Section 11 - Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication ('NVC) is the nonlinguistic transmission of information through visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic (physical) channels.

Nonverbal communication is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal a platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and the distance between two individuals. This form of communication is characterized by multiple channels and scholars argue that nonverbal communication can convey more meaning than verbal communication.^[1] Some scholars state that most people trust forms of nonverbal communication over verbal communication. Ray Birdwhistell concludes that nonverbal communication accounts for 60–70 % of human communication,^[2] although according to other researchers the communication type is not quantifiable^[3] or does not reflect modern human communication, especially when people rely so much on written means.^[4] The study of nonverbal communication started in 1872 with the publication of "The Expressions of the Emotions in Men and Animals" by Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin started to study nonverbal communication as he noticed the interactions between animals and realized they also communicated by gestures and expressions. For the first time, nonverbal communication was studied and its relevance questioned.^[5]

It includes the use of visual cues such as body language (kinesics), distance (proxemics) and physical environments/appearance, of voice (paralanguage) and of touch (haptics).^[6] It can also include the use of time (chronemics) and eye contact and the actions of looking while talking and listening, frequency of glances, patterns of fixation, pupil dilation, and blink rate (oculesics).

Just as speech contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage, including voice quality, rate, pitch, loudness, and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation, and stress, so written texts have nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words, or the physical layout of a page. However, much of the study of nonverbal communication has focused on the interaction between individuals,^[7] where it can be classified into three principal areas: environmental conditions where communication takes place, physical characteristics of the communicators, and behaviours of communicators during interaction.