16 Supplement #2: Nonverbal Communication

Principles and Functions of Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal Communication is an essential aspect of human interaction, encompassing a range of behaviors beyond spoken words. It involves both vocal elements, known as paralanguage, which include pitch, volume, and rate, and nonvocal elements, commonly referred to as body language, such as gestures, facial expressions, and eye contact. While verbal and nonverbal communication work together within a broader language system, they differ in several key ways. They are processed by different hemispheres of the brain, with nonverbal communication conveying more emotional and affective meaning. Unlike verbal communication, which is guided by grammatical rules, nonverbal communication lacks an explicit rule system. Furthermore, while verbal communication is uniquely human, nonverbal communication is shared across various species, including plants, birds, and mammals.

Nonverbal communication operates on several principles. It typically conveys more meaning than verbal communication and tends to be more involuntary, often occurring without conscious thought. It is also more ambiguous, as the interpretation of nonverbal cues can vary widely among individuals and contexts. Additionally, nonverbal communication is often perceived as more credible than verbal communication, as it is harder to falsify emotions and intentions expressed through nonverbal means.

Nonverbal communication serves multiple functions in human interaction. It affects verbal communication by complementing, reinforcing, substituting, or contradicting verbal messages. For example, a nod can reinforce a spoken agreement, while crossed arms might contradict a verbal expression of openness. Nonverbal communication also plays a crucial role in influencing others, serving as a key component in deception and being used to assert dominance or gain compliance. It regulates conversational flow by providing cues that signal the beginning and end of conversational turns, facilitating smooth interactions.

Also, nonverbal communication significantly impacts relationships. It is a primary means through which emotions are conveyed, social bonds are established, and relational maintenance is achieved. Through nonverbal cues, individuals express feelings, build connections, and maintain ongoing relationships. Lastly, nonverbal communication expresses identities. The way individuals set up their living and working spaces, the clothes they wear, their personal presentation, and the tones in their voices all convey aspects of who they are. These nonverbal elements help define personal and social identities, making nonverbal communication a vital component of self-expression and interpersonal dynamics.

Types of Nonverbal Communication

Kinesics refers to body movements and posture and includes the following components:
Gestures are arm and hand movements and include adaptors like clicking a pen or scratching your face, emblems like a thumbs-up to say “OK,” and illustrators like bouncing your hand along with the rhythm of your speaking.

Head movements and posture include the orientation of movements of our head and the orientation and positioning of our body and the various meanings they send. Head movements such as nodding can indicate agreement, disagreement, and interest, among other things. Posture can indicate assertiveness, defensiveness, interest, readiness, or intimidation, among other things.

Eye contact is studied under the category of oculesics and specifically refers to eye contact with another person’s face, head, and eyes and the patterns of looking away and back at the other person during interaction. Eye contact provides turn-taking signals, signals when we are engaged in cognitive activity, and helps establish rapport and connection, among other things.

Facial expressions refer to the use of the forehead, brow, and facial muscles around the nose and mouth to convey meaning. Facial expressions can convey happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and other emotions.
Haptics refers to touch behaviors that convey meaning during interactions. Touch operates at many levels, including functional-professional, social-polite, friendship-warmth, and love-intimacy.

Vocalics refers to the vocalized but not verbal aspects of nonverbal communication, including our speaking rate, pitch, volume, tone of voice, and vocal quality. These qualities, also known as paralanguage, reinforce the meaning of verbal communication, allow us to emphasize particular parts of a message, or can contradict verbal messages.

Proxemics refers to the use of space and distance within communication. US Americans, in general, have four zones that constitute our personal space: the public zone (12 or more feet from our body), social zone (4–12 feet from our body), the personal zone (1.5–4 feet from our body), and the intimate zone (from body contact to 1.5 feet away). Proxemics also studies territoriality, or how people take up and defend personal space.

Chronemics refers the study of how time affects communication and includes how different time cycles affect our communication, including the differences between people who are past or future oriented and cultural perspectives on time as fixed and measured (monochronic) or fluid and adaptable (polychronic).

Personal presentation and environment refers to how the objects we adorn ourselves and our surroundings with, referred to as artifacts, provide nonverbal cues that others make meaning from and how our physical environment—for example, the layout of a room and seating positions and arrangements—influences communication.

Nonverbal Communication Competence

To improve your competence encoding nonverbal messages, increase your awareness of the messages you are sending and receiving and the contexts in which your communication is taking place. Since nonverbal communication is multichannel, it is important to be aware that nonverbal cues can complement, enhance, or contradict each other. Also realize that the norms and expectations for sending nonverbal messages, especially touch and personal space, vary widely between relational and professional contexts.
To improve your competence decoding nonverbal messages, look for multiple nonverbal cues, avoid putting too much weight on any one cue, and evaluate nonverbal messages in relation to the context and your previous experiences with the other person. Although we put more weight on nonverbal communication than verbal when trying to detect deception, there is no set guide that can allow us to tell whether or not another person is being deceptive.

Nonverbal Communication in Context

A central function of nonverbal communication is the establishment and maintenance of interpersonal relationships. Nonverbal communication helps initiate relationships through impression management and self-disclosure and then helps maintain relationships as it aids in emotional expressions that request and give emotional support.

Professionals indicate that nonverbal communication is an important part of their jobs. Organizational leaders can use nonverbal decoding skills to tell when employees are under stress and in need of support and can then use encoding skills to exhibit nonverbal sensitivity. Nonverbal signals can aid in impression management in professional settings, such as in encoding an appropriate amount of enthusiasm and professionalism.

Although some of our nonverbal signals appear to be more innate and culturally universal, many others vary considerably among cultures, especially in terms of the use of space (proxemics), eye contact (oculesics), and touch (haptics). Rather than learning a list of rules for cultural variations in nonverbal cues, it is better to develop more general knowledge about how nonverbal norms vary based on cultural values and to view this knowledge as tools that can be adapted for use in many different cultural contexts.

In terms of gender, most of the nonverbal differences between men and women are exaggerations of biological differences onto which we have imposed certain meanings and values. Men and women’s nonverbal communication, as with other aspects of communication, is much more similar than different. Research has consistently found, however, that women gesture, make eye contact, touch and stand close to same-gender conversational partners, and use positive facial expressions more than men.

Attribution

This supplemental chapter was adapted from Communication in the Real World – An Introduction to Communication Studies ,CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Anonymous via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

We acknowledge that UMD’s TerpAI tool was used to adapt some of the contents of this supplement.