Sunday, March 17, 2013

Nonverbal Communication




               



            The television show I chose to watch is Happy Endings on ABC. Happy Endings is about six best friends living in Chicago, it is a comedy.  I have never watched this show because I assumed it was just a bad rip off of one of my favorite TV shows Friends. Therefore, I began watching the show with undue influence.
                The behavior of the six people, they spent a lot of time together at a restaurant, the show opened with all of them being at a friend’s apartment watching TV. This told me that they had a very close relationship and a long history. The cast used a lot of facial expressions to as illustrators to reinforce the verbal messages that they were giving and receiving.
                This particular episode was about pranking a friend. The friend was very upset about the prank and vowed revenge on the 5 other friends. Therefore there was a lot of adaptors used because of the 5 friend’s fear of retaliation. There was twisting of hair, rubbing of hands and fidgeting to show the 5 friends fear. The actors in this particular episode used the nonverbal communication codes of gestures and body movements, facial expressions, eye behavior and voice tone to convey this episode title “The Marry Prankster.”
                Most of my assumptions prior to the episodes were true. The actors conveyed the relationships of the characters very well. However, there were some assumptions I made that were incorrect. I assumed none of the characters were married to each other and the core couple was married. I knew they were pranking a friend, but I did not know why. My assumptions would have been more accurate had I watched the show previously.
                The greatest thing I learned from this experience is that nonverbal and verbal communication supports each one another. The use of both fosters clearer communication. I also learned that undue influence really does affect or communication.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with you that verbal and non verbal communication supports each other, They both go hand in hand and both are equally important. I never would have known that if I didn't take this class. I always thought verbal communication was most important and non-verbal was not all that important at all. I've learned a lot just in the past two weeks of this class. :-)

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