Encoding Information

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to talk about encoding information in communication. And so our key terms are code, symbol, information, verbal communication, and nonverbal communication. So look out for those throughout this tutorial.

When we are talking about communication, it involves taking information, which is a sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message, an awareness of things inside or outside the self that must be encoded in symbols to be conveyed to another. So what you don't already know.

So that information is what we want to get out to another person. And the information must be then transformed into a set of symbols. And a symbol is a representation of a concept in a tangible form. So in communication, a symbol would be something like a letter or a number, for example.

And once we have transmitted into symbol, it then needs to go into a set of consistent symbols, which would be a code. And a code is a set of symbols with consistent meanings used to hold and convey information. So a code would be a set of symbols or letters which would be then transformed into a word, and which further can be transformed into a sentence. So this is what we would consider to have consistent meanings and how we would transfer the information.

When we express information, we can do it in a lot of different codes. And this could be through spoken word, written word, or through pictures, and then also our gesture.

When we express our codes through let's say verbal word or written word, this would be called verbal communication. And that is communication using the code commonly called spoken or written language. So when we are speaking or writing, we are using verbal communication.

Whereas when we're using let's say our hand gestures or our facial expressions, this is called nonverbal communication. And it is communication using a variety of physical codes. So we are expressing our information non-verbally here.

In order to have effective communication, the sender and receiver must understand the code. So I would like to use an example. Let's say that I speak English and the person that I want to send a message to speaks Russian. And I don't understand Russian and the other person doesn't understand English.

And so since we don't understand or have a common set of codes for our languages, we therefore don't have effective communication, as we would if I understood Russian and could translate or if they understood English and could translate as well. So here we have to have the same understanding of codes in order for communication to be effective.

So now that we've talked about encoding information, let's talk about some key points here. So in communication, information is expressed as symbols. So these are letters, numbers, et cetera. And they need to be transmitted into a code.

And we express these codes of information verbally and non-verbally. Verbally would be spoken and written word, whereas nonverbal would be gestures and facial expressions, for example.

And to have effective communication, we had to have mutual understanding of sender and receiver. So going back to my example of our Russian and English speakers. Since they don't have a common code to express their communication, it is therefore ineffective.

Well, that's all that I have for you today. I really hope that you've learned something. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.