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Channels of Communication | 43

behaviours that accompany the verbal messages. Affect displays are the
movements of the facial area that convey emotional meaning e.g., anger,
happiness, surprise, etc. Regulators are nonverbal behaviour that regulate,
monitor, maintain, or control the process of speaking by another individual; for
example, we nod our heads, purse our lips, adjust our eye focus, etc. Adaptors
are nonverbal behaviours that resorted to in private or in public—but without
being seen; for example, when you are alone, you may sit with your legs flung
over the arm of the chair or you might talk loudly, something that you may not
do in public.

Proxemics—The Use of Space
When individuals interact with one another they maintain some distance that
is termed as proxemics. The usual nose to nose distance in ordinary conversa-
tion is four to five feet and variations of even a few inches may create feelings
of discomfort. The narrowing of this distance by one individual may be inter-
preted as a higher degree of intimacy, which may no be to the liking or com-
fort of the other person. In different parts of the world individuals of differing
cultures have their own sense of a comfortable distance between them and the
person they are talking to. The orientation of two people in a discotheque will
be different from that between a professor and a student in a classroom, even
though unknown to the two in the discotheque; one may well be a professor
and the other a student (Berg and Boguslaw 1985). It has been observed that
this distance is the maximum in North America and the distance is the closest
in the far Eastern regions with Mediterranean countries falling somewhere in
between. Effective communication takes place if one knows and respects these
differences in nonverbal signs in intercultural communication.

Use of Time
Different cultures have different attitudes towards time management and
work. This has always been the basis of argument, when people of differing
cultures meet at a common forum. The speed with which different cultures
achieve their goals reflects their agreement with Utopian time or the Golden
Age concept of time to a considerable extent. In the advanced countries of
the West, the trend is towards modernization and progressive thoughts. Most
westerners seem to be time-conscious while people from the East, tradition-
ally have been observed to take a more relaxed view of time.

SPEECH

Speech is an important part of communication. It serves a number of dif-
ferent functions. There are four basic functions of human speech—to teach,
to please, to move, and to defend oneself. The functions of speech are based

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