Purposes of Communication

Communication serves five major purposes: to inform, to express feelings, to imagine, to influence, and to meet social expectations. Each of these purposes is reflected in a form of communication.

Informative Communication is the process of people sharing knowledge about the world in which they live. Informative messages are expected to present an objective—truthful and unbiased—view of the topics being considered. For example, if a sports fan reads accounts of a baseball game in two different newspapers, it is reasonable to expect that the reports will agree on all the significant details of the game: the final score, the winning team, hits, runs, errors, and other happenings. Informative communication is an important part of life. Young people are exposed to informative messages throughout their school years; it is the main type of communication at all educational levels. As students mature, they are expected to grow in their ability to understand and create informative messages. When reading or listening to such messages, students are expected to recognize the subject or purpose, identify the main points, pick out important details, summarize information, make some assumptions, and draw additional conclusions. Informative communication is also important to adults in their work. Nations such as the United States were once called industrial societies, as most people worked in industries that manufacture products. Today these nations are often called information societies, as an increasing number of careers involve the processing of information rather than products. People who work with things rather than ideas, however, also must use such job-related informative messages as parts manuals, job descriptions, catalogs, instructions, warranties, contracts, and invoices. Young people and adults also use information away from school and work. They seek information about the weather, sporting events, available entertainment, and local, national, and international news. People need information in order to conduct their lives intelligently. Fortunately information has never been more available than at the present time. Free public libraries are available in most parts of the world. The reference sections of libraries contain a wide assortment of reference materials: encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, dictionaries of geographical places, biographical dictionaries, indexes such as ‘The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature', almanacs, and handbooks and manuals on how to make things. A wide array of printed materials is available. Magazines include information both for the general audience and for people with special interests. Informative paperback books may be found in bookstores, drugstores, newsstands, and supermarkets. Newspapers remain a popular source of information. Television has become an important source of news information in the United States. While newspapers were the primary news source in 1960, they were overtaken by television in 1963. Television is now the favorite choice for state, national, and international news. Only for local news are newspapers the most preferred and trusted source. Information is rapidly becoming even more available because of advances in technology. Personal computers, word processors, cable television, videodiscs, and video recording devices are finding their way into more and more homes, classrooms, and businesses. Computers have already dramatically changed the storage, analysis, and retrieval of information by business and governmental agencies.

4. Answer the following questions:

1. What purposes does communication serve to?

2. What sources of information do you know?

3. What of them are available for people?

4. What societies are often called informative?

5. Why do people need information?

6. When were newspapers replaced by television as primary source of information?

5. Find the equivalents of the following words in the text:

to affect; to satisfy; sensible, to produce; growing(number); to look for; sensibly; comprise