Communication context: definition and examples

A new lesson from a TEACHER starts in which we are going to study the definition and examples of the communication context. Do you know what we are referring to? We are going to shed light on the subject to learn more about it.

If you have taken a good look, when you talk to someone, when you write a text for someone else to read, even when you chat with a friend through an application on your mobile, you are making a communicative act. This, of course, has a series of elements that define it, and without which it cannot be produced. One of them is the context, which is what we are dealing with here. That is why we are going to start the lesson now to know what it consists of and how to differentiate it.

We are going to start by defining the context of the communication and then we will see a couple of examples to make it clear what we are referring to.

In a communicative system, the context is a set of circumstances that accompany the communication itself.

That is, we are referring to various factors that condition communication. Perhaps the most important are

The space and time in which it takes place. But the culture of the sender who sends the message is also basic, as is that of the receiver, who will be the one who receives it, etc.

However, we will not always know exactly the context of the communication. Let's see an example: Paco is gone. We can observe that in this message there is not enough information to be able to contextualize where the communication occurs, for example, or the place where it is taking place.

However, let's see another message: Paco has left, but he has come home a while ago to talk to his mother. Here we do observe information about the context, since Paco has spoken again with his mother at home, as well that we know that this person is in her home, context where communication takes place with her parent.

Since we have defined the context and seen examples of it, it is important to know that it is an element of communication, as we discussed at the beginning of this lesson.

Communication or communicative action is a process of transmission and reception of information. That is, another participates in a message or something that one has. Therefore, it can occur between humans, animals, and even machines such as computers.

Communication has a series of elementswithout which it would be impossible. These are:

• The context itself, as we have already commented and defined.
• The transmitter, which is the person, animal or machine that emits a message to another machine, animal or person.
• Receiver, who is the actor who receives the broadcast message, and who can also be human, animal or inanimate.
• Message: is the information that the sender has sent to the receiver to share.
• Referrer: is the reference, that is, the content itself of the message.
• Channel: it is the medium used for communication, which could be the air if you speak face to face, a mobile phone, a Smartphone application, a written letter, etc.
• Code: is the language or set of signs used to convey the message. It can be the Spanish language, the sign language, the braille system, the binary code, barking, meowing ...