Verbal communication

Contact between people forms the very base of communication and verbal communication is one of the most common ways of communicating between people face to face. The major components of this type of communication type are words, speaking, sound and language.

A child after birth produces sound and as it grows up it learns to convert these sounds to words. Some of these sounds may imitate natural sounds while others come from emotional expressions like crying and laughing. There may be no meaning to words produced by a child, but people give certain meaning to words. When meaning is given to a particular word, language is developed which in turn develops speaking.

There has been considerable debate regarding the origins of language. Some people believe that language has developed out of group activities like dancing or working together. However, another school of thought believes that gestures and basic sounds have led to the development of language.

We try to eliminate misunderstanding by speaking with each other, but at times, it becomes difficult to do so. We tend to assume that the message we want to convey is being correctly interpreted by the other person but in several cases that does not happen. Several problems may arise while speaking and the best solution is learning through experience.

Speaking can be divided into two areas- public speaking and interpersonal speaking. Most communication is in the form of interpersonal speaking and so we must be able to relate to each other to communicate efficiently. Offensive language should be avoided.

Another major area of verbal communication is public speaking. From time immemorial it has been observed that some people are better speakers among the public as compared to others. Public speaking requires the speaker to be persuasive, informative and to motivate or inspire an audience.