We send information on attitude toward person (facing or leaning towards another), emotional statue (tapping fingers, jiggling coins), and desire to control the environment (moving towards or away from a person). Show More than 700,000 possible motions we can make — so impossible to categorize them all! But just need to be aware the body movement and
position is a key ingredient in sending messages. Consider the following actions and note cultural differences:
Impossible to catalog them all. But need to recognize: 1) incredible possibility and variety and 2) that an acceptable in one’s own culture may be offensive in another. In addition, amount of gesturing varies from culture to culture. Some cultures are animated; other restrained. Restrained cultures often feel animated cultures lack manners and overall restraint. Animated cultures often feel restrained cultures lack emotion or interest. Even simple things like using hands to point and count differ. Pointing : US with index finger; Germany with little finger; Japanese with entire hand (in fact most Asians consider pointing with index finger to be rude) Counting: Thumb = 1 in Germany, 5 in Japan, middle finger for 1 in Indonesia. While some say that facial expressions are identical, meaning attached to them differs. Majority opinion is that these do have similar meanings world-wide with respect to smiling, crying, or showing anger, sorrow, or disgust. However, the intensity varies from culture to culture. Note the following:
In USA, eye contact indicates: degree of attention or interest, influences attitude change or persuasion, regulates interaction, communicates emotion, defines power and status, and has a central role in managing impressions of others.
Question: Why do we touch, where do we touch,
and what meanings do we assign when someone else touches us?
What is the problem? Traditional Korean (and many other Asian countries) don’t touch strangers., especially between members of the opposite sex. But the African-American sees this as another example of discrimination (not touching him because he is black). Basic answer: Touch is culturally determined! But each culture has a clear concept of what parts of the body one may not touch. Basic message of touch is to affect or control — protect, support, disapprove (i.e. hug, kiss, hit, kick).
Basic patterns: Cultures (English , German, Scandinavian, Chinese, Japanese) with high emotional restraint concepts have little public touch; those which encourage emotion (Latino, Middle-East, Jewish) accept frequent touches.
Which of the following are functions of eye contact?Making eye contact helps both people focus on the conversation and read facial expressions. This can improve understanding. And improving understanding can significantly improve communication between two people.
Which nonverbal behavior is an example of paralanguage?We speak paralanguage when we gasp, sigh, clear our throats, change our tone, whisper or shout, emphasize certain words, wave our hands, frown or smile, laugh or cry, string vocal identifiers like un-huh and ah-hah between our words, or speak faster or slower.
Which of the following are functions of nonverbal communication?The 5 functions of nonverbal communication are Reinforcement, Substitution, Contradiction, Accentuation, and Regulation. These functions help both the sender and the receiver of a message.
What type of gesture accents verbal messages?Illustrators: Illustrators are nonverbal behaviors that accompany and accent the verbal messages; they fulfill the illustrating function. Illustrators add a richer sense of meaning and intent to the verbal message. We all know that how something is said can be as or more important than the words.
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