Audience: Teacher
Nonverbal Communication
Ever hear someone say? “My wife (or husband) left me. I didn’t even know we were having problems.” Or “I thought the boss was happy with my work. I had no idea I was about to be fired.” This is because of a lack of communication. Communication is generally defined as has having both verbal and nonverbal components. Verbal communication often refers to the words we use in communication; nonverbal communication refers to communication that is produced by some means other than words (eye contact, body language, or vocal cues, for example) (Knapp and Hall, 2002). Communication is much more than verbal. Unfortunately, many people are of the opinion that communication is only oral or written verbal interaction. Verbal interaction accounts for only a small quotient of the messages that people send and receive. Researchers say that between 70% and 90% of the entire communication spectrum is nonverbal. Subsequently, people need to be aware how important nonverbal communications are. If the people that stated the above statements had paid attention to what people were saying nonverbally they never would have been as blind sighted by the events.
“Nonverbal communication is the process of communication through sending and receiving wordless cues between people. It is sometimes mistakenly referred to as body language, but nonverbal communication encompasses much more, such as use of voice, touch, distance, and physical environments/appearance. Informal space around the body and the use of time is typically overlooked in nonverbal communication. Not only considered eye contact, oculesics comprises the actions of looking while talking and listening, frequency of glances, patterns of fixation, pupil dilation, and blink rate.
Even speech contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, rate, pitch, volume, and speaking style, as well as features such as rhythm, intonation, and stress.