Non verbal communication

Having gone through the lecture on verbal and non-verbal communications, I’m more interested in the latter, because as said, it’s undervalued and seldom people place great importance or notices the great extent of which we are affected and influenced by it everyday. Non-verbal communication includes facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice, body posture and motions, and positioning within groups.

And again, culture and environment affects the way non verbal communications are interpreted. Because of the fact that it is receiver-orientated and he or she tends to base the intentions of the sender on the non- verbal cues he receives, we must be more aware of the signals that we are sending out. Facial expressions and gestures are the most basic types of non verbal communications. I believe all bodily movements have meaning to it, conveying meanings and the interpretations may be culture bound. There is a long-standing stereotyping of hot-tempered and ‘cold’ cultures. An Italian will naturally make use of extensive displays of anger and frustration, maybe waving his hands about and flaring nostrils. But let’s say when compared to his Japanese counterpart, the anger will be seen as less significant. It does not mean that he is less angry, or having a lack of emotions. The lack of display may be due to his upbringing and the culture he is brought up in. So lack of display doesn’t necessarily mean lack of emotions. I mean some people when in extreme anger can remain in silence and not speak for hours too.

In gestures, one good example is the folding of arms across your chest. For me, it seems as though a person is putting up an unconscious barrier between himself and me. But however, if the situation is relaxed and friendly, then maybe I’ll not think so. Fiddling when somebody is talking to you is also not very encouraging for the conversation to continue on. Even when he or she is looking at me, maybe the attention is drifting off or thinking about what to have for lunch. I guess when the conversation is getting boring, people do tend to drift off to their own wonderland. I can recognize boredom in people actually, because I realized their eyes tend to lose focus and look like their in a daze, when they’re still nodding and hmm-ing. It’s kind of irritating at times.

Ok, maybe when girls fiddle with their hair, they’re actually sending out different signals. Women do tend to send out sexual cues to show their interests in the other gender. Commonly it’s the knee pointing, leg-crossing and frequent glances across the room. Some extreme moves are showing childlike playfulness and proximity with they guy that she’s interested in.
Proxemics is the study if space and distance in communication. The distance one stands from another does convey a non-verbal message. In some cultures it is a sign of attraction, while in others it may reflect status or the intensity of the exchange. From what I know, Latin cultures tend to have smaller relative distances compared to other cultures. They are more comfortable being close to each other, while other cultures may feel invaded and intrusive. So understanding different cultures and their habits will eliminate discomfort and form better relationships when we don not meet with misunderstandings with each other.

And do u guys realise that the way we stand and orientate ourselves also shows something? We often stand along, side by side with friends, while being across, face-to face with competitors, like in a stand-off. Well, we don’t see anybody standing with their enemies right? Its really common kind of behaviour when speaking of it, but most of the time we just do not know how prevalent our body language is used everyday.

And I wanna touch a little on para-linguistics, which is another form of non-verbal communication that we as young adults often use, not knowing that it’s actually something we learnt in lecture. When we email, msn, text each other, the emoticons, fonts and color choices, capitalization and other abstract characters are also linguistic elements of non-verbal communication. Now I hope everyone is aware of the extent of how we engage in non verbal communications in our daily lives.

What we do is a means of communication, subject to interpretation by others. Did you ever stop to think that even failure to act is a way of communicating? So after understanding more and recognising the many methods of non verbal communication they are, I believe I’ll be less inclined to offend anyone with my bodily language, gestures or being so close invading into their personal space.