Nonverbal Cues

By: Rebecca Irvine

I am late posting today, but I suppose better late than never. I was teaching a communications class this evening at Red Mountain Community College and several of the class topics caught my eye in terms of writing. Specifically, I was teaching about nonverbal communication and that it often communicates meaning more fully than verbal communication. There are numerous aspects to nonverbal communication, which I will list below. How might you add additional detail to your characters or conflicts by including nonverbal cues such as...?

Body Movements:
Emblems: body gestures that translate into words



Illustrators: used to enhance verbal messages (i.e., flight attendant hand gestures during safety instuctions)


Affect Displays: movements of hands, face and body that communicate emotion


Regulators: behaviors that try to regulate or control communication of others (i.e.,  nod of head or hand in circular motion tells someone keep talking)


Adaptors: gestures that satisfy a personal need (i.e., blowing your nose or scratching an itch)


Spatial Messages:

Territoriality: possessive reaction to a space

Markers: signals of ownership, give you a feeling of belonging

Proxemic Distances: how far or near we place ourselves to one another

Artifactual Communication:

Color: the colors we choose to surround ourselves with communicate messages to others

Clothing: Clothes express people’s attitudes toward themselves and their society

Space Decoration: the objects we surround ourselves with communicate meaning

Olfactics: what we smell can communicate (i.e., perfume communicates attraction)

Touch Communication:

Touch can communicate play, control, ritual, task, and emotion

Absense of touch also communicates (i.e., avoiding someone's handshake)

Paralanguage and Silence:

Paralanguage is the vocal but nonverbal dimension of speech (i.e., accents, pronunciation, stuttering).

Silence can be used as a weapon, to show personal anxiety, to prevent communication, to communicate emotional responses, or simply that someone has nothing to say.

Time Communication:

When someone does something communicates a person's thoughts and attitudes about that action. Is it done with punctuality? Is it done as quickly as possible with bare minimum work?

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There are likely better ways to "show" your reader details that currently are stated explicitly in your manuscript. Try adding a new detail or two to your work in progress using one of these nonverbal cues.