COMMUNICATION – PAST AND FUTURE

A. Presentation

People are generally aware that success in one’s life and career depends to a great extent on one’s ability to communicate effectively. Because the first impression one makes is very important, each person has to know certain rules of greeting, of presenting oneself and of having a brief opening conversation.

A1. Exchanging words with a new acquaintance. Read the following dialogue and try to write down a similar one taking place between your family and the family of a friend of yours.

John Smith : Mr. Brown, you know my wife, Mary, don’t you?

Michael Brown : No, I don’t think we have met. I didn’t have the pleasure.

Mary Smith      : How do you do. It’s an honour for me to meet you, Mr. Brown.

Michael Brown   : How do you do. The honour is on my side. Now allow me to introduce you to my family. This is my wife, Angela, and this is my daughter, Jane.

Angela Brown : I am delighted to make your acquaintance.

Jane Brown         : Glad to meet you, madam, sir.

Mary Smith    : You have such a lovely daughter. Have you already graduated the highschool, Jane?

Jane Brown         : Yes, I graduated the highschool last year, and now I am a student.

Michael Brown   : She studies social communication and public relations. Our child has always wanted to do something new and interesting, so this field suits her.

John Smith          : When we were young, we also dreamt of doing the most fantastic things. We also left our son the freedom of choice and now he studies the art of painting.

Angela Brown : This gives me an idea. As Mr. Smith and my husband are colleagues, why don’t we meet some time at our place to find out more about the plans for future of our children?

Mary Smith         : Thank you for your kind invitation, then we shall pay you a visit soon and we hope you will return the visit to us.

A2. Describing a person

You are on the beach and you see an empty blanket on which there are a few objects spread around. You look at them and you wonder who is the person that owns these objects. And you are waiting for it to appear…

The list of objects is the following:

some chewing-gum

a film

a comb

a belt bag

some car keys

a camera

a picture of two old persons

some sun-tan lotion

a pair of head-phones

a mirror

a towel

a pencil

a book

a letter

Now use your imagination:

Is this person a man or a woman?

Where does he/she come from?

How old is he/she?

What is his/her job?

Is he/she married or single?

What is he/she doing at the moment?

What colour are his/her eyes?

Try to write a description of this person’s life, as you imagine it.

A3. Memories

In the following fragment the famous actress Sophia Loren recalls her first meetings with a film director, with the world of movies and, last but not least, with glory. Translate the text, then try to write down several memories about important encounters in your life.

They were golden days, the 50s. Vittorio De Sica and Carlo Ponti, my Carlo, were doing a project called The Gold of Naples. De Sica said, “I need a Neapolitan girl”. Carlo told him “I know a girl, she’s called Sofia Scicolone”. I was given the role of the pizzaiola (pizza street vendor). It was 1952. I was 17, and I was completely drunk with happiness.

For us Rome was an enchanting place, a city of trams and palaces. I felt like this because I was very young, but there were people 40, 50 years old who felt like me, too, because of what they had gone through during the war. They felt they could afford maybe to start a new life.

De Sica was a sensitive man with great instincts and a great sense of humour. We spoke the same language – almost the way as when you’re married a long time and you look at your husband and, with just a glance or a gesture, you know.

Then there was Anna Magnani. When De Sica was planning to film Moravia’s new book Two Women, he wanted Magnani to play the mother, and I could play the daughter. When De Sica went to see Magnani, she cocked that hip of hers and said, “No, I can’t play with Sophia. What are we going to do together on the set? We are going to kill each other!” As De Sica was leaving, she cocked that hip again and threw up her chin with that beautifully free-spirited air we all knew so well. “Hah! Why don’t you try to give Sophia the role of the mother?” Well, I did play that role. The mother became younger, and the daughter (played by Eleonora Brown) became a girl of 13. And I never played a role better!

A4. Choose one of the following topics and write a dialogue:

a.     You are strolling downtown. Suddenly you meet an old friend of yours whom you have not seen since you were in elementary school. You are surprised to learn that he has become a millionaire.

b.     You are walking down the street. Suddenly you see a friend in front of you. You run up to him and say hello, but when he turns around you discover that he is a stranger.

c.      You are a teacher in the first day of school. Present yourself in front of the class and prompt the conversation with the students.

