Communicating through Nonverbal Behaviors - Essay Example

I personally found the chapter on non-verbal communication as informative as it was interesting. The primary reason for the interest in non-verbal communication is that it relates to all of us as individuals. Many times we get perplexed at others’ reactions towards us since we feel that our verbal communication did not suggest anything to invite the unexpected response from the person we are communicating with. The reason behind such reactions many times is our non-verbal communication. I can recall that a few years back my mother had asked me to clean my cupboard and I had replied with an “Okay Mum” but I received a thrashing in return and when I inquired as to the reason behind it, my mother said that I shrugged my shoulders and rolled my eyes which exuberated a lot of negativity.

That day onwards I became watchful of my body language. A common misconception is that a person’s body language is the only form of non-verbal communication. That is not quite the case, other categories of non-verbal communication include paralanguage, spatial usage, and self-presentation. These encompass the pitch and tone of a person’s voice, the posture and use of space as also the attention a person pays to his/her appearance, even to the point of minute details such as the perfume a person is wearing.

The multitude of cues which fall under non-verbal communication has the ability of perplexing people with how to react under different situations.