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Understanding Communication | 27

bored as you are’, ‘who cares’, ‘why are you bored’, and so on and so forth.
All of them, however, are confrontations of a kind. The teacher is in a sense
forced to do something even though he or she might prefer to ignore it.
Even the less obvious and less easily observed behaviours communicate.
The smaller movements of the eyes, hands, facial muscles, and so on also
communicate just as much as do the gross movements of gesturing, sitting in
a corner, or staring out of a window. These small movements are extremely
important in interpersonal relationships. All nonverbal behaviour, how-
ever small or transitory, is significant as each has a meaning, and each
communicates.

Contextual

Like verbal communication, nonverbal communication exists in a context,
and that context helps to determine the meanings of any nonverbal behaviour.
The same nonverbal behaviour may have a totally different meaning when
it occurs in another context. A boy’s wink of an eye to a beautiful girl in the
school bus means completely different from a student’s wink of an eye to
another friend of the same gender; it signifies a put-on or a lie. Similarly,
the meaning of a given bit of nonverbal behaviour will differ depending on
the verbal behaviour it accompanies. When separated from the context, it
is impossible to tell what any given bit of nonverbal behaviour may mean.
Sometimes, even if we know the context in detail, we still might not be able
to decipher the meaning of the nonverbal behaviour.

Believable

Why we are quick to believe nonverbal behaviours when they contradict the
verbal behaviour seems to be an unanswered question till date. Consider,
for example, a conversation between a teacher and a student. The student is
attempting to get a good grade for the course and is in the process of telling
the teacher how much hard work was put into the classes and how much
enjoyment was derived from them. Throughout the discussion, however, the
student betrays his or her real intentions with various small muscle move-
ments, inconsistent smiles, a lack of direct eye contact, and so on. Somehow,
the teacher goes away with the feeling, based on the nonverbal behaviour
that the student really did not put in a good deal of work. For the most part,
research has shown that when the verbal and nonverbal messages differ, we
believe the nonverbal.

Types of Nonverbal Communication
The types of nonverbal communication can be grouped into the following
general categories:

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