1.1 *** introduction to the course
Communication
Notion The subject of communication is a fundamental one for business communication, because that is exactly the purpose, and the central concept. “Communication” goes from the lat. communication – message, transmission; communicare – to make common, to link, and to talk. The term communication is used for description of diverse processes, connected with information transmission, and for the verification of presence or absence of a relation between two subjects (systems).

COMMUNICATION – the exchange of meanings between individuals through a common system of symbols.

The subject of communication has concerned scholars since the time of ancient Greece. Until modern times, however, the topic was usually subsumed under other disciplines and taken for granted as a natural process inherent to each. In 1928 the English literary critic and author I.A. Richards offered one of the first--and in some ways still the best--definitions of communication as a discrete aspect of human enterprise: Communication takes place when one mind so acts upon its environment that another mind is influenced, and in that other mind an experience occurs which is like the experience in the first mind, and is caused in part by that experience. Richards' definition is both general and rough, but its application to nearly all kinds of communication--including those between humans and animals (but excluding machines)--separated the contents of messages from the processes in human affairs by which these messages are transmitted. More recently, questions have been raised concerning the adequacy of any single definition of the term communication as it is currently employed. The American psychiatrist and scholar Jurgen Ruesch has identified 40 varieties of disciplinary approaches to the subject, including architectural,