both being aware of ones tendency towards a wandering mind, and the ability to refocus towards the here and now.

There are multiple degrees/levels of communication that any one person will run into within every day of their lives. First, and most importantly, is intrapersonal communication. Intrapersonal communication is a broad concept of communicative phenoms that occur within the individual mind. For many, it can resemble traditonal forms of external communication where a "voice" is acting as a guide to understanding and internalizing the world around us. Intrapersonal communication is hard to conceptualize, and can vary due to biological factors effecting each individuals brains to create unique mental environments. Interpersonal communication, which is the next most intimate form of communication, is when two people exchange messages or share a dialogue. This only occurs with one other person, as the dynamic within a conversation completely changes on a psychological level when more people are there. Then there are multiple interactions of group communication, going from small, to public settings, and larger. All of these, albeit intrapersonal, can be done through verbal, nonverbal, and mediated communication.

Communication Competence refers to the values that differentiate successful, and non successful speakers. it involves a balance of both appropriate and effective communication, where omitting one or the other characteristics could damage peoples perceptions of your communication skills. Gauging these aspects to tailor to certain people and situations is the most effective strategy; communication that is successful in one context may go awfully in another dependent on culture, personal morals of your listener, etc. The way you successfully communicate with a child would not bode well if used during a college conference.

Although general applications of communication vary; individuals who have a degree of communication competence generally share similar personal values and skills that help achieve greater communication. Skillfullness, or the ability to take note of and work around/correctly use situational cues to approach a conversation the best they can, is one of these characteristics. The ability to work and adapt under stressful and pressured situations is another important skill to a competent communicator. Having a general idea of possible sources of error, and being able to switch on the fly to make light of those failed situations can be just as important as having a line of communication go exactly as planned. Involvement and understanding the audience tend to go hand in hand, where involvement ties into persuasiveness and excitability of the audience, and understanding is more of an emotional tie-in that creates a deeper, empathetic bond between speaker and audience to tap into their feelings to attempt to seem as genuine and "human" as possible. The last two characteristics, cognitive complexity and self-monitoring, both are skills that typically take practice and a lot of inward thinking to achieve. Cognitive complexity means saying the same thing in different ways. It can either mean changing verbiage to different synonyms, or completely altering a sentence while still maintaining the original meaning. Providing different way to comprehend the same message opens a wider range of people to interact and find your message valuable. Self Monitoring is the hardest of these characteristics to get, as it means turning inwards to focus on your behaviors and manipulate said behavior for your advantage. This can mean having pre-meditated points of conversation to follow, being very aware of the flow of the conversation, having a "meta" sense of your self and paying attention to things like body language, etc.

Communication Is Symbolic/Arbitrary * symbols, which are marks/objects that represent something else by association, are something that are taught and can be highly subjective depending on multiple aspects. words are visual symbols, and thus can have major forms of differential meanings. Meaning can change from contextual changes, cultural changes, physical body language, etc. Symbols are arbitrary; there is no reason why dog means the large quadrapedal canine creature. You can change the symbol and the true nature would not be affected.

Communication Is Shared Meaning * Symbols many be "meaningless" in a conceptual and disconnected sense, but they carry heavy meaning when individuals have an agreed sense and deliberate identity to it. Culture is a major form of how important group consensus ties to meaning both linguistically and socially. Beyond culture a major part of communication deals with experiences from an abstract intimate sense of self. Even members of the same culture will have different perceptions of an experience, which can make sharing difficult. human interpretation lends to answers objectively "correct" in one persons mind, but false in another. These are connotative definitions vs denotative definitions.

Communication Involves Intentionality

• we are in a constant state of communication, whether intended or not, but verbal communication almost always comes with a premediate sense of conviction and intention. Direct intention towards a shared topic makes communication more effective. Body language, is inversely related in that many times it can be an unconscious decision without intention.

Dimensions of Communication

• there are dimensions, or levels of interpretation during communication. Relational dimension describes how different relationships allow for specific tones, like friendship, cordial business, etc, and using specific tones for wrong situations could be seen as inappropriate. without having a clear understanding of the relationship you have with a person could make the reception of a message clouded or confusing. Content dimension refers to explicit information and the wordage used to convey a certain message.

Communication Is a Process

• communication is ongoing and dynamic, and even if a relationship with an individual start at one level of communication can mean it cant grow to be a "deeper" level where you can communicate more freely. Think of inside jokes.

Communication Is Culturally Determined

• Culture is learned and alters our perceptions of the world and what is considered "normal". Religion is a major aspect of culture that defines morality, values, etc. These perceptions are hard to pinpoint until interacting with someone who doesn't share those values.

Communication Occurs in a Context

• external forces are a major influence in how we interact/commun. yelling out "fire!" at a movie theatre vs yelling that as a lyric at a concert carry two very context dependent results.