six ways in which nonverbal communication works in conjunction with verbal communication

7/22/2019 six ways in which nonverbal communication works in conjunction with verbal communication

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FNBE JULY 2013FCOM 0102 Effective Public Communication

INDIVIDUAL ESSAYEffective Public Communication (FCOM O1O2)

Assignment 1

Ricky Wong Yii

0313785


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Title : Identify and explain four of the six ways in which nonverbal

communication works in conjunction with verbal communication.

Non-verbal communication is the process of communication where we convey

our feelings, emotions, attitudes, opinions and views through our body movements

(Sen, 2007). In non-verbal communication, we use our eyes, hand movements, face

expressions and other body movements to substitute words and express our thoughts

(Grahe and Bernieri, 1999). The popular aphorism Actions speak louder than words

holds a great deal of meaning and tell us the importance of nonverbal codes in

communication. There are six ways that nonverbal communication can work in

conjunction with verbal communication in order to carry out effective communication.

The four ways out of the six ways are repeating, complementing, contradicting and

substituting.

Firstly, we work nonverbal communication in conjunction with verbal

communication through repeating. Repeating always occurs in our communication to

send the same message repeatedly through verbally and nonverbally to ensure that our

recipient could understand our message clearer. Moreover, repeating almost occurs

unconsciously when we are communicating with others. For instance, we automatically

wave our hands when we say goodbye to our friends or use our hands to point out

directions when we are trying to explain the direction that our recipient should head to.

However different people interpret nonverbal message in their own way based on their

culture, age or other factors that would likely to affect their interpretation towards

nonverbal message. Therefore repeating doesnt necessary allowed our recipient to


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understand our message clearly or even caused confusion when the recipient have

different understanding towards our nonverbal message. For example, people who

practiced Indian cultures interprets nodding heads as no while shaking heads as yes.

Therefore, it is crucial for us to take in account of other peoples cultures, backgrounds

and age group to choose t the most appropriate nonverbal codes to repeat our

messages.

Besides that, we also use nonverbal codes to add or expand the meaning of our

message when we are communicating with others verbally through complementing.

Although complementing and repeating may seem similar, however complementing is

completely different from repeating because repeating only duplicates the message

through verbal and nonverbal codes while complementing does more than duplicate the

message by adding or expand meaning of our message verbally and nonverbally

through tone of our voice, gestures and body movements. In addition, complementing

usually helps us to express our feelings which goes beyond our verbal message. For

example, we tend to raise our tone of our voice and stand up when we are having a

serious argument with others to show that we are angry or disagree with someones

opinions and behaviors. Conversely, we tend to lower down our tone of voice, sit closely

to our recipient and lowered down our heads when we are trying to comfort someone.

Furthermore, complementing our messages verbally and nonverbally also helps to

attract attention of our audience besides adding feelings in to our verbal messages. For

instance, student tend to fall asleep or fell boring while attending lectures conducted by

dull lecturers. Conversely students draw more attention when lecturers tend to be lively


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throughout the lectures by actively complementing their messages verbally and

nonverbally.

Other than that, contradicting can also occurs while we are communicating with

others when our verbal and nonverbal messages conflict. It is undeniable that everyone

always try to avoid conflict while they are communicating with others but conflict still

happened unintentionally in our daily life due to various reason. Contradicting between

verbal and nonverbal codes often occurs accidentally and mostly affected by various

emotional problems faced. For instance, if we are forced to respond to someone when

we are emotionally unstable or angry, although we told them that we were fine, however

somehow our audience would still be able to found out our true emotion through our

body movements, facial expression, and use of space because our nonverbal codes

may have seeped out our actual feelings and exposed them to our audience.

Moreover, contradiction also may occurred intentionally in humor and sarcasm when we

are communicating with others. For example, when we unable to answer teachers

question, every body movements and facial expression may seem sarcastic although

our teacher did not mention anything that sound sarcastic.

Lastly, we tend to substitute our verbal code through different nonverbal codes

such as body movements, facial expression, usage of space and many other ways most

of the time in our life. Peter Drucker said, The most important thing in communication to

hear what isnt being said which tell us that the importance of decoding information

from others nonverbal code instead of verbal code. There are a lot of small gestures

that we use all the time to substitute our words without our conscious realization. In


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addition, the intended message of each nonverbal codes are often fairly clear and less

likely to cause confusion among audience. For instance, we have general specific hand

gestures which indicates different meanings such as the ok, good, thumbs down

and stop hand gestures to substitute or accompany our words during communication.

Other than that, we also use our eyes to convey messages to our audience through

eye contact. Although mini details such as eye contact dont seem to be influential

while we communicating verbally with others, however eye contact plays an important

role of substituting words and allowing others to notice your feelings while

communicating with them as eyes are said to be the windows to our soul and mirror of

our heart. For instance, people can tell when we are surprised about what they are

talking or whether we are eager to listen to their words just by having eye contactwith

us.

In a nutshell, nonverbal codes work in conjunction with verbal codes in

communication through repeating, complementing, contradicting and substituting. As we

all know, transmission of message is effective only when all the three aspects of

communication the verbal, the vocal and the visual are in tandem with one another.

Therefore, acknowledging the power and mastering the knowledge of the unspoken

language is definitely one of the key of success in communication.


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Reference

Grahe, J.E., & Bernieri, F. J. (1999). The importance of nonverbal cues in judging

rapport. Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, 23, 253-269.

Pearson, J.C., Nelson, P.E., Titsworth S., Harter L. (2013) Human Communication, (5th

edition) New York: McGraw Hill

Sen, L. (2007) Communication Skills, (2nd edition) New Delhi: Prentice, Hall of India

Private Limited.

Tubbs S.L. & Moss.S. (2003) Human Communication: Principles and Contexts, (11th

ed.) Boston: McGraw Hill

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six ways in which nonverbal communication works in conjunction with verbal communication