B. The Indicative Mood

In the exercises and texts above, while presenting characters and introducing people, we used the tenses of the Indicative Mood. We practised present and past, tenses which we have in the Romanian language, too, but also present perfect, which we cannot find in Romanian.

B1. Let’s compare the Romanian axis of tenses (which is only one) with the English axes (two of them) and discuss their different logic.

How is the Romanian manner? We have a unique axis of tenses, with a main point (prezent) with two derivations, one going up (viitor) and one going down (trecut). Of course, we know there are various kinds of past tense – “perfect simplu”, “perfect compus” and “imperfect” – and they differ from the point of view of usage (the first is informal, colloquial; the second is the most present in written communication; the third involves, in a way, continuity), but they cover the same position in the scheme. There is an intermediate tense which functions between present and future (called “viitor anterior” or “viitor apropiat”), expressing an action in the future taking place before another fact of the future. And there is another relational tense, named “mai mult ca perfect”, which represents an action in the past happening before something else in the past. The Romanian golden rule is that there is no rule: we are allowed to use any two tenses on the axis together, without restrictions. Let us have some examples:

“prezent” in combination with “trecut” : “A spus ca vine.”

“trecut” in combination with “viitor” “A spus ca va veni.”

“mai mult ca perfect” in combination with “viitor” : “Spusese ca va veni.”

So, the Romanian structure seems to be very permissive, the indicative mood being perceived as a succession of tenses situated in a certain order on a continuous axis.

How is the English manner? In English there are two axes, each one with a main tense: the first axis with present tense and the second axis with past tense as the central points. The most important thing is not to pass from one axis to another, because they are parallel, and we know that parallels never meet.

So, on the first axis we have a complete structure of future – present – the past of the present tense (present perfect). We also have, like in Romanian, an intermediary tense between present and future, future perfect.

future: subject + shall/will + infinitive (“shall” is used for the 1^st person, singular and plural);

future perfect: subject + shall/will + have + 3^rd form of the verb (-ed for regular verbs);

present: subject + infinitive (-s/-es for the 3^rd person singular);

present perfect: subject + have/has + 3^rd form of the verb.

Present perfect represents, as we have mentioned above, the past of the present, used because in English it is not permitted to use present linked with the proper past. There are three situations in which present perfect occurs:

1.     an action in the past which continues in the present

specific adverbs: always, ever, never, often, rarely, seldom, since, for

examples: I have never met a person like you. I haven’t seen him for five years.

2.     an action in the past which is very close to the present

specific adverbs: just, yet, recently, lately

examples: I have just arrived. I have had a lot of work to do recently.

3.     an action in the past whose results can be perceived in the present specific difference from past – example: I lost my pencil yesterday. I have lost my pencil yesterday and I am looking for it now.

On the second axis, we also have a complete structure, symmetrical to that of the first one, composed by future in the past (an action taking place before a past one) – past tense – past perfect (an action in the past taking place after a past one). There is also the intermediary tense between past tense and future in the past, future perfect in the past, rarely used.

future in the past: subject + should/would + infinitive (“should” is used for the 1^st person, singular and plural);

future perfect in the past: subject + should/would + have + 3^rd form of the verb;

past: subject + 2^nd form of the verb (-ed for regular verbs);

past perfect: subject + had + 3^rd form of the verb.

Future in the past is a technical tense, it is mechanically used whenever we try to express a future action in a past context. In a translation, whereas in Romanian we need a single axis, in English we need both axes.

Example: Spune ca va veni. – He says he will come.

A spus ca va veni. – He said he would come.

Past perfect represents in a way the Romanian “mai mult ca perfect”. But the difference is that in Romanian we can use either “trecut” or “mai mult ca perfect”, while in English past perfect has a stronger meaning of anteriority.

Examples: “A spus ca plouase” is the same with “A spus ca a plouat” and is translated into English as “He said it had rained”. “He said it rained” represents two actions taking place in the same time and is translated into Romanian as “A spus ca ploua”.

