II. Nonverbal Communication Codes:

1. Kinesics: visible body movements, including facial expressions, eye contact, gestures, and body postures;

2. Vocalics: vocal characteristics such as loudness, pitch, speech rate, and tone

3. Haptics: duration, placement, and strength of touch

4. Proxemics: use of physical distance

5. Chronemics: organization and use of time

6. Physical appearance: appearance of hair, clothing, body type, and other physical features

7. Artifacts: personal possessions displayed to others

8. Environment: structure of physical surroundings

III. Nonverbal behavior classification according to Bill Ausmus and Joseph DeVito

(Michael’s Sound Bite 7-1): kinesics (includes appearance); vocalics, haptics, proxemics, chronemics, objectics (which includes artifacts and environment), and more importantly, two more types of behavior: oculesics (eye behavior, classed separately) and olfactorics (smell).

IV. Kinesics

1. Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen: Kinesics is one of the richest forms of nonverbal behavior that includes, according to McCornack, visible body movements, including facial expressions, eye contact, gestures, and body postures.

2. Facial expression is perceived visually, and therefore is quite dependent on the angle and the view. Several observations are due: (a) we attend to specific movements of parts of the face; (b) angle is important.

3. Cultural influences on facial expression are tremendous (Michael’s Sound Bite 7-2): (a) emotions are not universally encouraged; (b) what your face must say is dictated by the situation; (c) although nonverbal cues of insincerity are being picked up, they are mostly ignored; (d) according to Bill Ausmus, the electronic age has brought lower sensitivity to nonverbal behaviors.

4. Eye contact (classed separately as oculesics by Stewart: (a) expresses emotion; (b) regulates conversation; (c) signals attention.

5. Additional oculesic functions according to Michael Argyle, are (Michael’s Sound Bite 7-3): (a) to provide feedback; (b) to indicate attitude; (c) to win trust or check trust; (d) to convince of being truthful.

6. Gestures: classed as (a) emblems (meaning words); (b) illustrators (illustrating verbal messages); (c) regulators (gestures regulating conversation); (d) adaptors (touching gestures of psychological or physical purpose).

7. John Stewart adds affect displays as gestures of emotion into the list (Michael’s Sound Bite 7-4).

8. Posture: (a) straightness, (b) body lean, (c) straightness of shoulders, and (d) head position. Posture communicates immediacy (how interesting you find your interlocutor) and power (how much influence you have over people or events).

9. According to Joseph DeVito (Michael’s Sound Bite 7-5): Anthropomorphic characteristics (height, weight, skin color, etc.) have also been listed as parts of kinesics by some scholars. These are culturally conditioned.

V. Vocalics

1. Vocalics are vocal characteristics we use to communicate nonverbal messages (George L. Trager): (a) loudness (by saying a word more loudly, we stress the meaning); (b) pitch (high or low voice); (c) rate (fast or slow); (d) tone (resonance and breathiness).

2. John Stewart adds more (Michael’s Sound Bite 7-6): (a) intonation; (b) pronunciation, (c) articulation, (d) quality (distinguishing characteristics of your very own voice).

DISCUSSION STARTER 3: Is there anyone you know whose voice you find funny, strange, or irritating? What is it about this person’s voice that fosters your negative impression? Is it ethical to judge someone solely from his or her voice? Why or why not?