The Analysis of Nonverbal Behaviors

 

 

To observe a nonverbal behavior in a communication, I choose a serial TV show from HBO. The title is Serangoon Road. The first time I watched it, it was turned off. I assumed there were a husband and wife having a conversation before going to bed about what they had done the whole day and what they were going to do about it for the next day. It seemed that the husband was proposing something good that made the wife looked so happy from the way she smiled. The following scene was the next day in the morning, both of them left the house, and there came a conversation of two women and the man or the husband from the previous scene having tea in the living room and one of them read a newspaper. Then a man wearing a very formal suit came and seemed to tell about bad news that caused the two women looked surprised.  

The second time I watched it with the sound turned on, I found that the man and the woman were not husband and wife. They were just friends talking about another person that I was not sure who he was. The next scene he went to his neighbors and brought a newspaper. He was talking with two women about the news on the newspaper when a man wearing a suit came and they were talking about the political conspiracy related to the news.

From both different ways of watching the same brief scene, it is very obvious that facial expression and body language only is difficult to guess and cannot tell the correct message. They create many assumptions. Having the possibility to listen to the verbal communication in the conversation makes a TV scene much easier to understand. The nonverbal communication during the conversation helps viewers to get the message correctly, and the music which was played during the scene helps us to be more involved in the story. Thus, it is perfect to hear clearly and see carefully to understand a message in a communication.