Till now, we have studied daily verbal communication and verbal communication. In this unit, we are going to pick up a new topic, nonverbal communication.

Nonverbal communication is the process by which nonverbal behaviors are used, either singly or in combination with verbal behaviors. William Shakespeare has once said, there is language in her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. It’s not what he said, but the way he said it. According to some communication theorists, in face-to-face communication, 30% of the information is communicated through speaking, while over 70% of the message is sent by nonverbal means. Another study carried out in the United States reveals that in the communication of attitudes, 93% of the message was transmitted by voice tone and facial expressions, whereas only 7% was transmitted by words.

From the above statistics, we can easily come to the conclusion that nonverbal communication is more important than verbal communication. Edward T. Hall calls nonverbal communication as the “silent language” and the “hidden dimension”. Then, what is nonverbal communication? Its study areas include four aspects: time language, space language, body language, and paralanguage. Each includes over 20 topics.