Demonstrative Communication Paper

Demonstrative Communication Paper

Philip Strasser-King, Anthony St. John, Lauren Batinich, Julie Ngo

BCOM 275

09/05/12

Dr. Sylvester Fadal

Demonstrative Communication Paper

Communication is defined as the process of sending and receiving messages. Communication is only effective when the messages that you are sending is understood, but effective communication involves more than just understanding the message. Effective communication involves what the communicators were thinking, feeling, wanting, or his or her intention. To ensure that effective communication one should follow the communication process model that entails the sender, receiver, encoding, decoding, the message, channel and feedback (Cheseboro, O'Connor, Rios, 2010).

There are times that communication can't be put in words and we have to use demonstrative communication. Demonstrative communication is the nonverbal and unwritten way that we communicate with one another. Demonstrative communication involves such things as your facial expressions, body language, tone of voice or any other way that we communicate nonverbally (Fadal, syllabus, p.2). In our paper we will examine the ways of demonstrative communication. We will provide examples showing how demonstrative communication can be effective and ineffective. Our paper will show the positive and negative effects of demonstrative communication and how it involves listening and responding as well.

When many think of examples of demonstrative communication the first to come to mind is facial expression. The initial tell indicative of how someone is reacting to the information that is being expressed to them is their facial expression.

A good example of this would be the players of a game of poker. Though the information itself is non-verbal, the hand of cards each individual is dealt, it is a message all the same. A good poker player is very aware of facial expression, his own and that of the other players. An individual may have a good hand, they try very hard to keep a straight face yet their eyes light up ever so slightly. Or an individual may have a bad hand and the corners of their mouth drop. A good poker player can perceive these slight changes in facial expression and make a judgment as to the strength of each player's hand, giving them an advantage.

When expressing a message verbally, as the sender, to another, the receiver, these same concepts as described in the previous example apply. The sender can judge how their message is being received by the facial expression of the receiver and can alter the way they are delivering their message by responding to those indicators. For example, an engineer is trying to explain the intricate detail of a product to a sales person. The engineer is used to speaking to other engineers and uses a lot of the professions jargon when conveying his message. The sales person is smiling but has a confused, bewildered look on his face. The engineer seeing this realizes that the receiver is having difficulty understanding their message and is able to alter his message by restating his explanation in lay-man's terms.

In the examples that were just given the positive attributes of facial expression were highlighted. The ability to judge how someone is reacting to a message and make adjustment to the message or make conclusions biased on the perception of the reaction is all positive. However, in each example the poker player or the engineer could have easily misread the facial expression of the other individual and made a mistake like placing a bad bet or by offending the sales person for not thinking they understood technical terminology.

There are other negatives to facial expression as well. It is very easy to show what one is thinking by the facial expression and can just as easily be misconstrued. For example, your boss has you in their office to check in on a project that you have been working on for some time. The project is going very well and with a few hours of overtime you will be able to finish the project on schedule. Your boss is very pleased with this news but tells you that there isn't room in the budget for any overtime and the project end date needs to be moved up. A look of disappointment and frustration plays across your face. Your boss takes notice of this and makes mention of it. Now you have to explain yourself and damage control for fear that you may come across as not being a team player.

Tone of voice is a form of verbal demonstrative communication. It can be combined with both facial expression and body language to interpret what the sender and/or receiver is saying. Inflections in the sound