Nonverbal Communication Fact.
Nonverbal Communication-information that is communicated without using words.
93% of communication is nonverbal
55% through facial expression, posture, gesture
38% through tone of voice


Nonverbals can include: Shaking hands, posture, facial expressions, appearance, voice, tone, hairstyle, clothes, expression in your eyes, smile, how close you stand to others, how you listen, confidence, your breathing, the way you move, the way you stand, the way you touch people, color choice, silence.
Nonverbal Messages
I. Visual

1. Kinesics

A. Facial

A facial expression can convey a great deal of information to others. For example, a student who gets a high score might smile more broadly than usual to indicate his/her happiness. While in Indonesia, a worker who gets a promotion at his work might smile more often to show his/her gratefulness.

B. Gestural
Gesture is a body language through the movements of head, hands and arms.





i. Emblems are body gestures that directly translate into words or phrases. For instance, a thumbs-up sign that means a good job, could also mean support in Indonesia. Emblems are also influenced by culture, so the use of one’s cultures emblem to other culture need to be carefully exercised. For example, shaking head, in the US, means no. But in Indonesia, in certain condition, it could mean angry or fed up.

ii. Illustrator is a body language that doesn’t have specific meaning or is generally understood the meaning. For instance, when giving a presentation, a person might use hand gestures to emphasize a point. In Indonesia, when talking about direction of a place, a person might use his/her hand to show that direction.

iii. Affect Display is a person’s body movements that convey feelings and emotions through facial expressions and body positions. These body movements may indicate whether a person is open, angry, or even distracted. A frowning face person is believed to be unhappy or stressful. A person with frowning face in Indonesia can be considered showing dislike.

iv. Regulators are behaviors that monitor, control, coordinate, or maintain the speaking of another individual. For instance, nodding head, when talking to someone means you tell the speaker to keep on talking. The same thing also occurs in Indonesia. But, in the US, when you want to take turn to speak, you could simply lean forward and open your mouth. While in Indonesia, some people may just do light patting on someone’s shoulder, to indicate that they want to talk.





v. Adaptors are typically unconscious behaviors and are used when a person is tense or anxious. For example, when someone is tense or nervous, he/she tends to bite his/her nails. In Indonesia, especially children, they also tend to bite their nails or suck their thumbs or fingers when they are tense or nervous, but for adults, they usually tap their finger(s) or move their leg up and down.

C. Postural
Posture and movements have a tremendous effect positively or negatively in terms of the final outcome. The way people stand, sit and pose, sometime has more effect than the message itself. For example, When a sitting down person lean forward, it implies that the person is open and interest. While sitting with the position leaning away shows disinterest. But for Indonesian, a person who leans away shows tiredness and may be bored.

2. Proxemics
Proxemics is the study of such interaction distances and other culturally defined uses of space. Each individual has his/her own personal space. For American people, the average personal space is 45-50cm, but for Indonesian people, the usual personal space is between 40-60cm. When conducting a meeting, it could range from 4 feet to 8 feet or 4 feet to 12 feet, depends on the number of the people. The same thing also happen in Indonesia.

3. Artifactual
Artifactual communication consists of messages that are human made, for example, communication through color, clothing and body adornment. For instance, yellow for American means caution, while for Indonesian, it means death. Clothing, wearing jeans to office is quite common in the US and not in Indonesia, although it is getting acceptable nowadays, especially for Friday.



II. Auditive

· Paralinguistic
Paralinguistic is the vocal cues that accompany spoken language, this is, the way we say words. For example, American people usually associate people who have low pitch voices with strength, sexiness, and maturity. While compare to Indonesian people, those who have low pitch of voices as lack of confidence.

III. Nonvisual Nonauditif

1. Tactile (Touch)
Touch communicates a wide variety of messages, it is perhaps the most primitive form of communication. People use touch to communicate nonverbally. Hand shaking is usually done for getting to know each other, especially for the first time in American. But for Indonesian, it is not only during the first meeting but also as greetings.

2. Smell Communication (Olfactory)
Smell communication is extremely important in a wide variety of situations and has now become a big business. The use of smell or aromatherapy has now been greatly used. For example, the smells of lavender and eucalyptus can increase alertness while rose oil reduces blood pressure.
Here in Indonesia, especially in Bali, they are also using aromatherapy for many purposes, originally in the form of incense.