Nonverbal Messages
Functions of Nonverbal
Messages
• Integrating Nonverbal and Verbal
Messages
• Researched Functions of Nonverbal
Integrating Verbal and
Nonverbal
• Accent - highlight or emphasize
• Complement - add meaning
• Contradict - directly negates
• Regulate - control
• Repeat - nonverbal restatement
• Substitute - takes place of verbal
Research
• Forming and Managing Impressions
• Forming and Defining Relationships
• Structuring Conversation and Social
Interaction
• Influence and Deception
• Emotional Expression
Channels of Nonverbal
• Body Messages
• Facial and Eye Movement
• Spatial Message
• Artifactual Communication
• Touch Communication
• Paralanguage and Silence
• Time Communication
Body Movements
• Emblems - body gestures that directly
translate
• Illustrates - enhance the verbal
message
• Affect Displays - communicate
emotional meaning
• Regulators - monitor, control,
coordinate, or maintain the speech of
another
Body Movements
• Adaptors - satisfy some personal need
• Alter-adaptors - directed at the
other person
• Self-adaptors - directed at self
• Object-adaptors - focused on
objects
• Attractiveness - indicates visual
appeal and pleasant personality
Facial and Eye
• Facial Management - enable you to
express feelings so as to achieve
desired effects.
• intensify?
• deintensify?
• neutralize?
• mask?
• stimulate
• Facial Feedback
Facial and Eye
• Eye - depends on duration, directing,
and quality
• Seeks feedback, indicates channel,
signals relationship, and
psychological distance
• Civil Inattention - ignoring to help
others maintain privacy
Spatial Messages
• Distances
• Intimate - within 18 inches
• Personal - 18 inches - 4 feet
• Social - 4 to 12 feet
• Public - 12 to 25 feet
Spatial Messages
• Territoriality
• Primary - areas you call your own
• Secondary - areas you don’t own,
but you associate with
• Public - areas open to all
Spatial Messages
• Central markers - objects placed to
reserve your space
• Boundary markers - divide your
territory from others
• Ear markers - identify you possession
Artifactual Communication
• Artifactual messages - messages
conveyed through objects or
arrangements made by human hands
• Color
• Clothing and Body
• Space Decoration
• Smell
Touch Communication
• Touch - most primitive form of
nonverbal communication
• Haptics - study of touch
communication
Touch Communication
• Meanings of Touch
• Positive Emotions
• Playfulness
• Control or direct behavior
• Ritual
• Task related
• Touch Avoidance - avoiding touch
from certain people or in certain
situations
Paralanguage and Silence
• Paralanguage - vocal but nonverbal
dimension of speech
• Stressed words
• Rate of speech
• Volume
• Rhythm
• Pitch
• Fillers
Paralanguage and Silence
• Functions of Silence
• Signals time to think
• Weapon
• Personal anxiety or shyness
• To prevent communication
• Communicate emotional response
• Nothing to say
Time Communication
• Psychological time - the relative
importance we place on past, present,
and future
• Monochronic - schedule one thing at a
time
• Polychronic - schedule multiple things
at the same time
Nonverbal and Culture
• Gesture
• Facial and Eye
• Color
• Touch
• Paralanguage and Silence
• Time