Miscommunication

Introduction to Human Communication

This blog is one of the required assignments for the Introduction to Human Communication (FDHCM001) course continuous assessment. It is required of us students to post at least two posts per week regarding this subject. The following is this week’s entry blog, my full name as registered and student id.
Blog entry 001, week 1
Introduction to Human Communication chapter 1 is the study of human communication as in to understand communication and its application. Secondly, is to master the necessary communication techniques to be used to survive the real world ( during and after college). More importantly, it is to equip students with intellectual capabilities in communication in both broad and specific manner – that is for us to know our choices and have the knowledge to decide for the best way to communicate for given situation. An example of miscommunication and how it occurs based on past personal experience is reflected and explained below.
Situation
It was on Raya eve when I was about seven years old that this incident took place in my grandmother’s kitchen at her house in Kuala Terengganu. My grandmother was cooking “Nasi Himpit(pressed rice)” manually and was at the stage to press the cooked soft rice when she called my name and with her hand pointing to the kitchen drawer, said to me in Trengganu dialet “ haNii... che ambik rhajuk tu ke tok wang, tok wang nok wak tekang nasi eh” and I went straight to the drawer and took a wet, ugly, dirty and torn rag and passed it to my grandmother. She slightly jumped at the contact of the wet cloth and when she looked at what I had given her, she half laughing half screaming to the whole kitchen “ tuohnye budok (laughs at the top of her lungs) oghang suroh ambik rhajuk ye gi ambik kain burok (laughs and wipe tears from her eyes) guane nok wak tekang nasi ipek ngan kain burok (laughter at top of her lungs with the rest of my extended family that shook the wooden house to the ground.)”
From the above situation, it is clear that miscommunication happened as a result of language barrier ( lack of vocabulary to be exact), misinterpretation@wrong assumption and my lacking of critical and communication skills which is to adjust to my grandmother’s style of language/signal, had caused the miscommunication. What my grandmother had intended for me was to get a plastic bag inside the pointed drawer but I did not understand the word “rhajuk”, thus acted on the misinterpretation/ wrong assumption her nonverbal signal – the pointing of her hand that she wanted the ugly rag.The feedforward of the communication is when my grandmother called my name by stressing on the second syllable of my name. The social-psychological part of the communication was me as a granddaughter to my grandmother and the culture dimension is I had to obey my grandmother. Lastly the noise that occurred was semantic noise as I and my grandmother had different meaning system.
To conclude, without proper knowledge and skills to communicate miscommunication happens.
Posted by, Wan Hani Arifah Binti W Mohd Saleh (B0802457)