Non verbal communication through body language and posture

Read the text and discuss in pairs/groups the different aspects that contribute to our body language and how we use it in our daily communication.

“Listening to body language”

Body language plays a key role, especially at the subconscious level, in communication and an awareness of it and how it can vary from culture to culture, can be particularly important in helping students to develop their ability to understand in a real environment.

The features of body language

Body language is made up of a whole range of features many of which we combine together without ever thinking about what it is we are doing or what we are expressing.

Eye contact can have a very significant influence when you are interacting with them.

• It can play a key role in helping to establish rapport and failing to make eye contact in many cultures is associated with being dishonest or having something to hide.
• Eye contact also plays an important role in turn taking during conversation. Among a group of people, a speaker will often make eye contact with the person he or she wants a response from. Someone who wants to enter or interject in a conversation will catch the eye of the person speaking to indicate that they want to interrupt, and equally someone who no longer wants to listen will avoid eye contact.
• People who know each other well can communicate mutual understanding with a single look.
• Eye contact is also a way of communicating attraction.

Facial expression is one of the most obvious and flexible forms of communication and can easily convey mood, attitude, understanding, confusion and a whole range of other things.

Proximity is a far less obvious form of body language but can be equally as meaningful. It is also something that can easily be misinterpreted as it can vary so much from culture to culture.

• Many British people require a lot of 'private space' and will often stand much further away from people than other nationalities whilst talking to them. They seldom touch each other whilst speaking. Breaking these invisible boundaries can either make them very uncomfortable or signal attraction.

Posture can communicate a number of things.

• Your posture can convey a whole range of attitudes, from interest or the lack of it, to degrees of respect or subordination.
• Speakers often use posture to punctuate what they are saying, shifting forward in their seat or leaning in towards their interlocutor to punctuate an important point, or slumping back to indicate that they have finished making a point.

Gesture can be used to replace verbal communication.

• Different finger, thumb or hand gestures can convey a range of meanings in different cultures, from insults to approval or even attraction.
• Many good speakers or storytellers use hand gestures to illustrate their stories.
• It can also form part of punctuation with head nods and hand movements, which relate to the stress, rhythm and tempo of their sentences. Speakers who use their hands a lot often let them drop at the end of a sentence. Heads often nod down when words in sentences are stressed.
• One of the most obvious and in many ways useful gestures is pointing: "It's over there." "I want that one."