The Romanian axis The English axes

Viitor Future Future in the Past

Viitor anterior Future Perfect Future Perfect

in the Past

Prezent Present Past

Trecut

Mai mult ca perfect Present Perfect Past Perfect

B2. Put the verbs in brackets into the correct tense:

a). 1. It (be) for the first time that John and Mary ever (be) so late. 2. It was not until she (say) “yes” that she (wonder) whether she (do) wrong. After all, she really (not know) him. 3. He asked the butler whether he (notice) anything different about his master the previous night. Jackson (reply) that he (notice) nothing of the kind. 4. “How long you (be) with him?” “23 years, Sir. Ever since he (start) to be anything at all”. 5. I told you we (have) guests at 8 o’clock and Mr. Johnson (be) the first and (smoke) a lot of cigarettes.

b). Agent Cooper (wake) up at 6 sharp, as he always (do), no matter where he (be) or what he (do) the previous day. His first thought was the realisation that he (wear) the pinstriped suit, and when his eyes (fall) on the reports piled around him, the events of the previous evening (come) back to him. He (go) to his club for supper, just (finish) his turtle soup and (look) forward to the second dish, when his meal rudely (be) interrupted by a call from his superior. Once he (drink) his black coffee, Cooper (think) carefully what to put on. He (see) M. at 9 o’clock that morning and (be) keen on impressing the latter. Glancing at himself in the mirror, it (strike) him that he (put) on weight recently. He (have) to pay more heed to his diet in the future.

B3. Translate into English:

a). 1. Copiii se joaca in parc in fiecare zi. 2. Duminica trecuta am scris cateva scrisori, apoi am ascultat un concert la radio. 3. De cand esti aici? Am venit azi dimineata si de atunci te astept.   4. - De ce nu porti ochelarii? – I-am pierdut. 5. Prietenii nostri nu vor veni in vacanta la noi.

b). Acest baiet, care s-a nascut acum, e nepotul meu. Pentru ca sa vedeti domniile voastre: eu am avut sase fete, dintre care cea mai mare, pe care ma gandeam s-o marit dupa ginere-meu, dupa ce va fi iesit dascal, s-a maritat dupa dascalul din Strantea, a doua s-a maritat dupa Mitrea lui Buduc, care acum e ctitor la biserica, pe a treia a luat-o ginere-meu, popa din Cladeni, cele doua mai mici iata-le aici, iara Mili s-a maritat dupa ginere-meu, protopopul, si a nascut pe acest copil, care acum e nepotul meu. (Ioan Slavici – Budulea Taichii)

B4 .Do the following exercises:

a.     Write down a funny adventure from your childhood, using the tenses of the past axis. Then retell the story as if it happened in the present, using the tenses of the present axis.

b.     Write a telephone conversation you have had with your parents or your grandparents. Then re-tell the story, using the past axis.

C. In the contemporary world, the necessities of life include not only basic supplies, like food or water, but also the deep human need for communication and information. We all communicate or inform ourselves or each other, but few of us try to define the terms or describe the stages of communication or even seriously think about the results of their gestures or sentences. As this handbook has been conceived for the students in social communication and public relations, the first course has to comprise a series of texts and exercises of initiation in the field.

C1.Please answer the following questions, using your experiences and memories. Try to use, as correct as possible, the tenses of the indicative mood. Pay attention to the differences between the Present Perfect and the Past Tense.

a)     Do you have a best friend? Do you tell him/her everything? Do you hide anything from him/her? If so, why?

b)     Are you an easy communicator or a person who has difficulties in expressing his thoughts and feelings for the others? Try to list the good and the bad parts of each type.

c)     Do you like being in a crowd or being lonely? Why? Have you ever felt lonely in a crowd and crowded with yourself alone? When?

d)     How is your relationship with your parents? Do you perceive a clash between generations or can you say that you get along well?

e)     Could you be a public speaker? Why? Have you ever spoken on behalf of a community (your class in highschool, your group of students in the faculty)? In what situation?

f)      Would you like to be a professional spokesman? Why? If you were one, would you like to impress through the sincerity of your thoughts or through the art of rhetoric you make use of? Explain your option.

C2. Read, translate and comment upon the following text, adding examples for each device or situation:

At a general level, communication events involve the following: a source, a process of encoding, a message, a channel, a process of decoding, a receiver, the potential for feedback and the noise.

To begin with, the source initiates the process by having a thought or an idea that he or she wishes to transmit to some other entity. Naturally, sources differ in their communication skills. The  source may or may not have knowledge about the receiver of the message. Sources can be single individuals, groups, or even organisations.

