Communication Skills – MCM 301 VU
© Copyright Virtual University of Pakistan
6
Lesson 02
Levels of Communication
There are five levels of communication:
1. Intrapersonal Communication
2. Interpersonal Communication
3. Mediated Communication
4. Person-to-Group Communication
5. Mass Communication
Intrapersonal Communication
When you think, you use intrapersonal communication. You initiate, receive, and process messages
within yourself. You are playing both the roles of: sending & receiving. Human growth depends on this
internal communication. Through it you know yourself and develop your self-concept, self-
determination, and self-motivation.
For example, each morning you decide how to dress, what to eat, where to go, etc. This kind of internal
communication forms the foundation for the other four levels of communication.
The word - "Intrapersonal" - means within the person. Intrapersonal communication processes happen
inside of you. Some people equate these processes with thinking. Although thinking is part of the process,
intrapersonal communication includes more than what we think. More importantly intrapersonal
processes include the way we think and the way we communicate with ourselves. Intrapersonal
communication affects the way we receive messages from others and affects the way we send messages to
others.
The Self: The role the self plays in communication is vital and complex. In order to be able to identify the
complex levels of the self, you first need to understand how such complexity becomes such an intimate
part of the communication process. We need to recognize the complex role of the self, and how the self
plays into how we communicate.
At the center of how you communicate, is how you see yourself, or your sense of who you are. This sense
of self is central to how you communicate with others. The term for that sense of self is self-concept.
Self-concept is your image of who you are. Put another way, self-concept is the total picture of who you
are. Or how you see your whole self. It is your psychological self, your physical self, your spiritual self,
your social self, and your intellectual self. Self -concept is how you perceive the different parts of yourself
that combine to form a total picture.
At the same time self-concept also means knowing how others see you, how your colleagues see you,
how your parents see you. When you interact with different groups and individuals and they see you and
react to you, you pick up signals and eventually you change yourself as a result of this feedback. In fact,
what research reveals is that most of our sense of self, thus, comes from interactions with other people
(family, friends, co-workers).
Through feedback from the process of communicating with other people, or the sending of verbal and
nonverbal indicators through involvement with friends and family, you acquire a sense of how others feel
about you, how they perceive you, and what they like and what they don’t like about you. And as a result
of this feedback, you develop a sense of self over the course of your life, this big picture of who you are,
based on all of the human interactions that you’ve had in life. And you are also constantly modifying your
sense of self. Until the day you die, you will constantly modify your self-concept. This is because we are
always interacting with other people, and because we are always communicating with others, we are
therefore always learning more about ourselves.
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