4. The Nature of Verbal / Non-Verbal Messages

In communication people basically use twomajor signal systems – the verbal and the non-verbal. The verbal system studies how spoken and written language serves as a system for communicating meaning, how it can be used effectively, and how it creates problems when it isn’t.

To begin with, verbalmessagesmay vary in directness being direct and indirect. Indirectmessages allowto express a thoughtwithout insulting or offending anyone; they allowto observe the rules of polite interaction.

The notion of directness / indirectness is also closely connected with gender / cultural differences.Apupular stereotype inmuch of the United States holds that women are indirect in making requests and in giving orders - and that this indirectness communicates powerlessness, a discomfort with authority. Men, the stereotype continues, are direct, sometimes to Ihe point of being blunt or rude. This directness communicates men’s power and comfort with their own authority.

Deborah Tannen provides an interesting perspective on these stereotypes.Women are, it seems,more indirect in giving orders; they are more likely to say, for example, “It would be great if these letters could go out today” rather than “Have these letters out by three”. But Tannen argues that “issuing orders indirectly can be the prerogative of those in power” and in no way shows powerlessness. Power, to Tannen, is the ability to choose your own style of communication. Men, however, are also indirect but in different situations.

According to Tannen men are more likely to use indirectness when they express weakness, reveal a problem, or admit an error. Men are more likely to speak indirectly in expressing emotions other than anger. Men are also more indirect when they shrink from expressions of increased romantic intimacy.Men are thus indirect, the theory goes, when they are saying something that goes against the masculine stereotype.

Many Asian and Latin American cultures stress the values of indirectness, largely because indirectness enables a person to avoid appearing criticized or contradicted and thereby losing face.An example of a somewhat different kind or indirectness is the greater use of intermediaries to resolve conflict among the Chinese than among North Americans.

As for non-verbal communication, it is usually understood as the process of communication through sending and receiving wordless messages. Non-verbal can be communicated through gestures and touch (haptic communication), by body language or posture, by facial expression and eye contact. Speech contains non-verbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, emotion and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress.

Proxemics is the study of how people use and perceive the physical space around them. The space between the sender and the receiver of a message influences the way the message is interpreted. The perception and use of space varies significantly across cultures and different settings within cultures. Space in non-verbal communicationmay be divided into fourmain categories: intimate, social, personal, and public space.

The term territoriality is still used in the study of proxemics to explain human behavior regarding personal space. Joseph identifies four such territories:

1) primary territory – refers to an area that is associated with someone who has exclusive use of it. For example, a house that others cannot enter without the owner’s permission;

2) secondary territory– unlike the previous type, there is no “right” to occupancy, but people may still feel some degree of ownership of a particular space. For example, someonemay sit in the same seat on train every day and feel aggrieved if someone else sits there;

3) public territory – refers to an area that is available to all, but only for a set period, such as a parking space or a seat in a library.

Although people have only a limited claim over that space, they often exceed that claim. For example, it was found that people take longer to leave a parking space when someone is waiting to take that space;

4) interaction territory – space created by others when they are interacting. For example, when a group is talking to each other on a footpath, others will walk around the group rather than disturb it.

Posture can be used to determine a participant’s degree of attention or involvement, the difference in status between communicators, and the level of fondness a person has for the other communicator. Studies investigating the impact of posture on interpersonal relationships suggest that mirror-image congruent postures, where one person’s left side is parallel to the other’s right side, leads to favorable perception of communicators and positive speech; a person who displays a forward lean or a decrease in a backwards lean also signify positive sentiment

during communication. Posture is understood through such indicators as direction of lean, body orientation, armposition, and body openness.

Gesture is a non-vocal bodilymovement intended to expressmeaning. Theymay be articulated with the hands, arms or body, and also include movements of the head, face and eyes, such as winking, nodding, or rolling ones’ eyes. The boundary between language and gesture, or verbal and non-verbal communication, can be hard to identify. Although the study of gesture is still in its infancy, some broad categories of gestures have been identified by researchers. The most familiar are the so-called emblems or quotable gestures. These are conventional, culture-specific gestures that can be used as replacement for words, such as the handwave used in the US for “hello” and “goodbye”. A single emblematic gesture can a have very different significance in different cultural contexts, ranging fromcomplimentary to highly offensive.

Another broad category of gestures comprises those gestures used spontaneously when we speak. These gestures are closely coordinated with speech. The so-called beat gestures are used in conjunction with speech and keep time with the rhythm of speech to emphasize certain

words or phrases. These types of gestures are integrally connected to speech and thought processes. Other spontaneous gestures used when we speak are more contentful and may echo or elaborate the meaning of the co-occurring speech. For example, a gesture that depicts the act of throwing may be synchronous with the utterance, “He threw the ball right into the window”. Gestural languages such as American Sign Language and its regional siblings operate as complete natural languages that are gestural in modality. They should not be confused with finger spelling, in which a set of emblematic gestures are used to represent a written alphabet. Gestures can also be categorised as either speechindependent or speech-related. Speech-independent gestures are dependent upon culturally accepted interpretation and have a direct verbal translation. A wave hello or a peace sign are examples of speechindependent gestures. Speech related gestures are used in parallel with verbal speech; this formof non-verbal communication is used to emphasize the message that is being communicated. Speech related gestures are intended to provide supplemental information to a verbal message such as pointing to an object of discussion.

Paralanguage (sometimes called vocalics) is the study of nonverbal cues of the voice. Various acoustic properties of speech such as tone, pitch and accent, collectively known as prosody, can all give off non-verbal cues. Paralanguage may change the meaning of words. The linguistGeorge L. Trager developed a classification systemwhich consists of the voice set, voice qualities, and vocalization. The voice set is the context inwhich the speaker is speaking. This can include the situation, gender,mood, age and a person’s culture. The voice qualities are volume, pitch, tempo, rhythm, articulation, resonance, nasality, and accent. They give each individual a unique “voice print”. Vocalization consists of three subsections: characterizers, qualifiers and segregates. Characterizers are emotions expressedwhile speaking, such as laughing, crying, and yawning.Avoice qualifier is the style of delivering amessage – for example, yelling “Hey stop that!”, as opposed to whispering “Hey stop that”. Vocal segregates such as “uh-huh” notify the speaker that the listener is listening.