INDIVIDUAL ESSAY

Effective Public Communication (FCOM O1O2)

Assignment 1

Ricky Wong Yii 0313785

FNBE JULY 2013 FCOM 0102 Effective Public Communication

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
FNBE JULY 2013 FCOM 0102 Effective Public Communication

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

FNBE JULY 2013 FCOM 0102 Effective Public Communication

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
FNBE JULY 2013 FCOM 0102 Effective Public Communication

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, h owever 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 contact with 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.

FNBE JULY 2013 FCOM 0102 Effective Public Communication

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

FNBE JULY 2013 FCOM 0102 Effective Public Communication