CUNY Academic Commons

should have emailed me In this […] “should have emailed me”

So do they like my speech? In […] “So do they like my speech?”

Verbal Communication Gone Wrong This cartoon is a great representation of what symbol means in Chapter 2. In the cartoon, it showcases text messages between a female and the other person. During the message, the sender communicate only with emojis while the female sends short text messages, which serve as symbolic representations of thoughts, emotions, and intentions. Within the chapter, a symbol is a verbal communication that is arbitrary, ambiguous, and abstract. This cartoon exaggerates the ambiguous element of the symbol by having a punch line, where the sender is a literal emoji instead of a person, showcasing how symbols can be ambiguous and interpreted differently by different people, since the female thought of it as a way for the sender to showcase thought and emotion, while in truth the sender sends the emoji because he is actually an emoji. This cartoon reflects my own experience with texting and online communication. For example, everyone has their interpretation of different emojis. When texting friends, some of them interpret the two hands together emojis as praying, while others see it as a high-five. Similarly, at work, messages with emojis or brief replies can easily be misinterpreted. The cartoon illustrates how digital symbols can oversimplify or distort communication, echoing key points from the […] “Verbal Communication Gone Wrong”

Same message in different time […] “Same message in different time”

'Telephone' in real life This cartoon connects well with the first chapter of the book. In this chapter, authors introduced two models of communication – Linear Model and Transactional Model. In the Linear Model, communication directly flows from sender to receiver, but noise—anything that interferes with the message—can disrupt that process. In this cartoon, it showcases an office space, where co-workers/receivers misinterpreted the sender’s original message from ‘communication skills’ to ‘forgotten his pills’. This misinterpretation was created when confusion compounded by another participant interpreting the behavior as forgetfulness, showing how quickly a message can break down due to noise in the channel. The confusion of this cartoon further reinforces the element of the Linear Model and its idea of noise. This can relate to my everyday life when it comes to text messaging my friends, family and coworkers. For example, if I type something autocorrect changes (like “skills” to “spills”), the person receiving it might misunderstand the entire message because of my mistake. In this situation, the noise would be the auto-correct feature of my phone’s software. Like the characters in the cartoon, the conversation can easily go off track if the receiver interprets the message differently than intended. This shows how even in simple communication, noise can significant […] “‘Telephone’ in real life”