The Importance of Non-verbal Commuincation

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Communication is an aspect of everyday life. People communicate both verbally and most importantly non-verbally. Verbal communication involves words whereas non-verbal communication consists of everything else but words. Moreover, there are different non-verbal concepts. These include haptics, refering to touch; proxemics, involving space and kinesics, which refers to gestures. Non-verbal communication is considered more meaningful and powerful because it communicates what the mouth does not. Non-verbal communication is expressed through body language and paralnguage. Paralanguage involves the voice and body language is embedded with non-verbal concepts. Overall non-verbal communication is an important universal language.

Paralanguage relates to non-verbal cues of the voice. This aspect of non-verbal communication includes intonation, vocal sounds and tone. People pay close attention to the voice in addition to listening to the words being spoken in order to clarify the message being conveyed. Take the case of a listener detecting whether the speaker expressed their message in the form of a question or statement through the pitch of their voice (Besson, Graf, Hartung, Kropfhausser & Voisard 2005). Another example involves the use of tone. Tone of voices can be friendly, aggressive, enthusiastic nervous and monotonous. The situation contributes to the tone of voice utilise. In the case of a political debate the tone voice would be rousing whereas in a television news report it would be in a more a factual tone. Additionally, people produce vocal sound either to show interest or express feelings. These sounds include laughter and screams of joy, fear and pain. In the great diversity of language, these sounds are most similar in for...

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...determine whether or not someone is telling the truth. For example police offers pay close attention to suspects in addition to other verbal cues in order to determine if the person’s honesty. However there are cultures where avoiding eye contact is a sign of respect. Consequently, reading non-verbal cues does no always mean a person will interpret correctly. Nonetheless nonverbal signals and cues allow people to communicate many things without uttering a word.

In conclusion non-verbal communication involves body language and paralanguage. There are many different concepts of non-verbal communication. The non-verbal signals and cues sometimes differ across different culture but are sometimes universal. Non-verbal communication is considered important because it is natural and communicates what words do not. In other words it’s a way of communicating in silence.

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