4.2 Discuss six elements that reveal the nature of nonverbal communication.

Nonverbal communication is:

• Culture bound: Interpret nonverbal cues within a cultural context.

• Rule governed: Expectancy violations theory suggests that you may not know that you have rules or expectations governing appropriate nonverbal communication until those expectations are violated.

• Ambiguous: Exact meanings for nonverbal cues are difficult to determine, but perception checking can help decipher the meaning of a nonverbal message.

• Continuous: Unlike verbal messages that start and stop, nonverbal cues are ongoing.

• Nonlinguistic: Verbal communication consists of language with patterns, grammar, and regularities;

nonverbal communication is more complex and does not operate like language.

• Multichanneled: Nonverbal cues register on our senses from a variety of sources simultaneously, but we can attend to only one nonverbal cue at a time.

Codes of Nonverbal Communication