Non-verbal communication involves communication using facial expressions, hand gestures, body language, postures, social cues, physical environment, eye contact, tone of voice, writing, and touch. Non-verbal communication is the opposite of verbal communication. In verbal communication, you use your voice to speak and share the message. Whereas, non-verbal communication involves expressing not using the words you speak.
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I will tell you a story about how a sign language is an effective form of non-verbal communication for people who are deaf and have hearing impairments. In India, we have Indian sign language for deaf people to communicate with each other. It is a language that uses non-verbal cues and uses eye contact, hand movements, facial expressions, and body gestures. Through sign language, a deaf person can even communicate with a hearing person if he is aware of sign language skills.
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I met my friend who was deaf and wanted to study further. He had joined a master in Design course from a fashion institute in Mumbai. The program had all course material and lectures in English written and spoken format. However, my friend wasn’t able to access the study material. Thus, he approached a sign language interpreter who used his skills to interpret the spoken and written English to sign language and vice-versa.
Non-verbal communication can become effective if a person knows how to communicate using eye contact. For example, you might have seen people who would respond Yes with just a nod rather than saying it in spoken format. You might have also seen people who just show the sign of bye instead of saying goodbye. There are also other non-verbal cues such as stop, thank you, and enough, no used by even common people irrespective of their origin language.
Non-verbal communication is also used by professors when they teach certain concepts to students. Instead of only speaking about the concepts, teachers use a lot of non-verbal signs and cues to communicate the meaning of the concept. Their body language and actions help students understand the seriousness of any topic that is being shared with them.
For example, a teacher may talk about a recent incident of theft of a gold chain of a young student of another school. While sharing the incident, the teacher may make her eyes more intense, and also her tone of voice would be quite serious and would not at all include a casual or friendly tone. She would ensure that every student is listening to her and thus, talk firmly and sternly about how students should avoid wearing gold or any jewelry item while coming to school or college.
Non-verbal communication will help the speaker connect with their audience well. If a person only speaks words and has nothing to change in the voice modulation or facial expressions, it will look like a robot being programmed to just read the text. As human beings, we are far ahead of any technology because it is we humans who have made the technology and not the other way round. So, non-verbal communication can be used as a technique by humans to convey their message in more effective and efficient ways.
