Documenti di Didattica
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Documenti di Cultura
July 7, 2015
Introduction
• What is nonverbal communication? (paralanguage)
− Not using language to communicate with other people
− Types of nonverbal comm.
1. Body language
2. Facial expression
3. Hand gesture
4. Dressing in a particular situation (clothing types)
5. The space people expect to have from other people (informal
space/communication distance, interpersonal space)
6. Architecture (formal space)
− Can we be conscious with nonverbal comm.? Negative. (Especially
under pressure, or have strong emotions to react in a particular
circumstance, and people under those situation are hard to realize they
are using nonverbal comm.)
− Are we able to control it? (if people cannot realize they are using, they
are not able to control)
The sign is the thing. The sign resembles the The sign has no necessary
Not presenting thing. relation to the thing.
something else, they are Some relationship but now Ex. Stop sign and the middle
what they are. Ex. as direct resembles the finger.
Crying. thing it is referring to.
Ex. Trying to show how big
something is with your
hands a.k.a. nemedic
gestures.
2. Decoding
a. Left brains: (intuitive)
• Rational
• Sequential
• Linguistic
• reflective
b. Right brain:
• Emotional
• Creative
• Visual
• Immediate
• A lot of the times it is going on in the background and we are not aware of
it
***It is impossible to completely separate the verbal from the nonverbal***
Intersubjective nonverbal behaviour
• Body in movement
• Body language
• Kinesics
General purposes of nonverbal behaviour
• Expressing emotion
• Accompanying speech for the purpose of turn taking, feedback, attention, and
the like.
− Nodding the head is a way to keep a person talking rather than turning
your head
The judgements people make
1) Immediacy. We react to nonverbal cues by evaluating the sender positively or
negatively, as good or bad, and likable or dislikable.
2) Status. Indicates the relative strength or weakness, the superiority and
submissiveness, of the people involved.
3) Responsiveness. Refers to our perception of the level of attention one person is
giving to another.
How verbal and nonverbal behaviour interact
1. Repeating: nodding your head as you say yes
2. Conflicting: may conflict when being sarcastic
3. Complementing
4. Substituting
5. Accenting or moderating: how loud we say something
6. Regulating: steers the conversation such as nodding, waving your hand
And it can influence our reading of:
• Personality (individual)
• Group identity
2. Illustrators
3. Affect displays
• Basic displays of emotions that are more felt than emblems are
4. Regulators
• Maintain and regulate the back and forth of speaking and listening (turn
taking)
• Tell the other speaker to continue, repeat, elaborate a point, hurry up, etc.
5. Adaptors
• They are often situational and adaptors are not usually meant to
communicate (intentionally).
What is paralanguage?
• It can and often does change the meaning of the words used.
• Ex. How many ways can we say the sentence: “You’re going to Cuba
during exam week?”
− The variations in how we say what we say is called
prosody
***It is sometimes possible to predict what a person is saying by just hearing the
paralinguistic introduction***
According to Albert Mehrabian:
2. Vocalizations
a) Vocal characterizers
b) Vocal segregates
• Vocalized pauses such as “um”, “uh”, “oh-oh”; also includes silent pauses.
Pauses
• The most attractive voices vary their pitch, tone and intensity but avoid extremes
• People with high pitched and soft voices are seen as warm and honest but less
powerful
• Extroverts VS Introverts
Fluency is characterized by
• Louder speech
Sex/Gender
Target affects
a) Talking to a baby
b) Talking to a boss, you want him to know you are knowledgeable
c) Talking to parents when you want something from them
d) Talking to a friend you familiar with/unfamiliar with
Group perception
Dialects & accents are judged for their:
• Aesthetic quality:
• Socio-intellectual status:
• Dynamism:
Emotions
• We are all, more or less capable of reading emotions from vocal cues
• …and there were wide divergences in the ability of individual judges to accurately
identify an emotion.
