Verbal+and+Nonverbal+Communication

=Verbal and Nonverbal Communication= =Jose M. Reyes II= =November 15th, 2011=



"Don't roll your eyes at me!" "Take that look off your face." "Sit up straight." Time and time again we have heard these remarks growing up from our parents, but why? Does rolling your eyes meaning something? Does a certain look on our face convey a message? Does slouching over mean something different that sitting up straight? Over time, we have realized that its not always what we say that conveys a message, but rather what we say in a non-verbal manner that says more. In //Bridges Not Walls,// Interpersonal communication texts typically devote one chapter to verbal codes and a separate one to nonverbal communication. This practice began in the late 1960's when communication researchers and teachers first discovered the importance of the nonverbal parts of communicating- eye contact, body movement, facial expressions, tone of voice, touch silence, and so on. Researchers are now focusing more and more closely on conversations as people actually experience them, and it has become obvious that you can't really separate the verbal and nonverbal parts. In the words of two researchers "It is impossible to study either verbal or nonverbal communication as isolated structures. Rather, these systems should be regarded as a unified communication construct."

The chapter emphasizes the fact that people engaged in conversation construct all verbal and nonverbal aspects of talk together. To put it in researchers' terms, utterance meaning and nonverbal meaning are not discrete and independent. This is true even of words written on a page. What you might consider to be "purely verbal" written words appear in designed typeface, on a certain weight color of paper, and surrounded by more or less white space. All of these nonverbal elements affect how people interpret the written words of any language. Similarly, even purely nonverbal behaviors, such as gestures or eye behavior, occur in the context of some spoken or written words:

Primarily Verbal---Mixed---Primarily Nonverbal
written words vocal pacing, gestures, eye gaze, pause, loudness, facial expression, pitch, silence touch, space

Written words are classified as primarily verbal for the reasons we just gave. They appear in a nonverbal typeface surrounded by nonverbal space, but readers interpret or make meaning primarily on the basis of the words' verbal content. To the degree that you can isolate the words speakers use, they might be considered primarily verbal, too. But spoken words always come with vocal pacing, pause, loudness, pitch, and silence, and as a result these are labeled mixed. Gestures, facial expressions, and so on are labeled primarily nonverbal because they can occur without words, but they are usually interprete d in the context of spoken words.