Non-verbal Communication

There are four major communication skills. Listening, thinking, nonverbal, and speaking. I've focused a lot on the speaking aspect recently, with a brief detour for maps and their influence over the world today.

I want to focus on the nonverbal aspect of communication today. Body language, facial expressions, and gestures all have a very important role to play in how we communicate with other people around us.

Body language conveys a lot about what a person is feeling, even if it's not entirely true. Look at the four women in this photo. While they are all the same woman, each position comes across as a very different emotion. This woman appears to be getting ready for an interview, and as this picture came from an article titled: 7 Body Language Mistakes May be Holding Back Your Career, I think it's safe to say that's what she's doing. The first woman looks bored out of her mind, and doesn't seem to really want the job. The second women's mind seems to be elsewhere and waiting for the weekend or dinner with friends after the interview. The third woman seems far too relaxed for an interview giving out a bad vibe for potential employers. The fourth women looks to be eager to interview, but confident enough to hold her ground. She seems very prepared with her papers in hand and a friendly, welcoming smile on her face. Out of these four women I would hire the woman on the far right because she has the right body language.

Nonverbal communication is not only important for interviews, but for everyday communication. Facial expressions, for example, show what a person is thinking/feeling at any given moment. No sound is needed for me to know that the second row far right picture is disgusted with whatever is happening in front of her. Facial expressions change the way words come across to a listener and can alter the tone of what is being said. What they say is true, "it's not what you say, but how you say it" and facial expressions are a big part of that.

 Gestures are the final common nonverbal communication. Saying something is "over there" means nothing without a gesture. However hand movements show a lot about what else is being said. As an Italian, I experience Italian hand syndrome which looks a little like this:

 Essentially, it's over exaggerated hand movements that has led to me making physical contact with the people around me. I get excited, and when I speak my gestures become part of my speech. It's part of how we communicate and an important part of what makes us tick.

Nonverbal communication can shape the way you view a person or how you're viewed, so it's important to watch not only what you say, but how you say it.

Maps! Maps! Maps!

Maps convey so much about the world. They have the power to shape our world view. Through maps we gain a sense of the world and where things are. Like most Americans I have a vague sense of where everything is, but I would have trouble telling you where every country on the map was in relation to other countries. 

Looking at the maps above, they are both maps of the modern world (the peters map is lacking South Sudan, but the idea is there), yet they are very different. The Peters map (bottom) shows an accurate area of each country projection of the world, where as the Mercator map shows the world as countries fit together with each other. For more information and a brief history of maps: click here.

There are inherent problems with both of these types of maps. 

First of all, neither map shows a true depiction of the world. The Mercator map shows where countries are in the world, communicating a warped view of what the word really looks like. The countries further away from the equator are warped to be larger than they actually are. Greenland for example looks larger than all of South America, when, in reality, it is much much smaller.

The Peters map doesn't show an accurate depiction of the world either because while all the countries have the appropriate area, the Peters map doesn't show their correct spacing in the world. All the countries are lengthened near the equator and shortened near the poles. It's just overall not a great picture of what the world is. 

Maps have to power to shape our world view, and it is important to remember that flat maps are not the truth and there is going to be something warped about them. Cartographers have the responsibility to create the best possible representation of a round world on a flat surface, and that is a difficult task. It is very impressive that the earliest world maps (including the Americas) date back to the early 1500s.

Introvert vs. Extrovert

What does it mean to be an introvert? Dictionary.com defines it as: a person characterized by concern primarily with his or her own thoughts and feelings. Being an introvert does not mean being quiet or lacking confidence. As an extrovert with an introverted father, it was always hard to communicate and find a common ground in what we would talk about and how we would talk about it.

Our first shared interest: baseball. He would take me to Wrigley Field and we would talk about the cubs and who the best players were. Then we were able to share comedy. As I got older and was able to watch actual stand-up comedy and understand the jokes, and my dad and I gained a report and were able to talk to each other as never before.

When I was younger, I didn't know what the difference between an introvert and an extrovert was. To learn the difference click here.

Communication between an introvert and an extrovert  can be difficult if both parties are not looking out for the other's interest. For an extrovert, be careful to give an introvert time to think and respond about what they are going to say because that's important to them. For an introvert, understand that an extrovert often acts or speaks before thinking and can run into a lot of problems because of that. For introverts and extroverts to communicate effectively each party needs to be forgiving and understanding.

Introvert and extroverts are nearly opposites, but it is true what they say: opposites attract. The best relationships or friendships between people I have witnessed have been between introverts and extroverts. Both need each other for the relationship to work.

One is not better than the other, each are just very different from the other. It is also important to recognize that being an intro or extrovert isn't a dichotomy, it's a spectrum. A spectrum that would often look like the one below.

Whether you identify for as an introvert or more as an extrovert, remember that other types of people exist in the world and their perspectives matter. Communicating with them doesn't come naturally, but in the end gaining their knowledge and their perspective is worth the uncomfortably felt.

Between my father and I, we have figured out many different things we can talk about while satisfying both our needs in communication and otherwise. It has taken me seventeen years, but I'm finally able to have a long standing and healthy relationship with my father.

Universal Gestures

          There are four main gestures/behaviors to avoid in Africa that we, as westerners, find completely socially acceptable. To read more on the four click here. The four main thing not to do while in Africa include somethings that might be intuitive, like respecting an elder and not getting into disagreements with them. But others may be less intuitive, such as not giving the thumbs up or not letting the soles of your feet face someone while talking to them.

