Real Reference: A Study Tool

• Nonverbal communication is the process of signaling meaning through behavior other than words. It is often spontaneous and unintentional, and its meaning may be ambiguous (p. 94).
• When channel discrepancy occurs, words and actions don’t match, and nonverbal behaviors are more likely to be believed than verbal ones (p. 96).

• Nonverbal communication reinforces verbal communication in three ways: repeating (mirroring the verbal message), complementing (reinforcing the verbal message), and accenting (emphasizing a part of the verbal message) (p. 97).
• Nonverbal cues can be used for substituting or replacing words (p. 97).
• Nonverbal communication also functions as contradicting behavior, conveying the opposite of your verbal message (pp. 97–98).
• Nonverbal cues also serve an interaction management function (p. 98) by which they are used to regulate verbal interaction (p. 98).
• A feeling of closeness, or immediacy, can be created with nonverbal behaviors (p. 99).
• Individuals with good nonverbal communication skills may practice deception, with good or bad intentions (pp. 99, 101), when they attempt to use nonverbal behaviors to convince others of something that is false.

• Kinesics, the way gestures and body movements send various messages, includes emblems (movements with direct verbal translations in a specific group or culture), illustrators (visually reinforcing behaviors), regulators (interaction management cues), adaptors (unconscious release of bodily tension), and affect displays (indications of emotion) (pp. 101–103).
• Seven primary facial expressions are inborn and are recognizable across all cultures: sadness, anger, disgust, fear, interest, surprise, and happiness (pp. 103–104). Masking is a facial management technique whereby we replace an expression of true feeling with one appropriate for a given interaction (p. 104).
• Oculesics is the study of the use of the eyes in communication settings (p. 104).
• How we pause, the speed and volume of our speech, and the inflections we use are vocalized nonverbal messages called paralanguage (p. 105), including pitch (vocal variation that gives prominence to certain words or syllables), tone (vocal modulation that expresses feelings of moods), volume (how loud or soft words are spoken), and a variety of other factors.
• Vocalizations are paralinguistic cues that give information about the speaker’s emotional or physical state, such as laughing, crying, or sighing (p. 107). Back-channel cues are vocalizations that signal vocally but nonverbally that you do or don’t want to talk (p. 107).
• Physical appearance and artifacts, accessories used for decoration and identification, offer clues to who we are (p. 107).
• Proxemics, the way we use and communicate with space, depends on the cultural environment and is defined by four specific spatial zones: intimate, personal, social, and public (pp. 107–108).
• Territoriality is the claiming of an area, with or without legal basis, by regular occupation of the area (pp. 110–111).
• The use of touch to send messages, or haptics, depends on the relationship with the communication partner (pp. 111–113).
• Chronemics is the perception of and use of time in nonverbal communication (p. 113).

• Contact cultures are more likely to communicate through touch, whereas noncontact cultures may tend to avoid touch (pp. 114–115).
• Gender influences communication with behaviors traditionally associated with femininity, such as smiling, often perceived as weak (p. 115).
• In mediated communication, capitalization, boldfaced terms, and emoticons are used as nonverbal cues (p. 116).
• Competent nonverbal communication relates to the situation; the public-private dimension is the physical space that affects our nonverbal communication, and the informal-formal dimension is more psychological (p. 117).