The encoding process refers to the activities that a source goes through to translate thoughts and ideas into a form that may be perceived by the senses. When you have something to say, your brain and your tongue work together to form words and spoken sentences. When you write a letter, your brain and your fingers co-operate to produce patterns of ink or some other substance on paper that can be seen. Encoding in a communication setting can take place once or more times.

The message is the actual physical product that the source encodes. When we talk, our speech is the message. Human beings usually have a large number of messages at their disposal, from which they choose to send simple or very complex ones. Messages can be cheap to produce or very expensive. Some messages are more under the control of the receiver than others.

Channels refer to the ways in which the message travels to the receiver. Sound waves carry spoken words; light waves carry visual messages. There are natural and artificial channels. Some messages use more than one channel to travel to the receiver.

The decoding process is the opposite of the encoding process. It consists of activities that translate or interpret physical messages into a form that has eventual meaning for a receiver. Both humans and machines can be thought of as decoders. Like encoding, decoding can also happen more than once. And, in the same way, some people are better encoders than others.

The receiver is the target of the message, its ultimate goal. The receiver can be a single person, a group, an institution or even a large, anonymous collection of people. The receivers of the message can be determined by a source or can self-select themselves into the audience. The sender and the receiver can be in each other’s immediate presence or can be separated by space or time.

Feedback takes into account the responses of the receiver that shape and alter the subsequent messages of the source. Feedback represents the reversal of the flow of communication.The original source becomes the receiver and the original receiver becomes the new source. There is the positive feedback from the receiver, which encourages the communication behaviour in progress, and there is the negative one, which attempts to change the communication or even to terminate it. Feedback can be immediate or delayed.

The last factor to be considered is noise, which is anything that interferes with the delivery of the message. There are three different types of noise: semantic (occuring when different people have different meanings for different words and phrases), mechanical (the fault of the machine that is being used to assist communication) and environmental (from sources of noise that are external to the communication process but interfere with it). As noise increases, message fidelity (how closely the message that is sent resembles the message that is received) goes down.

These are the components of the communication process in its simplest and clearest definition. Of course there are other possible, more refined, more complex ways of conceiving communication, as for example, it is difficult to make artistic communication enter these terms.

C3. We usually deal with communication between people, developed over centuries of expression, but researchers have pointed out the importance of transmitting messages and expressiveness also in the world of animals. These ones communicate inside their species and sometimes with other species. In this light, read the following text:

Our two pet donkeys were reliable watchmen, and their hearing was as sharp as their eyesight. I have seen them many a time look up from the grass they were eating and stare hard into the distance with ears raised; and in a minute or so I would see someone coming down the road towards the beach or observe a figure moving in a field a long way away.

When something unusual happened, Fred, the younger animal, would make so much noise that he could be heard in the next village and beyond. Obviously this could be embarrassing when the weather was still, for not everyone enjoys the sound of a donkey in full cry.

At night both donkeys were usually silent. They were undisturbed by the wild animals hunting in the fields after dark. They remained sleepily relaxed. Yet I was sure that they would always raise the alarm if there was a stranger about, or some activity which puzzled them.

One clear August night, for instance, I was woken up around three in the morning by Fred making a great deal of noise. It was a very quiet night and I immediately thought of all the people in the neighbourhood who might also have been awakened by him. It was a terrible noise, and it went on and on, and so I realised that something very unusual was bothering him. Then he stopped - and I heard voices.

On still nights we often heard the voices of the crews of fishing boats passing across the bay, sometimes speaking in French, but they soon faded away into the distance. On this night they did not fade away. And as I lay in bed realising that they had gone on for far too long to belong to a moving boat, I knew that I had to get up and investigate.

I pulled on some clothes, went outside, and shone my torch into the field by the cottage where I had put the donkeys. The light shone on Fred who was standing with his head facing towards the sea, ears upright like a V sign, showing such an intense interest in what was mysteriously happening that I felt like saying to him: “Here, take the torch, go and find out what it’s all about.”

Answer the following questions:

1.     Why were the writer’s two donkeys good at keeping watch?

A They were dangerous animals.

B The noise they made was frightening.

C They could hear things a long way away.

D They were nervous and excitable.

