The relationship of verbal and nonverbal communication

The relationship of verbal and nonverbal communication / edited by Mary Ritchie Key. Paris : Mouton Publishers, 1980

Seda laenutama minnes imestasin miks ta on sotsiaalteaduste osakonna hoidlas, mitte pearaamatukogus või isegi semiootika osakonnas. Pärast lugemist arvan, et ta on täitsa õiges kohas. Pealkiri tõotas informatsiooni mida selles tegelikult ei sisaldu. Kõige lähemal sellele teemale on tegelikult vaid Mary Ritchie Key enda sissejuhatav artikkel sellest, kuidas keel ja mitteverbaalne käitumine on sotsiaalsüsteemide organiseerijad. See väide muidugi ei tähenda, et raamat oleks halb või kasutu. Vastupidi, sain sellest palju ja isegi head materjali - kohati pealekauba sellist, mis seostub vahetult minu käsiloleva uurimusega.
Seni loetud mitteverbaalse suhtlemise raamatutest on see esimene tõeline artiklikogu mille külge minu käed on saanud. Tõsi, arvutis on nii mõnigi taoline, kuid lugeda pole veel raatsinud. Teemade ja autorite paljusus teeb sellest mõneti kaootilise teose, kus oli minu jaoks nii head kui halba. Näiteks paar väga lingvistikapõhist artiklit ei andnud mulle midagi. Seevastu Eibl-Eibesfeldti ja kaaslaste artikkel nõudmisest, andmisest ja võtmisest Lääne-Uus-Guineas oli väärt näpuga jälge ajamist pilte vaadates. Analüüs videomaterjalist millel väikesed tüdrukud söövad pähkleid on äärmiselt huvitav ja valgustav. Ja muidugi viisakuse definitsioon, mille võiks emakeeles meelde jätta: viisakus tähendab küsida teiselt midagi, andes teisele võimalus keelduda ilma, et selle tõttu puruneksid suhted. Seda artiklit võiks tulevikus uuesti lugeda.
Autorite valik on tõepoolest kirju, mistõttu ei läinud isegi minu jaoks kasutud artiklid raisku, vaid andsid aimu valdkondadest, mis 1980ndaks aastaks olid välja kujunenud. Selles oli valdkonna esindajaid sotsio- ja psühholingvistidest ja generatiivgrammaatikast kuni pragmaatika ja neo-behaviorismini. Isegi sotsiaal- ja reaalteadustest valgus mõjutusi, kõige absurdsemad neist sealjuures võrdlesid keemiat ja semantikat ning panid paari füüsika ja käitumise. Sealhulgas kohtusin esimest korda kroneemikaga (chronemics) pikemalt kui lihtsalt maining ja lugesin esimest korda Adam Kendoni teksti. Jätan siia hulga tsitaate, mida pidasin säilitamisväärseks:

Preface

Out beginning premise is that when human beings interact, language, in a linguistic sense, may or may not occur, but extralinguistic correlates always occur.

For some purposes, of course, such as where the communication is principally informative, language is the conveyor. But for other purposes in human interaction, such as expressive and directive communication, nonverbal correlates carry the heavy load in the dialogue.

Language and Nonverbal Behavior as Organizers of Social Systems
by Mary Ritchie Key

I propose that verbal and nonverbal expressions of status (reflecting the economic system) and male/female differences are the most important features of differentiation in the dynamics of human interaction. (Key 1980: 7)

We can observe the organism and how it reacts to a behavioral event, i.e. a speech act or a nonverbal act, in terms of the organization of social relationships rather than the act being a conveyor of information which is either a 'truth' or a 'falsehood'. In this sense one can note that is is just as impossible to define a 'lie' as it is to define 'truth'. In fact, the concept of Truth may be one of the greatest deceptions that humans have devised. (Key 1980: 10)

The extraction of meaning from a verbal or a nonverbal act has to do with discovering the motivation for that act. (Key 1980: 10)

The term patterns of behavior implies a cyclic nature in the interaction of human beings with the environment or with other human beings. Linguistic and nonverbal signals have been called 'regulators' and 'control mechanisms'. Scholars have referred to the synchrony of interactional events - 'self-synchrony' (inner rhythms of an idiosyncratic nature) and 'interactional synchrony' (conversational rhythms). 'Syncing' or 'being in sync' are common terms now among people studying interactional behavior, as well as among professionals in the film industry. (Key 1980: 13)

