Nonverbal communication makes up a sizable portion of everyday interactions. People frequently react to a wide range of nonverbal behaviors and signals, such as facial expressions, vocalics—such as tone and vocal qualities—and kinesics—such as gestures, posture, and eye contact. People ascribe various meanings to everything others portray while speaking, including the use of proxemics such as personal and physical space and chronemics. (Verderber et al., 2010). This paper will evaluate Barry's nonverbal behaviors and their purpose in light of the given case scenario, assess how other people reacted to Barry's nonverbal behavior, and then determine whether his responses were morally acceptable by providing justifications. Analyzing Barry’s Non-Verbal Behavior and Their Goal
Pointing out to his body motion, Barry seemed to be more dominant over Elana as he leaned too close while commanding her to fetch his sweat. This was to signal Lisa and Marquez who had complemented Elana on her improved performance that he had power over her. There is a lot of self-depreciating and brooding sarcasm (Knapp et al., 2013) in Barry utterances when he says “Gee, isn’t she sweet,” after commanding her to fetch the sweater. His facial expression becomes cold when Elana tried to reason out with him about bringing the sweater since he was closer, and this signals male chauvinism as he wanted her to obey right away without arguing. Additionally, he makes intentional vocalized pause when saying the word “now” to emphasis and make Elana listen up, stop arguing with him and get the sweater immediately.
Interpretation of Others’ Reaction to Barry’s Non-Verbal Communication
From the scenario, it is clear that all three other people involved in the conversation were not pleased with Barry’s non-verbal communication. First of all, Elana drewback when Barry leaned too close, and this implied that he was invading her personal and physical space. Again, after he commanded her, she quickly without much argument fetched the sweater, and that implied that she was scared of him. Lisa and Marquez sense jealousy reaction from Barry since he did not receive any compliment. Again, them gazing on the floor implied that they were disgusted by Barry’s sarcasm that Elana was sweet after humiliating her. Excusing themselves from the couple implied that they did not want to get involved in whatever was transpiring between Elana and Barry though they knew Barry was in the wrong.
Why Barry’s Behavior Was Unethical and Unacceptable
Nothing positive came out of Barry’ behavior through the use of non-verbal communication. His sarcastic compliment on Elana, invasion of her physical and personal space as well as emphasizing in a manner to command and silence her was unethical. He used his gender power to portray male chauvinism and negative emotions against Elana because she had received genuine compliments yet he did not (Jacob et al., 2016). Additional, it is rude to interrupt people when they are conversing, which is what Barry did when he commanded Elana to fetch him a sweater so that she could not receive more of the compliments. He took advantage of the fact that they were a couple, hence the others could not come into Elana’s defense.
Conclusion
From the tennis case scenario, it was irrefutably clear that non-verbal communication has an impact on verbal communication, and can change the information to mean the opposite. Though Barry did not utter any negative or abusive word, the emphasis he put on the words and actions depicted precisely what he felt after his mates failed to compliment him. Therefore, it is essential to pay attention to non-verbal communication like what Lisa and Marquez did to understand what one tries to mean.
References
Jacob, H., Kreifelts, B., Nizielski, S., Schütz, A., & Wildgruber, D. (2016). Effects of Emotional Intelligence on the Impression of Irony Created by the Mismatch between Verbal and Nonverbal Cues. PloS one, 11(10), e0163211.
Knapp, M., Hall, J. A., & Horgan, T. G. (2013). Nonverbal communication in human interaction. Cengage Learning.
Verderber, K. S., Verderber, R. F., & Sellnow, D. D. (2010). Communicate! Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.
