Nonverbal Communication: The Most Important Form Of Communication

Communication is an ongoing process that people use in everyday life. However, the most frequently used forms of communication is also one of the easiest to forget, nonverbal communication. It is necessary to look at each part of nonverbal communication to fully understand its significance. Complex and always present, nonverbal communication is a powerful asset to anyone’s interpersonal communication skills. So powerful that nonverbal communication is the most important form of communication.

“Nonverbal communication is behaviors and characteristics that convey meaning without the use of words” (Floyd, 2011, p. 179). Although commonly referred to as “body language” in popular culture since the publication of Julius Fast’s book of the same name

They include body behavior, physical characteristics, silence, space and distance, and artifacts. “Body behavior refers to the expression and movement which transfer communicative messages” (Wang, 2009, p. 156). This includes gestures, such as waving a hand to say hello to a friend. Physical characteristics provide nonverbal communication on status, gender, and power. Every society defines expectations for what one wears, which makes identifying nonverbal cues based on appearance simpler within those societies. Wang (2009) describes space and distance as the flow and shift of distance between someone and the people with whom that person interacts. It is as much a part of a communication experience as the verbal words people exchange with one another. Space and distance allow people to convey meanings nonverbally. A less commonly considered part of communication, silence is an important part of nonverbal communication. Silence sends nonverbal cues concerning the communication situations in which one participates. Wang (2009) goes to say that silent cues affect interpersonal communication by providing an interval in an ongoing interaction during which the participants have time to think, check or suppress an emotion, encode a lengthy response, or inaugurate another line of thought. Silence also helps provide feedback, informing both sender and receiver about the clarity of an idea or its significance in the

Jensen (2016) has a chart in his article, “Personality Traits and Nonverbal Communication Patterns,” that provides a good visual describing the differences between high context cultures and low context cultures. High context cultures have a greater reliance on context and nonverbal communication than verbal communication. This means that high context cultures have more indirect verbal communication. Thus, the low context cultures have more direct verbal communication with less emphasis on context and nonverbal communication. “Nonverbal communication takes place in specific cultural contexts and is influenced by cultural norms. Cultural norms are social rules for what certain types of people should and should not do” (Chang, 2015). Blahova (2015) found that physical distance is very close and typical of Latin American or Mediterranean nations. Touching, hugging or even kissing business partners is quite typical there. Some Asian cultures, on the other hand, avoid physical contacts with partners. This even means shaking hands is unacceptable, and is replaced by bowing in Japan and China. The angle of the bow is subject to cultural differences and the partner’s rank in the corporate hierarchy, according to Blahova (2015). “Eye contact is important in all cultures, although rules differ about who looks at whom and for how long” (Blahova, 2015, p. 16). In some cultures, respect is often