Understanding Non-Verbal Communication

In its most basic form, communicating involves a sender who takes his

or her thoughts and encodes them into verbal and non-verbal messages

that are sent to a receiver. The receiver than decodes the messages and

attempts to understand what the sender meant to communication. The

communication is completed when the receiver transmits verbal and

nonverbal feed back to indicate his or her reception and understanding

of the message.

This process takes place within a context; also know as rhetorical

situation, which includes all that affects the communication process

such as the sender-receiver’s culture, the sender-receiver‘s

relationship, the circumstances surrounding the sender-receiver’s

interaction, and the physical environment of the interaction.

Because the basic communication process is the same in every

situation, there are some similarities across all types of

interactions. Just the same, each interaction remains distinct and

therefore each rhetorical situation will be different. For example,

think about how you communicate with another person in the library and

at a party. In both cases, you are sending messages and reacting to

feedback. But the rhetorical situation of the library means that you

will be speaking in whispers, whereas at the party you will be

speaking much louder and with more animated gestures. If you were to

switch style, whispering at the party and yelling at the library,

then, your communication style will be ineffective to day the least.

In both situations, you are engaging in the same communication

process, but the rhetorical situation requires you to act different

ways.

Verbal communication is simply using spoken language to convey a

message to other people. However, nonverbal communication is far more

complicated, it contains the use of object, body language, actions and

symbols to show meaning to people. In fact, it’s not easy to define

non-verbal communication, because “experts disagree about whether

count unintended action as nonverbal communication.”

(http://maine.maine.edu/~zubrick/tren5.html, 28/4/2005)

Non-verbal communication is deceptively important in how we express

ourselves , and it plays a huge part in child’s development into