Another certainty is that many, if not most, of the behaviors are articulated out-of-awareness. Some of these can be brought to awareness, but it is not at all clear how much the human being is capable of perceiving. In fact, a good case could be made for the human being or a family, group, or institution, becoming dysfunctional if too much is brought to awareness. (Key 1980: 22)

It could be that nonverbal behavior is where physiology and psychology or linguistics meet; nonverbal behavior is the interface where body and language blend. (Key 1980: 29)

In order to find the unifying scheme in which all the forces inherent in language and nonverbal exchanges are connected we might try another point of view. As I have suggested at the beginning of this chapter, we can look at language and nonverbal behavior as organizers of social systems. Physicists can explain much about the universe in relatively simple ways, by reducing the interaction to four basic forces. We can find easily applied analogies in human interaction by thinking of such terms as: attract-repel; affiliate-withdraw. (Key 1980: 29)

The Relation of Interactional Synchrony to Cognitive and Emotional Processes
by William S. Condon

Each language group will probably manifest its own body motion rhythms. Such differences may affect the interaction. Micro sound-film analysis is only just beginning to provide information about this complex dimension of behavior. (Condon 1980: 55)

Normal response exhibits temporal regularities which can be observed in the timing of the eye movements, the turn of the head, the verbal acknowledgement, and the motion and rhythms of the listener's body in relation to sounds, particularly human speech. A listener provides the speaker with almost constant feedback that he is attending, including information about the level of that attending. The body of the listener moves in time and intensity with the speech of the speaker. The speaker is probably aware at some level of the listener's responsive entertainment and the many subtle variations of it. (Condon 1980: 58)

An orienting response is the response of orienting oneself toward perceived stimuli, such as looking around in response to hearing one's name called. In daily life such looking around (within a certain time limit) provides the speaker with evidence that the person has heard him. (Condon 1980: 60)

Human history has been an illustration of the search for identity - that of the self. There has been an on-going clash between systems of belief and believable systems (based on information gathering). Emergent information which gains assent has an impact on prevailing systems of belief, often forcing reformulations. Our age, perhaps more than any other, is characterized by people beginning to study themselves as objects of knowledge. This is related more to man as a person in societies of persons and not so much to his physical nature which has had a longer history of study. People themselves and all their behaviors are taken as objects of knowledge. They are assumed to be as fully determined as any other natural process, even though incredibly complicated. The study of verbal and nonverbal communication highlights this trend. These are only two illustrations among a vast number of such studies across many dimensions. We are information gatherers as other cultures were food gatherers of various types. Humans are only animals, although specialized by their degree of intelligence. They will be found to be more and more fully determined. All aspects of their existence are beginning to be scrutinized: their gaze patterns, their posture and movements, their intonational patterns, their verbalizations, their communication leakages, their slips, their hesitations, their greetings, and their courtships and aggressions. And as their identity shrinks one wonders how they will come to view themselves and their purposes. These are the questions which also need to be raised. Human communication does not exist in a vacuum and greater knowledge of human behavior will have consequences on how people view themselves. (Condon 1980: 61)

Communication is not just a process of 'bits' of information traveling between people: it is just as much an overaching domain of trust and distrust; the multitudinous and subtle ways by which people love and hate, praise and blame, accept and reject - themselves as well as others. A such they affect the inner being of others, there to aid or hinder, with greater or lesser consequences on that inner life. (Condon 1980: 63)

A Method for Film Analysis of Ethnic Communication Style
by Carolyn Leonard-Dolan

As two individuals each possessing a distinctive repertoire of nonverbal behavior begin to interact with each other a new and complex system develops, a 'resultant' of the joining together of both the individuals' patterns. (Leonard-Dolan 1980: 94)

Chronemics and the Verbal-Nonverbal Interface
by Thomas J. Bruneau

The basic foundations of languages involve temporal alterations, perspectives, and functions which counteract the silence and null stances of rigid present orientations. However, on the other hand, verbosity and verbal reasoning may be counterproductive to an awareness of the present moment and a here-and-now focus necessary for awareness of nonverbal behavior. (Bruneau 1980: 109)

