Inside Intuition What We Know About Non Verbal Communication

"How much do we communicate with words, and how much with gestures, posture, and movement? What can we learn from the study of nonverbal behavior? Is it really possible - or desirable - to "read" body language? Flora Davis set out on a one-and-one-half-year odyssey to universities and mental hospitals interviewing anthropologists, psychologists, ethologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists to find the answers to these questions. What she discovered is that words are often the least important part of a conversation. By the way people move and hold their bodies they supply a whole emotional undercurrent. They may court, or maneuver for status, or contradict what they're saying verbally. Their body movements can be a tip-off to social status and cultural differences and an expression of maleness or femaleness as well as projection of personal style. We all "read" these signals intuitively and respond to them, usually without being at all conscious that we're doing so. But now scientists working with slow-motion films have learned to translate much of this language of the body. The nonverbal "language" is as complex and subtle as the verbal one: it is not really possible to say that any one particular gesture or posture always means the same thing. Yet an awareness of the multiplicity of meanings that lies beyond words can, in Flora Davis' view, bring us into closer touch with ourselves and with one another." -- from book flap.

This volume on nonverbal communication studies, the most multi- and interdisciplinary contribution to this field in almost twenty years, offers numerous suggestions for further research in many hitherto unexplored areas. The twenty contributions include the most recent theoretical and empirical crosscultural studies of gestures from historical, communicative and sociopsychological perspectives. In addition the volume presents novel psychological and clinical studies of nonverbal behaviors in connection with, for instance, aphasias and children's experience of artificial limbs. A whole section is devoted to nonverbal communication in literature and literary translation, and a discussion of art and literature, which opens new avenues for literary analysis and a better understanding of reading as a recreational experience. A unique feature is a discussion of Nonverbal Communication Studies as an academic area (including detailed outlines of three current courses), complemented by an extensive bibliography.

Nonverbal Communication in Everyday Life, Fourth Edition, is the most comprehensive, thoroughly researched, and up-to-date introduction to the subject of nonverbal communication available today. Renowned author Martin S. Remland introduces nonverbal communication in a concise and engaging format that connects foundational concepts, current theory, and new research findings to familiar everyday interactions. Presented in three parts, the text offers full and balanced coverage of the functions, channels, and applications of nonverbal communication. This approach not only gives students a strong foundation, but also allows them to fully appreciate the importance of nonverbal communication in their personal and professional lives.

Paralanguage and kinesics define the tripartite nature of speech. Volume 2 builds on Poyatos’ book Paralanguage (1993) – reviewed by Mary Key as “the most amplified description of paralanguage available today”. It covers our basic voice components; the many normal or abnormal voice types; the communicative uses of physiological and emotional reactions like laughter, crying, sighing, coughing, sneezing, etc.; and word-like utterances beyond the official dictionary. Kinesics is viewed from interactive, intercultural and cross-cultural, and literary perspectives, with much needed research principles for the realistic study of gestures, manners and postures in their intersystemic links. Applications are given in the social or clinical sciences, intercultural communication, literature, painting, theater and cinema, etc. Related to both paralanguage and kinesics are the many eloquent sounds produced bodily, by manipulated objects and by the environment. A discussion of silence and stillness as opposed to sound and movement and related to darkness and light, shows their true interactive status, coding, functions, qualifiers, intersystemic co-structurations, positive and negative functions, and cross-cultural attitudes toward silence. The first two volumes are then brought together in a detailed model for studying our interactions with people and the environment, including certain emitting and transmitting congenital or traumatic limitations.1608 quotations from 133 authors and 216 works vividly illustrate all topics.

This book is an up-to-date compendium of knowledge on the secret language of close relationships, namely nonverbal routes of communication. In close relationships, as everyone learns sooner or later, the usefulness of words can be somewhat limited, because people (a) mean different things by the same words, (b) mean the same thing by different words, (c) sometimes find it hard to express their feelings in words, and (d) lie. Nonverbal signals therefore often provide the best means of communication. The book points out how decoding (interpreting) nonverbal signals is a major key to success, because often what people say wholly belies how they feel—nonverbal signals reveal their true feelings rather than what they want other people to think their feelings are. This book helps decode those secret signals. The book is written by the leading worldwide experts in the field of nonverbal communication to ensure accuracy, comprehensiveness, and timeliness.

Anyone who can successfully read people can communicate and hold power.