Nonverbal Communication: Research Areas And Approaches

Research indicates that nonverbal communication accounts for more of the social meaning in human interactions than do the words themselves. The formulation, expression, perception and interpretation of such meaning is achieved through seven nonverbal codes: kinesics (face, body and limb movement), vocalics (voice), physical appearance, haptics (touch), proxemics (space and distance), chronemics (time), and artifacts (objects and the environment). These codes work interdependently with one another and the verbal stream to accomplish nine communication functions. One function, message production and processing, entails the ways in which nonverbal cues perform semantic, syntactic and pragmatic linguistic functions and facilitate message comprehension and recall. A second, expressing emotions, considers what kinesic and vocalic features are implicated in encoding of emotions and their accurate decoding. Three more functions relate to expression of one's personal identity in terms of projecting culture, age, sex/gender, and personality; impression management (active crafting of one's image); and impression (formation of social cognitive perceptions of nonverbal cues that are involved in rapid judgments, stereotyping, biases, and first impressions). A sixth function, relational communication, concerns how people communicate the state of interpersonal relationships, especially in defining intimacy/affection and dominance/power relations. A seventh function is to manage the logistics of a conversation, to aid in the initiation and termination of interactions and to regulate the flow of conversation. Two final functions are to exert social influence and to perpetrate and/or detect deception.