In order to truly understand the skills of communication, they must be tested. Therefore, I watched a television program called, iQ’Viva! The Chosen (n.d.), starring Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, in order to see if I can appropriately detect nonverbal cues in their original intent. First, I watched the show without hearing the volume, and it appeared as though in some cases Jennifer Lopez was giving some bad news to a family who had just sung a song to her. Later, viewing it with the volume turned up, I was able to see that she was not delivering bad news, but was just using accenting, or nonverbal behaviors used for emphasizing specific information in a verbal message (O’Hair & Wienmann, 2009). In another segment of the show, [with the volume down again] it appeared that Marc Anthony and Jennifer were giving each other intimate glances; but, in fact, they were making jokes at each other with snide remarks. There were many instances of channel discrepancy, two sets of behavior given by one person that have conflicting messages, between them throughout the show (O’Hair & Wienmann, 2009). The assumptions that I made about the nonverbal cues that were gleaned were possibly due to my unfamiliarity with Jennifer and Marc, and how they respond and communication with each other. It was my assumption that they were married, therefore the glances were read in reference to this belief. Perhaps my assumptions would have been more correct if I had been watching this show more often, and learned how the two of them really get along.
I learned the following from this experiment:
· Nonverbal communication is ambiguous
· Nonverbal messages can be contradicting
· Nonverbal codes, symbols used to send messages with or without words, can be very powerful; and
· Eye behavior and language interpretation has a lot to do with relational and situational context
References
O’Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2009). Real communication. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Cymantha,
ReplyDeleteI agree that non verbal communication and messages can be very contradicting! Often times what one person is expressing with body language is not the same as he or she would express verbally. I think this brings up a great point about being mindful of the non verbal messages we are sending out to those who we communicate with on a regular basis but more importantly those individuals who we do not come in contact with on a regular basis. We want to be approachable.
Great post.