 As humans, we kind of naturally gravitate towards some sort of guiding framework or principles that we establish through our laws and through our societal expectations and things. And the truth is that in communications, it's no different. We have some founding principles and guiding principles that we use in communication and that are important for us to understand as communicators. So in this video, we'll take a look at a few of those. So starting with the idea that communication can be intentional or unintentional. Sometimes we communicate exactly what we wish to communicate. We say what we intend to say in our nonverbal behaviors match our expressed language. At other times, though, we send messages that we didn't intend to communicate. We may say something without thinking about it first or do something without thinking about it first and then we regret it afterwards. Or we may say the right things, but our facial expression gives away our true feelings. The one thing we cannot do is not communicate. All behavior has communicative value. Anything we say or don't say or do or don't do will be interpreted by the other person or people involved. We're always communicating something whether we intend to or not. Next, communication is irreversible. Once we've expressed something, either verbally or nonverbally, it cannot be fully taken back. We can apologize and ask the other person to forget we said or did that and they may even agree to do so. But once it's out there, it's out there and cannot be completely erased. Communication is also unrepeatable. There's a proverb credited to Heraclitus that says no man ever steps in the same river twice for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. The point Heraclitus is making here is that even if you step in a river and then you step back out and then step back in again immediately afterwards, it's not the same river because the water you touched before is now moved downstream. Neither are you the same person because you have an expectation of what's coming and when you step in because you've done it before. This is inherently true in communication. We can say the exact same thing and maybe even express it in the exact same way but we can never fully repeat the same circumstances in context. Imagine a couple who's been together for many decades, 50 years or more. How many times do you suppose they've said I love you? Over the many thousands of times that they've said I love you to one another, do you think that the intention behind that has always been the same and that the feeling behind that is exactly the same as it has been every other time? No, of course not. These are people who have lived and they've changed and they've grown together and they've experienced joy and loss and all of these things during their time together so every time they say I love you it's a little bit different because they've both lived a little bit more and shared a little bit more now. I want to be clear this does not mean I'm not saying that when they say it one time or another that it means more or less than any other time or that it gets more or less meaningful over time. I'm just saying that it is inherently different each time we say it and that's true for all communication. Our circumstances change, we change as people and so our communication is unrepeatable because of that. Communication also has content and relational dimensions so basically this is getting at the principle that there's what's being said and then there's the underlying underlying meaning that goes along with it. Let's say for example imagine that you ask someone that you work with if they'd like to do something with you that weekend. Unfortunately they are not available and they say so but there are lots of different ways that they can say the same words right? So imagine your co-worker says this with a tone and facial expressions that seem to indicate that they are really sorry that they can't go with you. You get the impression that an invitation and for another time would be welcomed. On the other hand they could say the exact same thing using the exact same words but with nonverbal behaviors that gave a clear indication that they won't be joining you this Saturday or any other Saturday. They're using the exact same words in each of these scenarios but the implications are very different. This illustrates the different dimensions of communication. The content dimension is the bottom line of the message. They're not going to be able to do anything with you this Saturday. The relational dimension of the message however is used to signal contextual clues about how we feel about the message or about the other person or about the situation in general. As you can imagine both the content and relational dimensions are very important and should be considered by both communicator A and communicator B so anybody either party involved in that communication scenario. The final principle that we'll discuss is this. People give communication its meaning. We have a tendency to give words a lot of power and this is not completely off base because words can carry great meaning. However the simple truth is that words themselves have no meaning. The meaning they carry is only significant because of the shared understanding that people have for what those words represent. The language is symbolic meaning that is simply representative of an idea. The same is true for anything in terms of communication value, communicative value. We see this illustrated here in that the only difference between these two notes is our belief that one has more value than the other. In reality both the legitimate US government backed $100 bill and the $100 bill that you would find in your monopoly game are just pieces of paper illustrated with ink and images. The US bill uses a special kind of paper and ink and design but it's not imbued with any magical powers. What gives that bill its value and relative worth is our shared understanding of what it represents. If all of the legal US money went up in smoke one day we could just as easily switch to the monopoly bills so long as we all agreed that that was now the legal tender and this is basically what it's worth. This is the essence of communication. Words, images, gestures, facial expressions, all of it. They all have meaning but only through the shared understanding of the meaning that people assign to them. Again these principles kind of establish a framework for us. It's like looking at at a house that's being built. We have the framing here right but there's still lots to to go on there. We still need to put on the the drywall to cover things in and the roof and the and then we decorate things inside but these principles of communication give us the framework on which we can continue to build our understanding of communication. If you have questions about this or anything else related to the foundational principles of communication please feel free to email me. I'd love to hear from you and in the meantime I hope that you will give these some thought and be able to recognize them as we see them at work in communication in our daily lives.