Page 57 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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Channels of Communication | 45

• how he or she can develop his capacity to encode and decode mean-
ings via facial expression.

Ten classes of meanings can be communicated by facial expressions:
happiness, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, disgust contempt, interest, bewilder-
ment, and determination. These facial expressions accurately reflect an
individual’s internal state. The face is often called ‘the index of the mind’.
To quote—‘the human face has evolved as the most potent transmitter of
information that we know and the transmitter we most readily learn to tune
in to’. The face, furthermore, gives a high level of feedback that may be iso-
morphic to the transmissions one is making; for example, blushing, smiling,
holding a stern/stiff upper lip. When we blush, the message is conveyed to
others and through a multitude of ways we receive that same message and
feel humbled, foolish, and confused. However, the expressions on the face
can be effectively controlled to mask one’s true emotions, if and when a
person wants to.

Gestural Communication
Gestures have been an integral part of communication, since time immemo-
rial, especially when one needed to address large gatherings of people. It was
however, more suitable for communication among smaller groups because
of the close physical proximity of the group members. Gestures represent a
form of nonverbal communication. Even today, a communicator’s gestures
are reliable indicators of the intensity of his or her feelings. Gestures serve
two functions:
1. They are reliable cues to a communicator’s behavioural predisposi-
tions, whether cooperative, defensive, or hostile.
2. They function to regulate interactions among group members by
communicating the member’s attitudes and feelings.
Gestures comprise the form of communication, to which all physical move-
ments or postures to which meaning is ascribed. These forms of expression
range from an involuntary reaction reflecting one’s personal attitude, to the
conscious use of an elaborate code of signals, as in the occupational codes
of railway men, supervisors, structural workers and scouts, or the deaf-mute
sign language. Symbolic gestures may have the same, varied, or exactly oppo-
site meaning in different cultures. Gestures are related to the group opinion
process in many ways. Within group situations like crowds, mobs, audi-
ences, and other face-to-face groups, the membership is affected not only
by the gestures of leaders, but by the gestures, physical postures, and facial
expressions of their fellows. Such gestures may be profoundly indicative of
their attitude.

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