It may be hypothesized that personal tempo interacts in many significant ways to yeald particular space-time configurations in one's environments. It may also be hypothesized that habitual tempo in social and cultural situations interacts in significant ways with personal tempo. These propositions certainly deserve a great deal of focused investigation. Inquiry into the nonverbal meaning of time and human tempo has been curiously minimal. (Bruneau 1980: 111)

Numbers and systems of numbers epitomize the language of objective temporality. Consequently, relative temporal environments appear to be neglected in the theoretical constructions and models concerning nonverbal behavior. (Bruneau 1980: 112)

Requesting, Giving, and Taking: The Relationship Between Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior in the Speech Community of the Eipo, Irian Jaya (West New Guinea)
by VOlker Heeschen, Wulf Schiefenhövel and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt

One of the guiding hypotheses of this article, is that nonverbal acts are not only prerequisites, necessary accompaniments, or substitutes of language proper, but that they are means of action in their own right, the employment of which depends heavily on the different strategies in face-to-face interaction. Connected with this proposal is the second hypothesis that for human beings in general it is advantageous to have at their disposal two channels of communication: the verbal and nonverbal. Thus human beings are enabled to require, beg, approach, and make claims, which can be hostile acts or acts of provoking repulsion and aggressivity, on the one channel, while maintaining the bonding process on the other. (Heesch, Schiefenhövel & Eibl-EIbesfeldt 1980: 141)

Preverbal Communication and Linguistic Evolution
by Ivan Fónagy

The stylistic value of a variant is at first determined by the articulatory gesture it involves. In the following stages of development of stylistic character, a determining factor is the distribution of variants in social space (social status, professional groups, sex and age, etc.). (Fónagy 1980: 174)

THe Nonverbal Context of Verbal Listener Responses
by Howard M. Rosenfeld and Margaret Hancks

Listeners are as active kinesically as they are verbally. They engage in a wide range of visible nonverbal behaviors, some but not all of which co-occur with their verbal listener responses. These include occasional shifts in posture, periodic changes in direction of orientation of the head and eyes, gesticulations of the hands and arms, and a variety of affective and emblematic reactions involving the face and head. (Rosenfeld & Hanks 1980: 193)

The most commonly identified kinesic form of listener responses is the head nod. Head nods may or may not accompany verbal listener responses. In fact they often occur in the absence of any verbal component, although the present analysis will be limited to consideration of listener responses that contain some vocal activity. An interesting difference between brief vocalizations [nagu "mhm"] and head nods is that the latter are much more likely to occur in listenere prior to the completion of a speaker's utterance. This difference in location may be attributed to the less interruptive consequences of nodding, versus talking, while another person is speaking. But a further possibility is that when the listener nods prior to completion of an utterance of the speaker, it indicates that the listener is processing information faster than the speaker is producing it. Such behavior could have important effects upon the subsequent type and amount of information provided by the speaker. There also has been some speculation that more complex forms of listener response, such as the combination of brief vocalizations and head nods, may communicate more complex feedback messages - for example, understanding or agreement rather than simple attention. (Rosenfeld and Margaret 1980: 194)

'Acquisition' of Communication Competence: Is Language Enough?
by Morton Wiener, Robert Shilkret, and Shannon Devoe

If we are to investigate nonverbal behaviors as components within a communication matrix, and as systematically emitted by and responded to as having communication significance by most, if not all, members of a given group or subgroup, it becomes important to discriminate nonverbal communication behaviors from nonverbal noncommunication behaviors (e.g. socially patterned behaviors learned as part of the social matrix such as patterns of walking typical of males or females in a given group, and nonsocial nonverbal behaviors such as swatting at a mosquito). Unfortunately, from our perspective, few investigators of nonverbal behavior have been concerned with discriminating between nonverbal communication behaviors - that is, nonverbal behaviors which, like verbal behaviors, are part of a code used by members of a group in communication behaviors - and nonverbal behaviors which an observer can use as a 'sign', that is, as behaviors from which an observer can make inferences about the behaving individual. (Wiener, Shilkret & Devoe 1980: 280)

