As all living beings in nature, an individual develops assimilating the experience that humankind has accumulated throughout its existence. Human development is a complex and contradictory process initiated by many forces: biological, cultural, and internal motives and external influences. This process starts from the moment of birth and lasts until the end of life. Thus, personality development is influenced by many factors, one of which is communication.
Since people are social beings, they constantly feel the need to communicate with other people, which determines the potential continuity of communication as a necessary condition for life. From the first months of life, a child needs other people, which gradually develops and transforms from the necessity for emotional contact to the need for profoundly personal communication and cooperation with adults. As speech develops, it becomes possible to diversify the content of information transmitted and perceived in communication and the process of learning and to use various means of communication. Thus, communication undergoes fundamental changes in growing up, which affects the dynamics of personality development.
The purpose of communication is what this type of activity arises for. Among animals, the purpose of communication can be to induce another animal to take specific actions or to warn that it is necessary to refrain from any action. For a person, the number of communication goals increases significantly. In addition to those listed above, they include the transfer and obtaining objective knowledge about the world, learning and education, the coordination of people’s actions in their joint activities, or the establishment and clarification of personal and business relationships. Among animals, communication goals usually do not go beyond the satisfaction of biological needs relevant to them. Nevertheless, in humans, communication’s aims represent a means of satisfying many diverse needs: social, cultural, cognitive, creative, aesthetic, needs for intellectual growth, and moral development.
In accordance with a wide range of practical problems solved in business negotiations, conversation, or dialogue, communication has many functions. First of all, through communication, messages and knowledge are transmitted and received. Furthermore, in communication, goals, motives, guidelines for joint or individual activities are clarified and formed. Mutual control of judgments, opinions, and discussed ideas is implemented by feedback that regulates the entire communication process. The emotional function is manifested as the creation of a complex of feelings and mental states of each interlocutor in communication. Many conversations lead to emotional uplift and satisfaction, which also contributes to personal development.
Thus, communication is the interaction that occurs between different subjects. Since a person is a social being, he constantly feels the need to communicate with other people, which determines the potential continuity of communication as a necessary condition for life. Communication has various goals related to the cause of this type of activity and performs significant functions, including communicative, regulatory, and emotional. Being a complex phenomenon, communication affects the individual’s development.
References
Carrigan, Emily and Marie Coppola. “Successful Communication Does Not Drive Language Development: Evidence from Adult Homesign”. Cognition, vol. 158, 2017, pp. 10-27.
Harrison, Angel. Personality and Communication Development. EDTECH, 2018.
Moore, Richard. “Gricean communication, language development, and animal minds”. Philosophy Compass, vol.13, no. 12, 2018, pp. 1-13.