Communication between people takes place every time and everywhere. Language is extremely powerful tool which helps people to understand each other's needs, wishes, expectations, convey meaningful messages and just reach a desired consensus. However, it often occurs that the way people speak, how they behave during a conversation, is much more important than what they actually say. The function of our facial expressions is “to convey delicate shades of emotion and intention” (Burling, 2015), as it is much easier than to do with a language. Likewise, observing people speaking or reacting to the co-speaker, not even hearing the words, may say a lot about the one's emotions, mood and attitude. That is why just observations may lead to quite fascinating discoveries which are to be described and analyzed in this essay.
In the course of my observations three different conversation scenarios may be described: the one in university between a teacher and a student, a business interaction in the cafe, and the conversation between a boy and his girlfriend in the same place. As all the three scenarios were of the different contexts, the way their facial expressions complemented their speech has also greatly differed. The teacher was actively gesticulating and looking directly at a student, while the one stood still, nodding her head, and avoided eye contact. She had her hands crossed over the chest and stood steady with no movement at all. A business interaction in the café involved three people sitting by one table, two of which were mainly silent. The one who spoke looked at both of his listeners from time to time, however, most of the time he stared at some point in far front of him. His hands were placed on the table, crossed, and sometimes raised in quotable gestures like “okay” circle. One of his colleagues was holding the pen and twisting it in his hands, and occasionally casted a fast glance at the speaker. It was obvious from this glance that he felt his authority, but was also dissatisfied with what the speaker said. The other colleague didn’t detract his eyes from the speaker, looking at him attentively, which showed his great commitment and interest in the topic.
The couple sitting next to them in the café were exchanging long direct looks at each other while talking, they sat one in front another, holding each other's hands, which were to be considered the sign of trust. The girl kept talking a lot, smiling occasionally, while the boy was rather nervous and serious. He was complementing the girl's conversation by quotable vocalizations stating the agreement: “a-ha”, “mm”, “umm, umm”, however, rather inattentively, thus it was visible he was not particularly interested in the topic
Such group of signals as laughs, screams, smiles, frowns are called by Burling “gesture calls”, as they involve both audible and visible signals (Burling, 2015). He provides more specific terms to the greatly complex notion of “nonverbal communication”, differentiating between different types of gestures: Burling thus describes so-called “gesture-calls”, “quotable gestures”, “gesticulation”, “signing”, and “instrumental gesture” (intonation). This differentiation helped me significantly in noticing even small details while observing certain conversations. Thanks to Burling's characteristics I was able to consider multiple factors which influenced the speakers, and which one of the gestures tended to prevail in each of the cases: a conversation between a student and a teacher, for example, had a great level of gesticulation from the teacher's side, while conversation between the couple was greatly defined by instrumental gestures.
“Most of signals, other than language, are graded rather than discrete” - states Burling, providing a justifying example that “a giggle is not sharply distinct from a laugh” (Burling, 2015). It is as well greatly influenced by heredity and environment as a crucial factors of human behavior, claims Burling (Burling, 2015). That is why nonverbal communication may be a challenging one to comprehend and analyze.
Works Cited
Burling, Robbins. Smiles, Winks, and Words. The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved.
Studies in the Evolution of Language. Oxford University Press. 2015. Print.
