NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
 

中国经济管理大学 名课教辅

“Understanding nonverbal communication is not simply useful for a manager.  It is essential.”

I. A few basic considerations about nonverbal communication:

 A. Communication experts have established that less than a third of the meaning transferred from one person to another in a personal conversation comes from the words that are spoken.

B. Nonverbal communication is widely regarded as the transfer of meaning without using verbal symbols.

C. Separating the effects of nonverbal and verbal behavior are never easy because they are always in some way about each other.

D. With the exception of emotional displays and certain facial expressions, virtually all nonverbal communication is culturally based.

II. The concept of nonverbal communication can be organized into a number of different areas, steps, functions, and principles.

A. Communication researchers have outlined three basic categories of nonverbal language.

1. Sign language can be as simple as the extended thumb of a hitchhiker, or as complex as the complete system of sign language for the deaf.

2. Action language includes all movements that are not used exclusively for communicating. (i.e. walking).

3. Object language includes all objects, materials, artifacts, and things that we use in our daily lives.

B. Nonverbal communication is really a three-step process involving a cue, our own expectations, and an inference.

1. We first look for a wordless cue - a motion or an object.

2. We then look to match the cue against our expectation, asking what seems   reasonable or obvious, based on our prior experiences.

3. Finally, we draw an inference based on the nonverbal cue and our expectations.
C. Nonverbal communication can serve any number of important functions in our lives, but the following six functions are deemed the most important by researchers:

1. Accent some part of a verbal message.

2. Complement the general tone or attitude of our verbal communication.

3. Contradict the verbal messages we send, sometimes deliberately, sometimes unintentionally.

4. Regulate the flow, the pace, and the back-and-forth nature of verbal communication.

5. Repeat what verbal messages convey.

6. Substitute for verbal messages, particularly if they are simple or monosyllabic.

D. Fifty years of research and five thousand years of human experience with nonverbal communication have identified six principles thought to be universally true.  Nonverbal behaviors:

1. Occur in a context;

2. Are usually packaged and thus are difficult to isolate;

3. Always communicate, even when we are not speaking with or listening to others;

4. Are governed by rules, just like spoken and written language;

5. Are highly believable, even when they contradict a verbal message;

6. Are meta-communicational, or simply, communication about communication.

III. The code of nonverbal communication is organized into different dimensions, each with the power to encode and carry messages from one person to another.

A. The Communication Environment is a collection of nonhuman factors that can, and often does, influence human transactions.

B. The manner in which we move and position our bodies tells people something about us.  The five basic categories of body movement are:
  1. Emblems - nonverbal acts which have a direct verbal translation or dictionary definition, sometimes a word or two or a brief phrase.

2. Illustrators - gestures that often complement our verbal signals, helping to illustrate what we said verbally.

3. Affect displays - behaviors that indicate the type and intensity of the various emotions we feel.

  4. Regulators - body movements that help to control the flow of communication.

5. Adaptors - movements or behaviors that involve personal habits and self-expressions; these methods help us adapt to the world in which we live.

 C. Direction, duration, and intensity of eye contact play an important role in human interaction.  Such contact:

  1. Indicates interest, attention, or involvement between two people.

  2. Varies in meaning among different cultures.

 D. A communicator’s physical characteristics and overall appearance often affect how others react to the conversation.  Attractive people are frequently better received by an audience.

E. Artifacts or objects that are human-made or modified affect our interactions.

F. The act of touch greatly affects the way we perceive the communicator.

1. Positive and negative influences of touch depend greatly on the environment and context for the interaction.

2. Touch ungoverned by rules is no longer welcomed in workplace exchanges.
 
G. Paralanguage which refers to how something is said and not what is said influences communication.

1. It deals with a range of nonverbal cues involved in speech behavior, such as voice qualities, vocal characterizers, vocal qualifiers, and speech segregates.  These are sometimes referred to as vocalics.

2. Often the only real clues we have to a person’s actual intent as we listen to him or her speak are found in paralanguage.

H. Our use of space in the office or in a social setting affects our interaction.  Here are four categories of distance which help to define the relationship between communicators:

1. Intimate:  ranges from actual touching to a distance of about 18 inches.

2. Personal:  ranges from about 18 to 30 inches.

3. Social:  ranges from about 4 to 12 feet.

4. Public:  ranges from about 12 to 15 feet.

 I. Our use of time and how we view its role in our personal and professional lives play a role in our communication.  The meaning of time and its importance varies from culture to culture.

 J. Color or shading are subtle and powerful message senders.

K. A primitive perceptive capability, smell is a powerful communicator reaching far and wide throughout human emotion and experience.

L. Our ability to taste, highly correlated to our sense of smell, is highly subjective and thus influences our communication.

M. Sound and its effects on communication are important parts of nonverbal communication.  Here, the notion of sound relates to acoustics as well as the melodic ranges of the human voice, sounds produced by nature and mankind, and music.

N. Silence can be used both positively and negatively to affect, to reveal, to judge, or to activate.  Research in interpersonal communication has revealed that silence may serve a number of important functions.  It can be employed to:

  1. Provide thinking time;

2. Hurt others;

3. Isolate oneself;

4. Prevent communication;

5. Communicate feelings;

6. Communicate nothing.

IV. Here are the six general effects of nonverbal communication every manager should know:

A. Nonverbal cues are often difficult to read.  Remember not only to look at nonverbal clusters of behavior, but also recognize that nonverbal meaning rarely is limited to a single denotative meaning.

B. Nonverbal cues are often difficult to interpret.  Remember that what may mean one thing in one context, culture, or circumstance, may mean something entirely different in another.

C. Some nonverbal cues are more important than others.  The relative importance of a given cue is dependent on habits and usual behaviors of the speaker.

D. We often read into some cues much that is not there, and fail to read some cues that are clearly present.

E. We are not as skilled at this as we think we are; our confidence often exceeds our ability.  Remember it is easy to misinterpret, misread, or misunderstand someone.