Chapter 9- Communicating Nonverbally

 

One of the reasons why I find language and overall, communication, to be so difficult to grasp, are due to the many facets that are involved. The fact that communication is mostly done through nonverbal methods only really sunk in within the last few years and to me, that’s scary. For one, I have never been all that great at reading people. Many times, I have interpreted something to be a certain and it ends up being something different. This happens a lot with my mother. I would not be surprised if someone reading this think, “Dear lord, how do they not know their mother by now.” Well, I do, but the misinterpretations tend to be out of love. From experience, I know my mother is a talkative person. When she starts talking about a particular thing, she keeps going until she is finished. This leads her becoming quiet, which to me and my father, is bad. We start to think something is wrong, so we ask, and most of the time, she is fine. I think most of my misinterpretations come from lack of ability to read kinesics. This is the ability to talk with your body (ch.9, pg.239). I think if I grow my ability to read kinesics, I will have less misunderstandings in my life.