Week 6 (10-16 November): How do we find nonverbal paths in the wilds of communication?

Nonverbal communication is one of the most astonishing, extraordinary and incomprehensible ways of human communication. Wordless messages are sent through our gesture, body language, posture, clothes, hairstyle, even through the rooms we live in and objects we use. These messages might be decoded by our interlocutors intentionally or unintentionally, but nevertheless they do not go unnoticed. We are surrounded by the jungle of nonverbal communication and we cannot escape from it. 

By means of nonverbal communication we express our feelings, personality, attitude towards certain things, needs and problems. Nonverbal cues may either constitute a message on their own or they may be a supportive measure undertaken to strengthen what we say. But the question is how we know if we encode and decode those wordless messages properly. What determines our understanding of nonverbal communication? How do we find nonverbal paths in the wilds of communication? Is it our inborn ability or do we acquire this skill through socialization and the process of upbringing in a specific culture? In this essay I will try to reflect upon these and some other questions connected with the mysterious phenomenon of nonverbal communication.

Sometimes I wonder whether nonverbal communication is not a relics of evolution, such as: wisdom tooth or coccyx, yet then I think it is not the case. People might have used nonverbal cues for communication before they evolved and started using verbal ones, but why did not they give it up when having discovered a more efficient and time sparing way of encoding and decoding messages? Human being is a peculiar, cunning creature who is always trying to defeat and deceive the nature. Maybe this time it is the nature that deceived the human being. We use words, verbal messages not only to communicate something but very often to hide something from our interlocutor, to keep something secret and not to communicate. Words can be deceptive. But maybe nature invented a way to tame our cunningness. That is why we still have nonverbal communication. It reveals what is meant not to be revealed. It reveals what we are afraid to reveal. It says what we would never say. It shows our true nature. Of course a well-trained person is able to tame his body language, but still he cannot control it all the time.

My another guess connected with this topic is that we need nonverbal communication because language constraints us, it does not enable us to express the abundance of emotions that we feel. The enormousness of our feelings cannot be articulated through a means of communication that imposes limits on us. But how do we know how to encode and decode these wordless messages? Now, if we presume that nonverbal communication is an invention of nature and evolution, then we can also presume that we must have acquired an inborn ability to sense it, detect it and use it. I do not know whether it is a special apparatus present in our brain or an invisible phenomenon called intuition, but I am convinced that we do have it. There is no other explanation for the fact that people from different countries, cultures, different social background are able to decode such universal feelings as: anger, happiness, sadness expressed nonverbally.

To conclude, nonverbal communication is a vast and complicated subject which we still are not able to understand completely. There is little doubt that all of us are more or less aware of the fact that it exists and we use it on a regular basis, but I do not think that enough attention is paid to its role and importance. Most people do not ponder over nonverbal communication and its determinants. They do not wonder, how we find nonverbal paths in the wilds of communication – they simply find it. They do it intuitively, subconsciously. Maybe it is because of some evolutionary relics or a peculiar sensor in our brain or because of the society and culture we grow up and live in. Or maybe there are other factors which I have not thought of. I believe that all of the phenomena mentioned above play a crucial role, as far as decoding and encoding nonverbal messages is concerned. I think it is not enough to focus on one of them and study it in detail. They cannot be discussed separately, because they are interconnected and together, as important aspects of human life, form and determine the complex phenomenon of nonverbal communication.

Sources:

1.      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication

2.      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication

3.      http://psychology.about.com/od/nonverbalcommunication/a/nonverbaltypes.htm

4.      http://www.andrews.edu/~tidwell/bsad560/NonVerbal.html

5.      http://dan.univerzita-online.cz/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/facial-expression.jpg

6.      http://aulaobertasanisidro.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ROLEPLAY.jpg

7.      https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjlSNMkdNU5lMGpqsHI3bZ1VlupvqqSGhcm_i1Ldx-vlWn4_MZ2cfaPCSrblo8S_1RVz8Eo4bzTphFemhNYQQIRVMyRQnsziQ7iHyPHN1R_g5AVahltHqylr3wxpeBVL9lrmK45VgOWc0/s320/para.jpg