Communication?
What a broad term, and what a basic term, which unfortunately I feel has been over complicated over the years. See to me personally, and I could be wrong (and probably am) but communication is primarily to do with two things, the message, whatever it might be. And the receivers ability to decode said message.
"ahbahahbfhjsbdvjklsdflhcdlsavjkvjksdahasdlhJKASGFKAGFsldfagjasDGJKASGg"
did you understand that?
I doubt it, and this is where the 'medium' or 'channel' comes in..
The reason you didn't understand that, is obviously because it is complete shite and has no meaning whatsoever (and yes it could be argued that me thinking about mashing on the keyboard and creating this cryptic message, does indeed give the message meaning, but lets ignore that) in short: That string of letters is illegible because its not a language anyone understands and therefore cannot be decoded.
However the sentence:
"Hello, my name is Paul and i'm 18"
Is combined using letters from the same alphabet (and a couple of numbers) yet it has meaning. Because we combine these letters in recognised sequences allowing the receiver to decode them.
So I guess what im getting at is that the channel or medium we receive the letters through is crucial to the receivers ability to understand it, which in this case is the correct use of the alphabet. And obviously its important the sender, in this case myself creates a message which can be decoded by the receiver (you).
WOW.
Now I know why communication has been over complicated throughout the years, it seems impossible to talk about it without sounding confusing. Luckily, another form of communication is seeing images, and y'know what they say "an image says a thousand words". Hopefully this handy graph will help (I know it helped me)
T--------------signal>-----[MEDIUM OR CHANNEL]------------------------R
Basically that graph summarises everything I was waffling about above. Transmitter sends the signal (communication) uses the medium, which could be anything from a noise, photo, glyph, phone call, video (whatever) to the receiver who decodes it.
I guess you could say this entire post is one big signal coming from me, the blog is the medium and hopefully what im typing is half understandable, otherwise I have failed my job as the transmitter.
And dear reader, that is only the surface, we are about to go a whole lot deeper into the depths of this communication HELL! GARGHHH.
oh and by the way, that graph up there was something to do with a couple of people called Shannon and Weaver, I'll have to get back to you on that.
NOISE, NOISE, NOISE, NOISE, NOISE.
noise? you say?
Well.. communication always happens in an environment, and in every environment there is noise apparently. Could be the literal sense, but probably not. Noise is anything that stops the message being transmitted properly, for instance a french person probably couldnt read this blog, because they couldn't read english. The message is still here, what little use this waffling would be to anyone is beyond me, but the message is here nevertheless. Their ability to not read english would be the noise, much like your ability to not read that gibberish up there is noise. It doesn't make me any less of a bad transmitter for broadcasting a signal the receiver could decode though. As I have touched on before, its important the code is decodable to the receiver, hence cutting out the noise in that communication.
Basically noise stops the clear transition of a signal between the sender and receiver. There are so many examples, im sure you can think of a better one than me.
Anyway, I better chuck this in before I move on: There are a couple of types of signal.
-Redundant: Which is predictable (expected)
-Entropic: Which is unpredictable (unexpected) 
I think that's right, I'll look it up, but don't quote me on it just yet. IM STILL LEARNING DAMNIT!
Which brings us on seamlessly to Semiotics.. yeah.
Semiotics are the study of meaning.
and yes.. This is where it all gets a bit weird.
OH LOOK! its the 'Face On Mars' . Probably a mountain or valley, which has formed into a face coincidentally. Possibly an alien land mark or message to us (one which people have been struggling to decode for years, damn aliens not being a proper transmitter)
Any-bloody-way..
This is all irrelevance, what i'm getting at, is it is obviously not a real face. Not even a good representation of one, yet we instantly decode it as one. Because of a few simple features. This is semiotics in action people.
'Iconic' is I think, what this image is. It is iconic because it is closer to a real face that say the word 'FACE' which is arbitrary*. When in reality the word 'FACE' is used all around the world everyday. Semiotics I feel is built in to all of us, the ability to recognise things. Like we see the face on mars, when actually we are looking at rocks. Or perhaps spotting shapes in clouds. Its such a basic principle, overcomplicated with big words!
* its arbitrary because F A C E. Looks nothing like a.. well face! but we see the word 'FACE' and think of...
A FACE.
Okay my brain has melted enough for now.
All this stuff I have taken out of the lectures, I think is pretty interesting, if not over complicated. It shouldn't be confusing because its stuff all of us do everyday, but explaining it is tricky. Maybe something for a psychology student?
I just hope I got my message across and it was easily decodable!
Paul x
