Nonverbal Communication: An Absolute Refinement to the Verbal Communication

Abstract

Critics laud the brilliance of Shakespeare’s imagination when he made his Romeo sing of Juliet: “She speaks, yet she says nothing; what of that? Her eyes discourses, I will answer it” ( Romeo and Juliet, p.40). They also cherish the Homeric elegance and Goethean beauty that sing in its voluminous pages the significance of the emotions that accompany the voices of their characters. However, it is not the beauty or the theatrically involved in nonverbal communication, but the very essentiality of the comprehension of the meaning that makes the nonverbal cues indispensable in the strategies of verbal communication. When the non verbal signal is understood, its message, paired with the lexicon context, makes the interpretation of the sender’s meaning absolute. In fact, it is the nonverbal communication most of the people use nearly 75% of their waking hours to communicate their knowledge, thoughts and ideas. The social anthropologist Edward T. Hall claims, “60 percent of communication is nonverbal”. If verbal communication deals with words, sentences and spoken expressions, nonverbal communication constitutes body movements, gestures, expressions etc. and it can be defined as ‘communication that takes place without the use of words’. Research suggests that nonverbal communication is more powerful than what people say. It is the term commonly used to refer to all the communication that occurs by means other than spoken and written words. The term nonverbal communication was coined in the 20th century and it includes many features such as; communication through touch and smell, clothing, marks as well as vocal features like; intonation, stress, speech rate, accent, and volume. It also refers to communication through body movements- facial expressions, gaze, pupil size, posture and interpersonal distance.