Kinesics: Nonverbal Communication and Body Language

Nonverbal communication is usually described as the process of wordless communication through sending and receiving mostly visual symbols between people. Messages can be communicated through gestures and touch, by body language or posture, or by facial expression and eye contact. Nonverbal messages could also be communicated through materials, objects, or artifacts such as clothing, hairstyles, and accessories. Speech contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage. This includes voice quality, rate, pitch, volume, and speaking style. Speaking style covers rhythm, inflection, and stress on words. Written texts have nonverbal elements as well, such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words, or the physical layout of a page. The study of nonverbal communication, however, has tended to focus on face-to-face interaction. It can be classified into three principal areas. These three areas are environmental conditions, or where the communication takes place, physical characteristics of the communicators, and behaviors of communicators during interaction.
Most social psychologists claim that nonverbal communication makes up about two-thirds of all communication between two people or between one speaker and a group of listeners. Nonverbal communication can portray a message with the correct body signals. There are numerous elements of what we call body language. They include but are not limited to physical features, both changeable and unchangeable, your gestures and signals you send to others at a conscious and unconscious level, and the space that you use when communicating with others. The wrong signals can be sent if the body language conveyed does not match a verbal message.
Nonverbal communication strengthens a first impression in common situations like attracting a partner or in a business interview. The first scientific study of nonverbal communication was Charles Darwin's book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. He