Page 129 - Essentials of Human Communication

108 ChaPter 5 Nonverbal Messages

Communication Touch avoidance is also affected by age and gender (Guerrero & Andersen,
Choice Point 1994; Crawford, 1994). Older people have higher touch-avoidance scores for oppo-
touch boundaries site-sex persons than do younger people. Males score higher on same-sex touch
A colleague at work continu- avoidance than do females, which matches our stereotypes (Martin & Anderson,
ally touches you in passing—your arm, your 1993). That is, men avoid touching other men, but women may and do touch other
shoulder, your waist. These touches are be- women. On the other hand, women have higher touch-avoidance scores for opposite-
coming more frequent and more intimate. sex touching than do men (Andersen, Andersen, & Lustig, 1987).
You want this touching to stop. What are
some of your options for stopping this behavior? touch and culture The functions and examples of touching discussed earlier
To whom would you speak/write? What would were based on studies in North America; in other cultures these functions are not
you say?
served in the same way. In some cultures, for example, some task-related touching
is viewed negatively and is to be avoided. Among Koreans, it is considered disre-
spectful for a store owner to touch a customer in, say, handing back change; doing so is
considered too intimate a gesture. Members of other cultures who are used to such touch-
ing may consider the Koreans’ behavior cold and aloof. Muslim children in many countries
are socialized to refrain from touching members of the opposite sex, a practice that can
easily be interpreted as unfriendly by American children, who are used to touching one
another (Dresser, 1996).
Students from the United States reported being touched twice as much as did the Japanese
students. In Japan there is a strong taboo against strangers’ touching, and the Japanese are
therefore especially careful to maintain sufficient distance (Barnlund, 1975).
Some cultures, such as those of southern Europe and the Middle East, are contact cultures.
Others, such as those of northern Europe and Japan, are noncontact cultures. Members of
contact cultures maintain close distances, touch each other in conversation, face each other
more directly, and maintain longer and more focused eye contact. Members of noncontact
cultures maintain greater distance in their interactions, touch each other rarely if at all, avoid
facing each other directly, and maintain much less direct eye contact. As a result, northern
Europeans and Japanese may be perceived as cold, distant, and uninvolved by southern
Europeans—who may in turn be perceived as pushy, aggressive, and inappropriately intimate.

paralaNguage aND sIleNce
Paralanguage is the vocal but nonverbal dimension of speech. It has to do with how you say
something rather than what you say. Silence, on the other hand, is the absence of sound but
not of communication.

paralanguage An old exercise that teachers used to increase students’
ability to express different emotions, feelings, and attitudes was to have the students repeat a
sentence while accenting or stressing different words each time. Placing the stress on differ-
ent words easily communicates significant differences in meaning. Consider the following
variations of the sentence “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?”
1. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
2. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
3. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
4. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?
5. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

Each sentence communicates something different—in fact, each asks a different
question, even though the words are the same. All that varies among the sentences is
which words are stressed, one aspect of paralanguage.
In addition to stress, paralanguage includes such vocal characteristics as rate, volume,
and rhythm. It also includes the vocalizations you make when crying, whispering, moaning,
belching, yawning, and yelling (Trager, 1958, 1961; Argyle, 1988). A variation in any of these
vocal features communicates. When you speak quickly, for example, you communicate