SOCIOL 41 Lecture Notes - Lecture 68: Spoken Language, Nonverbal Communication, Paralanguage
Document Summary
The process by which people act toward or respond to one another, mutual influence. The sending and receiving, expressing and reading, of symbols. Social interaction and symbolic communication are interchangeable, they are the same thing. Communication is how people transmit information about their ideas, feelings, and intentions. We communicate through spoken and written words, through voice qualities, physical closeness, gestures and posture. Symbols are arbitrary forms used to refer to ideas, feelings, intentions, or any other objects. Symbols represent our experiences in ways that others can perceive through sounds, gestures, pictures, even fragrances. Spoken language is a socially acquired system of sound patterns with meanings agreed on by the members of a group. Words are the symbols around which languages are constructed. All the vocal aspects of speech other than words. In addition to the approximate 250,000 different facial expressions that humans can make, nonverbal communication uses many other bodily and gestural cues.
