Elements Of Nonverbal Communication

Communication is an ongoing process in social life. Humans communicate verbally and non-verbally to convey their thoughts, ideas, emotions and feeling. But, actions speak louder than words. In fact, nonverbal behavior is estimated transfers 60 percent of the social meanings in daily communication (Burgoon & Bacue, 2003). Effective communication consists of both verbal and nonverbal. But, nonverbal messages is given the priority when conflicts happened because nonverbal behavior is usually unaware and free from manipulate (Burgoon & Guerrero, 1994; Verderber, Verderber & Sellnow, 2009). In general, nonverbal communication can be classified into six elements: physical appearances, kinesics, haptics, paralanguage, chronemics and proxemics (refer

This aspect includes nature and nurture criteria. Nature measure in terms of biological approaches like body size and skin colour. According to Burgoon and Guerrero (1994), stereotype or prejudice may cause due to different body sizes like endomorph (fat), mesomorph (muscular) and ectomorph (thin). Different body types perceive different symbolic meanings. For example, mesomorphs who are strong in physically are more likely to commit crime. Whereas, Burgoon and Guerrero also claimed that nurture criteria include elements like clothing, grooming and cosmetics. A well dress-up, neat outfit, suitable accessories or jewelry and appropriate make-up give people a good impression and enhance physical attractiveness. Not only that, it reflect one’s social-economic status, personality, age, lifestyle, attitudes and values (Barker, 1990; Burgoon & Guerrero, 1994). Through physical appearances, judgmental will be made and people are more willing engage a communication with one who have a charm physical

Tubbs and Moss (1991) stated that “paralinguistic or paralanguage is something beyond or in addition to language itself” (p. 164). Generally, paralanguage focus on the study of oral cues rather than the communication content (Karimi, Dabaghi & Tabatabaei, 2012). So, Trager (1958) has divided paralanguage into two major categories which is voice qualities and voice vocalizations. Pitch, tone, volume, rhythm, enunciation, articulation and pronunciation are all belong to vocal qualities. While, vocal vocalization contains vocal characteristics which mainly attach with emotion like laughing, crying and yawning; and vocal segregate with minimal response such as “um”, “oh” and so on. Paralanguage is crucial in order to identify the emotional state of the communicator. For instance, if a person speaks with high volume and pitch, this probably shows that the person is in angry and