As you learned in Chapter 4, immediacy is a feeling of closeness, involvement, and warmth between people as communicated by nonverbal behavior (Mehrabian, 1971; Prager, 2000). We often think of immediacy as being an important facet of close interpersonal relationships. This is certainly true—but it is also an important component of building trust in the relationship between the speaker and the audience (Andersen, 1979).

Speakers enhance their immediacy with their audience by following many of the guidelines we have already set forth in this chapter: establishing and maintaining eye contact with audience members, smiling, moving toward the audience, using inclusive gestures and posture, speaking in a relaxed or conversational tone or style, and using humor. Research clearly shows that audiences respond favorably to speaker immediacy in a variety of settings (Christophel, 1990; Frymier, 1994; Teven, 2007a, 2007b, 2010; Teven & Hanson, 2004). However, as is the case with interpersonal relationships, immediacy is a two-way street. Audiences help to foster this feeling of closeness and trust by listening actively, responding with eye contact, nodding, and offering nonverbal indications of agreement, surprise, confusion, and so on.