Easily read:
• Anger 65%
• Anxiety 54%
• Sadness 49%
• Happiness (43)
More difficult:
• Love 25%
• Fear 25%
• Jealousy 25%
Comprehension
• Uses of variety inflection, volume % pitch combined.
Persuasion
• Louder voice
• Faster speech
• Part 1 of the Human Face makes an evolutionary argument about the social
function of facial expression and other nonverbal communication.
• What is that argument and is it consistent with all of the information provided?
• Nature or Nurture?
Do newly born infants display the same facial expressions with the same
meaning as adults?
They express joy, surprise and interest but there is no way to be sure that
they are actually feeling those emotions
Pain is an exception
Pain in infants is easily communicated, and similar to pain as displayed y
adults:
1) Lowered brow
2) Eyes squeezed tightly shut
3) Vertical wrinkles at the side of the nose
4) Open lips and mouth
5) Taught tongue
Human infants (Cont…)
• However, infants, quickly begin to imitate adults ( to 71 hours old)
• This indicates that infants are born with the ability to make a
connection between what they see and the act they then perform.
• So, while infants may or may not be born with the same nonverbal
behaviour as adults,
Deaf & blind children do not display subtle changes between expressions.
• Mating
• Cooperating in groups
• Friendly greeting
• General approval
• Agreement
• Flirting
• Seeking confirmation
• Thanking
• Beginning a statement
• Paintings in 20th sentries are more abstract and distortions to express the
characters’ facial expression.
• The wax and wane of the moon could also represent facial expression, it
is called ‘man in the moon’.
1. Facial Primacy
The face has come to represent the essence of being human both
personally and socially
Facial recognition is a key factor in our sense of belonging (and
not belonging)
The face:
• Replace speech.
• Emblems are held for shorter or longer periods of time than the corresponding
felt expression
Felt & Unfelt Smiles
• The felt smile combines 1) the zygomatic muscles around the mouth…
Affect Displays
• Affect displays vary from culture to culture and are governed by display rules that
are a product of socialization.
Display Rules
• We learn that some effect displays are more appropriate than others.
• De-intensified affect
• Neutralize an affect.
• Over-intensification of an affect.
• Make an affect
1. The withholder
The facial expression shows an emotion other than the one the
person think is being displayed.
6. The Frozen Aspect Expressor
• Humans often combine two or more emotions into one facial expression.
• This implies that facial expressions not only reveal emotion but also create them.
3. arbitrary gestures
These gestures are the least dependent on speech for their meaning
1. speech independent gestures
• In America ASL is the third most popular language next to English and
Spanish
• There is a British, Australian and a French sign language, and each has a
different grammar.
Signed English
• When an English speaker is signing as they speak they are using signed English
• Directing movement
Evaluation:
• Compliments
• Insults
Hands are not the only part of the boy used in punctuating or
emphasizing.
Refer to turn-taking
Frequency of Speech Related Gestures
• They are also likely to increase when a speaker is enthusiastic or involved in the
topic
• Speakers concerned with the comprehension will use more speech related
gestures.
• Gestures trigger images and linguistics cues in people’s minds and memories
• The film is rich in examples of nonverbal behaviour. While watching the film
please briefly note on a piece of paper the kinds of nonverbal behaviour used to
communicate meaning, express emotions, and regulate human interaction.
• Also, how does the relative importance of different nonverbal channels change
when you are hearing impaired? 当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当当
Midterm
1. Definition: meaning of the words, examples and related concepts 4/6
2. 2 short answers, write a page
3. Long essay, 1 out of 2, 3-4 pages
After Midterm
July 28, 2015
Media Analysis Essay
• Turnitin.com
− Password: 202proxemics
• When describing scene, give some concrete details about the scene
• Restrict to 6 pages
The Human Face
Part 3: “Beauty.”
On beauty
− Beautiful people have the top jobs and make the most money
− Study showed that everyone ranked it the same no matter what age or
gender
• The video tend to reflect the value and nature of beauty in a consumer society
obsessed by youth.
