| Nonverbal communication makes up between 70-80 percent of total communication. To totally communicate interpersonally, one must understand what the nonverbals may be telling the other person. Nonverbal study improves your sense of observation and allows you to SHOW rather than tell about your subject.
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Body motion
In this example from Esquire magazine, note body gestures, facial expressions, paralanguage, touch
Allows you to control the use of nonverbal communication instead of allowing
it to operate unchecked.
Knowing about nonverbal communication enables a writer to SHOW things rather than tell about them.
In an interview, the reporter may learn more about a subject by knowing nonverbal communication.
WARNING: Avoid jumping to conclusions about nonverbals. Report only what you observe; you are safe.
Be discriminating. Too much unplanned description can be ludicrous.
This category includes gestures and other body movements, including facial expressions, eye movement and posture. Winking, staring, blinking, gazing. He was happy? How happy was he? The answer will be what you write.
Paralanguage
This includes voice qualities, speech habits, inflection, volume, tone and other verbal actions such as laughing, hissing, growling, etc. It is not WHAT is said, but HOW it is said. Often, a dialect or speech pattern can tell something about the interviewee. He drawled in his Pampa, Texas, accent. She whispered.
Space
This includes human use and perception of physical space; may be referred to as "our bubble." This involves interaction and reaction among people. How do people interact with each other? Do some withdraw? Do some get too close?
Artifacts
Things with which we surround ourselves such as clothing, jewelry, eyeglasses. These artifacts may offer meaning in a writer's work ' signs of wealth, poverty, power, age or other abstracts.
Touch
Handshakes, embraces, pats on the back, punches all have meaning when applied to a situation in a story. These also signify interaction and may signify caring behavior.
Color
Our use of color tells much about ourselves; however, we are not always in control of the colors which are in our environment. Colors often say things: Green with envy, purple prose, a yellow streak, little white lies, etc.,
Time
The way human beings use time may speak volumes about them.
Trump raises his right arm and waves (body gesture) to the crowd like a presidential candidate (comparison), which he once pretended to be as a ploy to generate publicity for his first book. Then the fight fans spot Marla and start cheering for her.
"Mar-la! Mar-la!" they begin to chant. (paralanguage)
Trump stops in his tracks (body gesture) and lets the pleasure of the frozen moment wash over him. He used to be insanely jealous of his ex-wife Ivana's celebrity, but he regards Marla's notoriety as being entirely his own creation.
"Can I make a star or what?" he gloats. (paralanguage)
Marla grits her teeth in a drop-dead grin. (facial expression/comparison)
"Oh, thank you, Donald," she replies, caressing his arm. (touch)
Then she turns and purrs (paralanguage) to a friend, "If I was nothing before, how come he went after me?"
Another excerpt from the same story shows even more nonverbal information:
Marla arches her brows and purses her thin red lips to effect the half-smile of a pinup model.
"Donald just loves to do this." She sighs and rolls her opalescent eyes
Why study nonverbals?
COMM1307
You have a choice.
1. Write a column for a college audience. Use active, action verbs and other nonverbals in your writing. Keep paragraphs short and snappy -- even one-sentence paragraphs are fine. The column may be witty or serious. Write no more than two pages, double-spaced.
Your column may be a parody; a comment on national, state or local news; comments on a person; or a personal observation.
For examples, look at the TV magazine in the San Antonio Express-News for Chris Quinn's column.
Here are other examples:
2. Write a scene about a wealthy, elderly woman walking alone through a dark part of downtown. She is not accustomed to being in that part of town.
The beard and long hair give him a Rebel sharpshooter look; he could be one of Mosby's Raiders. And true to his Ozark roots, the Springfield, Mo., native brims with an edgy country presence, so much that it almost seems calculated " he's all mumbles and sidelong looks and Tom Waits growls.
In L.A. for a taping of "In Living Color," Mary J. Blige lies in a hotel room bed, covers pulled up to her neck, her parka hood pulled over her hair. "Don't worry about it," she says shyly. "I'm just cold." (paralanguage) In the middle of May, Amy Fisher strolls across the small front lawn of the silvery-white beach house in Massapequa. She wears a loose top and big, baggy pants. Her long, thick auburn hair, with its new purple tint, wraps up under a baseball cap.
The day before Halloween 1992, Winona Ryder sits in a hotel room in New York City with her hands squeezed between her knees. She has just seen "Dracula" for the first time and she feels "shaky." Perhaps the most talented American comedian working the circuit these days is a native Houstonian who looks about as funny as a death in the family. Bill Hicks is a pallid, limp-haired, sad-faced, hostile 33-year-old with a taste for black clothes, black humor and musicians who die before their time.
For the assignment:
TYPE your paper, and double space.Have a beginning and an end.
What are the surroundings like, and what reactions to the surroundings do the people have?
Write about people with a name.
You may use internal monologue -- what were the people thinking?
Consider all nonverbals, particularly if they illustrate something about the people: jewelry, vehicles, clothing, etc., would indicate socio-economic status.
Write in the present tense.
Work with strong verbs -- visual verbs. Don't just write "talks" but be specific: roars, whispers, mumbles, croaks, stammers, etc., Don't say "walks" but use descriptive verbs: strolls, hobbles, prances, sways, swaggers, minces, hops. SHOW THE READER.
Try to avoid "to be" verbs--is, are, was, were
Look for specific words to use. Instead of "car" why not use "1999 Lincoln Town Car" or "a '56 Ford Mustang with glistening clean wire wheels.
Watch overuse of "ing" verbs.
Vary the length of your sentences -- short, long, one word, many words.
Active voice, not passive voice. "The boy hit the ball" is active; "the ball was hit by the boy" is passive.
Work for rhythm (various sentence lengths, different arrangement of subject-verb), rhyme, alliteration (festive fight fans shout their agreement) , onomatopoeia (clang, ding, clippity clop). Make the story sing.
Use a tieback ending -- somehow refer back to the beginning or lead.
Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
This is how to grade yourself, based on my instructions:
1. Write directly with present tense. A scene should be in present tense because you want the reader to experience it, not be told about it. (5 points off)2. Use paragraphs to help transition, especially in dialogue. AVOID one LONG glob of copy. Also, a paragraph requires an indent. (5 points off)
3. Show, don't tell. This IS an exercise in using nonverbals, such as action verbs (screeches, squawks, etc.,) and signs of status (such as clothing, vehicle, etc,) (2 points off)
4. Get to the point quickly. (2 points off)
5. Make the nonverbals work with the story; don't just drop them in hither and yon.
6. Avoid comma splices. Use a period or a semicolon. A comma splice is when you combine two complete thoughts with a comma, don't do it. That last sentence is a comma splice. (2 points off)
7. Watch redundancies: rich, wealthy friends; mink fur coat, tuna fish.
8. Follow directions: name, the date and the class hour in the upper left corner of the first page. (5 points off)
9. Don't ramble. If your column is more than two (2) pages, that's rambling. (5 points off)
11. Common mispellings: to, too, two; they're, there, their. Don't make a plural with an apostrophe--apostrophes are used for the possessive. Use a dictionary. I always need to look up the word embarrass, for example. (2 points off)
Other enrichment assignments will involve something other than writing. I will not give anyone lower than a C if you try to do what I requested and hand it in on time. Late papers will be penalized.
Updated Jan. 9, 2006