Persuasion - Larson Chapter 10 and Gladwell

Reflection Paper #8

Liz Horgan

December 1, 2009

COMM 612 Leanne Pupchek

Larson shocked me with the following quote from our textbook, “non-verbal

communication accounts for over 80 percent of the meaning transferred

between people” (p. 258). He went on to outline the various forms and

methods of non-verbal communication: facial expression and eye contact and

movement; body language and physical communication; proxemics and the use

of personal space; physical appearance, which includes dress, personal

features, grooming and accessories; artifacts -- the things you surround/arm

yourself with; voice issues and the use of silence; tactile communication, or

touch between people and the haptics/touch of things; body placement,

movement and subtle signaling; dialect, time, and gender. Non-verbal

communication highlights, modifies, clarifies and enhances and helps create

verbal meaning.

The way we are communicating is changing in our 24/7 world. Lengthy

face-to-face conversations are being replaced by more focused, succinct forms

of technologically enabled communication, such as: texting, email, Tweets and

Facebook chats. Shorter messages inherently provide less context. How does

our technologically assisted communication work when the non-verbal cues are

not present? How do we understand and make sense? Some people use

emoticons when emailing as a way to enhance or clarify meaning. A sentence “I

hate how Jenny brings up Sam in every conversation” can sound harsh and

judgmental, yet the same sentence ending with a ;-) can show the author is

merely annoyed or is just venting from a recent chat with Jenny. Others use

“haha” to soften tones, or “JK” (just kidding) to temper a sarcastic remark.

Punctuation is also used to add context to content on line. For example, “…”

can indicate a further train of thought that tends to soften the preceding

commentary, even though what would have been said, the …, is not identified

or spelled out. The use of ALL CAPS adds emphasis and can convey some of the

same things that non-verbal communications cues do: I AM MAD suggests that

the writer is really mad; HAHA could be used to signal that a comment is either

really funny or that the writer is kidding; and “I TOLD YOU SO” in lieu of “I told

you so” can have very different meanings, with all caps indicating anger or

shouting.

How do we now know that we’re getting it right? That we’re

communicating and understanding effectively? We can’t gauge a listeners

interest by watching their eye movements, by seeing their crossed arms and

reading their body language, or by looking at their facial expression. We rely

on other information, visuals (emoticons) and written cues (all caps, special

words or abbreviations) to add to the message. It seems to me that it places a

greater burden on each person involved in the communication -- it requires

them to take action if they feel they do not understand. Deliberate questioning

or follow-up is needed to clarify and make meaning in an on-line or

technological setting, whereas in personal discourse much more than half of

the sense-making in conversation comes from non-verbal sources. It takes

more energy to use the central processing route of the ELM model (questioning

the meaning of a text message, to use the example above) than the peripheral

route (the channel typically used for the non-verbal communication cues which

are subtly used to enhance and enlighten).

Non-verbal cues are communication short-cuts processed along the

peripheral route, they are used to supplement face-to-face verbal

communication. Non-verbal communication comes into play because people

have so much to process, it helps reduce the clutter and streamline

information. On-line communication is different. With technologically

directed written communication, we begin with distilled communication and

have to work backwards, adding complexity and creating verbal and new non-

verbal cues to clarify messages to make shared meaning. Much of the

technological communications, texting and on-line communication, begin as

short-cuts. Sometimes you can short-cut a short-cut, but mostly I’ve found

that sense-making comes from a balance between communication quantity and

quality.