            The dissonance in the way African (and of course I’m generalizing here) cultures, and western cultures behave is very interesting to study. There are some very good reasons behind not using a left hand to greet someone or pass an item to someone with his/her left hand. It stems from a desire to be healthful because the left hand is what is referred to as the unclean hand. The left hand is used for personal hygiene and the right hand is reserved for greeting and shaking hands with other people.

            What struck me most is the stark difference in meaning between the gesture of giving someone the thumbs up. I always thought of the thumbs up as the universal sign for doing a good job, yet just an ocean away it’s considered to be equal to the middle finger in America. The difference in communication between cultures constructs a barrier between two people.

          Fonzie from Happy Days is pictured in the above picture giving his signature thumbs up. There is nothing the slightest bit threatening about Fonzie in this photo to us, yet we see a change in the way people feel as we move across cultures.

            Smiling was thought to be the universal language in the 1990s, but there are plenty of people, such as Dr. Warren M. Krutchick and Erin Cooper who would vehemently argue against that. Smiling in places like Thailand or China emotion is not expressed through a smile, but more through eyes.While Thailand and Africa are not the same thing, it's still important to understand that cultures are different and communicating with people from different cultures can be difficult.

           African gestures vary from American gestures in a big way and when communicating with Africans needs to be very cautious. Offending the people you're talking to in a village can make a good trip poor. It is important to do your research before traveling to another place because as we know: a smile is NOT the same in every language. 

Communication Through the Ages

Halfway through the quarter and struggling to finish my college applications, I’m think about what I want to communicate about myself in a single 500 word essay. But here’s the thing: I communicate differently than my parents and grandparents. I find myself reading more than talking, yet I have less patience to sit down and read a book than watch a movie or binge watch a TV show. I can maintain a conversation all day over text, yet when I have a chance to call or talk to the same person we run out of things to say in fifteen minutes. This generation has gotten used to slow and long forms of communication rather than short and quick.

My parents on the other hand like short quick forms of communication such as e-mail and short phone conversations. My parents were both born in the middle of the sixties, and grew up in the seventies and eighties. The cell phone wasn’t widely used until the eighties and the first phone with a full keyboard didn’t come out until 1997. Now, texting is a staple in the society, but my parents were already parents by the time the first cell phone came out.

My grandparents are different still. They prefer long drawn out phone conversations hearing about every aspect of a person’s life. When I talk to them over the phone they like to hear what has been going on in my life, all of my life, sine we last talked. It can be over a month since we last talked and they want to hear everything I’ve done in fine detail. It’s interesting how the different generations communicate.

When a college admissions officer reads my essay they will read it through a different lens than my peers, and probably closer to the way my parents would read my essay. I now understand the importance of getting many different perspectives on my essay. I don’t want to have a slow, drawn out communication. I should shoot for a more all-encompassing picture of who I want to show the colleges I am. I get one shot to make the right impression, so I need to make it great. So far, for each essay I’ve had three sets of eyes look at it: two being from my parents’ generation and one peer. I can’t communicate what I want to say in my style. My style is a conversation. That’s how I prefer to get across my ideas. That comes from being a teenager.

A strategy I have used is to have a mock conversation with my mom about what I want to say. Getting across what I want to say over my words becomes so much easier when I’m able to talk out what I want to say rather than write it out and have to delete what I had previously written. It’s my way of pre-writing without writing.

I talk about everything I do before I do it. I’m in the generation of oversharing, it’s what we do. We want to stand out and be our own special snowflake, but we don’t want to do the work that goes along with it (e.g. pre-writing).

How do People Communicate?

I have been a people person from the moment I could talk. In fact, since I started talking I haven’t stopped. I communicate my ideas in so many different ways, I get lost in the jumble and often my method for the moment isn’t appropriate. For example, when I get excited about something and want to share a brilliant (or so I think) idea, I say it out loud then and there. In a familiar discussion with a few close friends, that’s fine, but in a classroom with at least twenty other people, that’s not the best method.

I’m not shy. Never have been, probably never will be. I want to investigate why when I say one thing one way it makes people react way differently than when I say it another. I don’t have a very good filter. That’s landed me in trouble many times. They’re just words. What about words is so important to our society?

How do people communicate? How much does what we say versus how we say it affect our actions? This is what I want to explore about human interaction, or lack thereof. The younger people are, the less they actually want to someone face to face. I am guilty of this myself. When I’m in the company of others I want to be in the company of more than just those people and I have my head buried in my phone. I want to explore the attachment we all feel for our phones.

Social Media is a whole other monster and allows for mass communication between people. The problem is that we’ve started to believe that liking each other’s photos on Instagram and Facebook is the same as actual communication. I’m not against social media, but my age bracket especially, is reliant on scrolling through our various apps to keep up with 1,000 people we don’t talk to anyway. Social media has even made its way into the actual news. Not even the nightly news is immune from the comment section.

What platforms are used to communicate? Exploring TV, Radio, Websites, and Local Posters is an amazing way to get at the psychology behind what is eye grabbing. It gets at why people click on a link or stay on any given channel.

These are all topics I want to explore over the next school year. I want to know about communication and how I can get better at it. I should especially know this if I’m going to pursue communications as a career in the future.