• The result is that female beauty is objectified (turned into a thing rather than the
quality of a real person).
• It carries the bias of our current consumer-oriented culture: youthful beauty is the
ideal.
• Those aspects of our face and body that are relatively consistent throughout a
communicative exchange
• Humans are concerned with their appearance and the appearance of others
• The cultural guidelines of what is, and is not, attractive are established by the
age of 6
• Peer popularity is highly correlated to physical attractiveness
• Teachers tend to see attractive students as more intelligent, more socially adept,
and higher in educational potential.
Pitfalls of attractiveness
• People think that the achievements of attractive people are product of their
attractiveness
• Power and prestige: CEO’s over 6ft and comedians are tall
• General attractiveness
• Competence (capable)
3. Body odour
• In our western consumer culture people wash often and wear deodorants,
colognes and perfumes
• Women pluck eyebrows and use bleach to hide their own facial hair
• In Canada & the US, the absence of underarm and leg hair is widely
considered feminine and clean
• Culturally dependant
• In short term relationships people are often content with only physical
attraction.
• In long term relationships both men and women indicate that they look for
other qualities.
• People considered attractive are more likely to be selected for a job, other
things being equal
Context is important
3. Persuasion
• However, this is mainly the case when the stakes are low and there are
few possible negative consequences
4. Self-Esteem
• The use of cosmetics has also been shown to similarly enhance self-
esteem
Qualifications to research:
1. Problems of method
• those who are socially skilled also have an edge over those who are not
• judgments of attractiveness are relative to who you are with and who they
are with
• heterosexual people of the opposite sex tend to rate each other more
highly than do those of the same sex
4. Attraction is not just physical
5. Attractiveness varies historically
Qualifications to research:
• Problems of method
• Clothing provides society with a set of fixed message. It is, therefore a “closed
code”.
• McCracken: “it allows for the representation of cultural categories, principles, and
processes without at the same time encouraging their innovative manipulation
(68)”
• In any given society there are a diversity of clothing codes that are not always
easily readable by other groups
Conformity & individualism
• People who are less concerned about what other people think (exhibitionists, or,
those who prefer practical clothing)
Clothing
1. Social status
• Suits, etc.
2. Gender
3. Occupation
• Ex. Chef == apron to keep clean, height of hat; taller the higher up you
are
4. Ethnic, political and religious affiliation
5. Cultural dissent
Proxemics
• No definitely not
Interpersonal distance
1. Intimate distance
2. Personal distance
• 45 centimeters – 1 meter
3. Social distance
• 1 – 4 meters
• 4 meters or more
Interpersonal distance
• Quiet haven
• Spatial harmony
• Aesthetic balance
• When one leaves or comes, balance changes and adapts for spatial harmony
• Females interact more closely with individuals of either sex than do males
• Other people of all sexes in all studies approach women more closely
than they approach men.
2. Age
• Adults are more forgiving of young children bumping into them then they
are of adolescents or other adults
• Both the very young and the very old are interacted with more closely
than those in-between
3. Contact & non-contact cultures
• Paris 110
• Gainesville, Florida, 2
• London, England, 0
Contact Regions:
Asia (Japan)
1) Leadership
In the North America leaders are usually found at the head of the table
Including the head of the house hold, elected group leaders, seminar
leaders
1
Dominance
2 People in positions 1,3 and 5 talked the most
3
1 & 5 task oriented leader
4
3 was the socio-emotional leader
What light does Proxemics shed on the typical North American family
home?
2. Secondary territories
• in the 1950s, Chicago used public housing to segregate the city’s rapidly growing
black population
• the worst offender was a four-mile stretch of public housing on the city’s south
side known as the Robert Taylor homes
• the design included narrow, winding residential streets, a central village square,
broad green boulevards
• “Coy”
Intimacy as submission
Strong women