choice according to context
and social custom. A contextual rule is an expression whose purpose is to
identify and label portions of text. The rule determines what the elements
those have to be present are and the order between them. According to
this rule, the meaning of a word, expression, or symbol is partly or wholly
determined by defining the meaning of a larger expression containing the
word, expression or symbol.

2. Our Reality Is Shaped by Our Language

It’s not just the words or sentence structure or the meaning that makes
communication. Your language itself, ever changing and growing, in many
ways determines your reality (Whorf, 1956). You can’t escape your
language or culture completely, and always see the world through a shade
or tint of what you’ve been taught, learned, or experienced.
Suppose you were raised in a culture that values formality. At work, you
pride yourself on being well dressed. It’s part of your expectation for
yourself and for
others. Many people in your organization, however, come from less formal
cultures, and they prefer business casual attire. You may be able to
recognize the difference, and because humans are highly adaptable, you
may get used to a less formal dress expectation, but it won’t change your
fundamental values.
By taking into account your audience’s background and experience, you can
become more “other-oriented,” a successful strategy to narrow the gap
between you and your audience. Our experiences are like sunglasses,
tinting the way we see the world. Our challenge, perhaps, is to avoid letting
them function as blinders, like those worn by working horses, which create
tunnel vision and limit our perspective.
3. Language Is Arbitrary and Symbolic

As we have discussed previously, words, by themselves, do not have any

inherent meaning. Humans give meaning to them, and their meanings
change across time. The arbitrary symbols, including letters, numbers and
punctuation marks stand for concepts in our experience.
For example, a picture of dog can be called Dog in English, Kutta in Hindi,
Kutra in Marathi, Kukur in Bangla, etc.
Sign = Signifier + Signified.
Signifier is the word/speech sound, signified is the symbol/picture.
There is no logical relation or similarity between signifier and signified.
There is no logical relation between the picture of the dog and the word
used for dog.
The relationship between speech sounds and meaning is arbitrary. If you do
not know a language, the sounds spoken to you will be incomprehensible.
Because the relationship between speech sounds and what they represent
is arbitrary, different languages have different speech sounds to represent
the same thing. Different sounds but same meaning.
English: The rice is burning!
Hindi: Chawal jal raha hai!
Korean: Pap thanda!
Language is arbitrary because a language form does not have an innate or
natural relationship with its meaning. Words and other forms have meaning
only as parts of a system, with each form deriving meaning solely from its
difference from the other forms in the system.
Because language is arbitrary, language is not a code.
Language is arbitrary. Otherwise, all languages would use the same forms
to perform the same functions.
Finally, because language is arbitrary, all languages are linguistically equal.
Symbols are the sounds or things which have meaning given to them by the
users. Symbols are words or sounds or gestures that represent thoughts. A
symbol is a concrete shape that contains an abstract thought. The
relationship between the words and things we experience is symbolic.
“cat” symbolizes a certain class of quadruped.
“table” symbolizes a certain type of furniture.
4. Language Is Abstract

Abstract language is the ability to gain meaning from things that are not
said, or from things that are said in a different way. There are many ways to
refer to "abstract language:" inferential/figurative/implicit/non-literal
language all includes the same higher order thinking.
An abstract word ‘refers to something that you cannot experience directly
 through your senses or actions. Its meaning depends on language. The
easiest way to explain it is by using other words’.
An example of the use of abstract language is the statement ‘the beach was
amazing’ instead of ‘the beach was hot’ or ‘the dress is pretty’ instead of
‘the dress is pink’.
We all think a day at the beach is amazing; however, the use of the abstract
word amazing to describe the beach diminishes the experience. We want to
appeal to the reader’s senses. There are better words to describe the
beach. The reader should be able to visualize the blue waves or smell the
salty air!
5. Language Organizes and Classifies Reality

We use language to create and express some sense of order in our world.
We often group words that represent concepts by their physical proximity
or their similarity to one another. The systems of organization we use are
not part of the natural world but an expression of our views about the
world.
We all use systems of classification to navigate through the world. Imagine
how confusing life would be if we had no categories such as male/female,
young/old, tall/short, doctor/nurse/teacher.

5. What are emphasis strategies and what is their importance?

Emphasis Strategies
One key to communication is capturing and holding the audience’s attention.
No one likes to be bored, and no communicator likes to send boring messages.
To keep your communications dynamic and interesting, it often helps to use
specific strategies for emphasis.
i. Visual Communication

By definition, visual communication is the practice of graphically representing

information to efficiently, effectively create meaning. It is the conveyance of
ideas and information in forms that can be seen. Visual communication in part
or whole relies on eyesight. It is a broad spectrum that includes signs,
typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, industrial design, advertising,
animation, color, and electronic resources.
While presenting a speech or document it is always vital to use
demonstrations for better understanding. Adding the visual dimension to a
document or speech can be an excellent way to hold your audience’s interest
and make your meaning clear.
But be careful not to get carried away. The visuals are to support your
document or presentation, not to take the place of it. A picture may be worth
a thousand words, but it is the words that really count. Make sure that your
communication is researched, organized, and presented well enough to stand
on its own. Whatever visuals you choose should be clearly associated with
your verbal content, repeating, reinforcing, or extending the scope of your
message.
ii. Signposts

'Signpost language' is the words and phrases that people use to tell the
listener what has just happened, and what is going to happen next.
In other words, signpost language guides the listener through the
presentation.
These are indicators/key words that alert the audience to a change in topic, a
tangential explanation, an example, or a conclusion.
Readers and listeners can sometimes get lost, forgetting what point is being
made or how far along in the discussion the writer or speaker has gotten. You
can help your audience avoid this by signaling to them when a change is
coming.
Common signposts include “on the one hand,” “on the other hand,” “the
solution to this problem is,” “the reason for this is,” “for example,” “to
illustrate,” and “in conclusion” or “in summary.”
iii. Internal Summaries and Foreshadowing

The role of internal summaries and foreshadowing in verbal communication is

to help the audiences to keep track of where the speaker is currently at in the
process of communication.
Internal summaries remind the listeners what has been discussed.
Foreshadowing is emphasizing what is coming next (McLean, 2010).
These strategies work by reviewing what has been covered and by highlighting
what is coming next.

iv. Repetition

There is a scientific reason why messages need to be communicated clearly,

consistently, and often to be effective. Research has proven that the more
someone hears something or practices a task, the more the brain responds
and remembers.
A message delivered only once or twice doesn’t always hit its intended target.
If someone is listening only superficially or is distracted in some way, they can
miss the key point of a message or just not hear it at all.
There is another form of repetition.
Indirect repetition: using alternative ways of saying the same point or idea.
Suppose your main point was, “global warming is raising ocean levels.” You
might go on to offer several examples, citing the level in each of the major
oceans and seas while showing them on a map. You might use photographs or
video to illustrate the fact that beaches and entire islands are going
underwater. Indirect repetition can underscore and support your points,
helping them stand out in the memory of your audience.