The acquisition metaphor presents still a further problem for us. The term 'acquisition' seems to suggest some common end-point beyond which only minor change may occur and beyond which all 'competent' members of a language group are ostensibly interchangeable. However, a group of adults, all of whom have presumably acquired 'language', are not all equally likely to produce and comprehend poetry, metaphor, or proverbs; nor can it be taken for granted that all will 'comprehend' the 'same' nonmetaphorical, nonproverbial or nonpoetical statement in the same way; nor even that the same person will comprehend the 'same' statements in the same way at different times, e.g. on repeated readings of some particular book or article. Given these kinds of considerations, it would seem to be essential to include, in concerns about 'acquisition' some statements about excplicit criteria of mastery which specify what kinds of forms or combinations, for what kinds of contents, in what communication matrix, in what kinds of communication contexts, for what kinds of audiences, for what kind of speakers. (Wiener, Shilkret & Devoe 1980: 285)

FOr us, then, 'rule-following' is a phrase which describes the regularity and predictability of individuals' behaviors in contexts, and not a 'thing' which is acquired in addition to the behaviors themselves. That is, regularity and predictability of communication behavior are not statements of what the child 'knows' but statements of whether or not the child behaves consistently as assessed by some social norm. (Wiener, Shilkret & Devoe 1980: 285)

Silenve is Golden? The Changing Role of Non-Talk in Preschool Conversations
by D. Jean Umiker-Sebeok

Gaps are to a certain extent encouraged by the sequencing rules of spontaneous conversation, which allocate turns one at a time and where each such allocation involves a set of options open to participants. The current speaker, first of all, has to decide whether or not to select the next speaker himself, and at what point in his turn. If he does not select next speaker, the listener must decide whether or not to self-select, and, if he decides to take a turn, must project ahead to a likely termination of current speaker's turn and select an appropriate turn-entry device. Finally, the current speaker must decide if he will continue speaking if no listener has self-selected. At each of these decision-making points, participants may choose not to take a turn. In this sense, gapping, like overlapping, is a result of the conversation being a system of self-management, where turns are assigned through the direct interaction of participants. (Umiker-Sebeok 1980: 295)

Silence in adult conversations are, then, as systematically imbued with significance as signs where the signifier has an overt verbal or nonverbal form, and adequate conversational performances require that interlocutors be able to interpret and employ such 'zero-signifiers' correctly. (Umiker-Sebeok 1980: 196)

Dionysians and Apollonians
by Arnold M. Zwicky

Nobody knows what 'intuition' really is. My guess is that it is a sort of subconscious reasoning, only the end result of which becomes conscious. (Szent-Gyorgyi 1980: 317)

Why Electromagnetism is the Only Causal 'Spook' Required to Explain Completely Any Human Behavior or Institution
by F. T. Cloak, Jr.

Ti anticipate a bit: the characteristics of any living thing or any product of a living thing - including a behavior, an artifact, or a social organization - are entirely the outcomes of two sequences of events that happen to that thing and/or product - its ontogeny and its phylogeny. Very roughly, its ontogeny is the sequence of events through which the thing develops from seed, and its phylogeny is the sequence of events through which the seed acquired its characteristic ontogeny in the first place. (Cloak, Jr. 1980: 328)

But the ubiquity of the inverse square law suggests to me that all macroevents have microexplanations. If that is true, we are wasting our time when we look for correlations between classes of macroevents without simultaneously seeking microexplanations to provide the causal links... (Cloak, Jr. 1980: 329)

An instruction, a structure which can do a certain behavior, is like any other material structure except that is has this peculiar ability to behave on cue and then return to its pre-behavior state and hence, to behave again on cue. One can say that the instruction is the structure which can do behavior: or, metaphorically, that the structure carries the instruction; or that a pre-existing structure is programmed with the instruction by the modification of its fine structure. (Cloak, Jr. 1980: 334)

While a social organization is maintained, of course, it has effects on the behaviors of individual organisms, both members and nonmembers. These effects fall into two categories: In the short term, group-behaviors release or cue an instruction carried by one or more individual organisms; the resultant behavior may itself be sociogenic, as when a group-member, cued by being in the group situation, directs some sanctioning behavior toward another member cueing, in turn, some conformist behavior on his/her part - social control, in a phrase. In the longer term, the social organization and its behaviors make up a salient part of the environment controlling the subsequent evolution (phylogeny) of the instructional repertory of the population - again including sociogenic and other social isntructions. (Cloak, Jr. 1980: 335)