Non-Verbal Communication: Paralanguage

Video Transcript

"Okay, now let's talk about something called Paralanguage. Sounds kind of crazy, doesn't it? Well what this is, and this is such a major part of communication. This is not what you say, but how you say it. So, I don't know if you ever thought about that as being non-verbal, but, it actually is. When we're talking about tone, not the words you choose, but the manner in which you choose to say it. I'll give you my favorite example in the whole wide world. Somebody says to me, "Hey, Tracy how you're doing today"? And I say, "fine". Okay, those don't go together. Fine, means I'm doing okay, right? So I would normally go, "fine". And you hear how my tone of voice, my pitch went up. My tone was lighter, my expression was lighter. I'm truly fine. But, when I go, "fine". There's an underlying message. The message is, "I am really mad at you". Or, "I'm really mad at something". Or I am really not fine, but I am simply telling you that I am. And that's what Paralanguage is and all of us use that all the time. In fact, what you have to be careful of, is using that to communicate how you feel, rather than actually saying the words how you feel. And this is where we get into a lot of problems in relationships is people don't say, "you know what, I'm really mad at you". They say, "I'm fine". That's Paralanguage."