2.     When Fred was disturbed by something unusual he would

A sound like a baby crying.

B make a very loud noise.

C run towards the beach.

D stand still for several minutes .

3.     When the writer was woken up at 3.00 a.m. he

A immediately felt frightened.

B thought he ought to wake the neighbours.

C shouted at the donkeys to be quiet.

D lay in bed and listened for a while.

4.     What had alarmed the donkeys that particular August night?

A a French fishing boat

B wild animals

C voices nearby

D a strange light

C4. Explain the type of noise which led to the following funny miscommunications:

a.     During the 1985 Christmas season, an 800 (call and win) number was set up so that children could call Santa Claus and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. Unfortunately, the phone lines got crossed and the little toddlers were connected to a Las Vegas bookie who dutifully informed them about the betting line on football games.

b.     A leading national shoe company premiered this slogan in 1987: “We’ll only sell you the right shoe”.

c.      A Seattle newspaper published a commemoration column in which Diana, Princess of Wales, was referred to as the “Princess of Whales”.

d.     When Chevrolet introduced its Nova model in South America they were puzzled by the low sales. Someone then pointed out that “no va” was Spanish for “it doesn’t work”.

e.     In 1984 the Coca-Cola company introduced a new advertising campaign to promote a soft drink, Tab. The theme of the campaign was “Let’s taste new Tab”. The commercials on billboards and flies were a success, but on radio and TV people heard “Less taste, new Tab”. The company had to remove the ads at considerable loss.

D. Vocabulary practice.

D1. Give the synonyms and the antonyms of the following words:

source; encoding; cheap; original; response; noise; to initiate; to enter; to buy; to manage.

D2. Complete the passage with these words:

The human race is on the threshold of a new emerging civilisation: the ……… civilisation. It is an extension and a successor to the agricultural and industrial civilisation that have determined our ………structure until now. Agricultural civilisation was the first to take concrete ………. It was established in fertile alluvial areas in the Middle East from the ………of agricultural production, fact which assured the ………of Homo sapiens and the ………of large amounts of social surplus. The increasing dependence of agricultural productivity on the sun and manual labour had as result the ………of two social aspects: a religion of sun ……… and a system of agricultural slave ……… Industrial ………provided the means by which industrial civilisation flourished. Its origins lay in the natural sciences and the machinery of the industrial ………made this possible. New society systems emerged, with the free ………of private business, comodity markets, parliamentary democracy and labour ………. The monuments of the agricultural civilisation are the pyramids and temples and those of the industrial civilisation are factories and skyscrapers. The information civilisation depends on computer and communication ………, being thus invisible. Its products are ………symbols and images. It is global, it does not take into account soil or city, because it spreads all over the world in ………form. It aims to the mutual understanding and ………thinking of citizens overriding national interests and deepening different cultures.

D3. Using the verbs to declare, to proclaim, to pronounce and to state, translate the following sentences into English:

a.     S.U.A. a declarat razboi Iugoslaviei.

b.     Va declar sot si sotie.

c.      Va rugam sa declarati tot ce stiti si sa nu ascundeti nimic.

d.     In urma numararii voturilor el a fost declarat presedinte.

e.     A fost declarat cel mai bun jucator al turneului.

f.      Vom declara pozitia noastra presei dupa pronuntarea sentintei.

g.     Aveti bunuri de declarat la vama?

h.     Ma declar cu totul impotriva acestei actiuni.

i.       Vreti sa faceti o declaratie acum sau dupa ce v-ati consultat avocatul?

j.       Faimoasa Declaratie de Independenta a Statelor Unite ale Americii a fost proclamata pe 4 iulie 1776.

Remember the following phrases:

to declare war; to declare something or somebody to be something; to declare somebody a winner; to issue a declaration; to declare one’s hands (a da cartile pe fata to proclaim a president; to proclaim somebody a traitor; a papal proclamation; to pronounce a judgement/verdict/sentence; to pronounce a statement; to pronounce man and wife; to state one’s opinion/view; to state a case; to make a statement; to state one’s full particulars.

D4. Write down the nouns deriving  from the following verbs:

believe; threaten; agree; suggest; express; refer, form, correct, intend, analyse, correspond, lose, promiss, irritate, damage, inherit, decide, declare, insult, sustain.