MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

TRANSCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA ART
There are also different contextual factors which play a role in nonverbal
communication and can inluence communication in different but clearly
identiiable ways. Bio-physio-psychological factors, socioeducational
characteristics, cultural models and environmental factors all constitute
an external system of communication. Bio-physio-psychological factors
include character, disposition, abilities, the current psychosomatic
and physical condition, gender, age, race, image, empathy, liking and
similar. Socioeducational characteristics result from achieved education,
employment and social status. Cultural models involve following certain
religious and moral values and ethical and aesthetic norms. In practice
these three factors are connected with the inluence of the communicator
on the course of communication. Environmental factors relate to the
inluence of environment on communication.
3 Coincidence of the verbal and the nonverbal
The beginnings of the concept of the coincidence of verbal and
nonverbal communication go back to the publication of Pragmatics
of Human Communication (1967) by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin
Bavelas and Don D. Jackson. In this book the authors elaborated on the
familiar claim that “one cannot communicate” and that each piece of
information has content and relates to something. According to them,
people communicate even if they do not speak verbally; their nonverbal
behaviour, such as gestures, facial expressions, postures and physical
appearance, communicates for them. 8 It was a revolutionary claim at the
time because most researchers in the 1960s explored communication
irrespective of its nonverbal component. Another groundbreaking
work related to the concept of the coincidence of verbal and nonverbal
communication is a study by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen. 9 The
authors analyze the mutual functioning of verbal and nonverbal means
and describe ive types of relationship between them: repetition,
substitution, complementation, contradiction and emphasis. They also
explore ive types of kinesic behaviour: emblems, illustrators, affect
displays, adaptors and regulators.
8 WATZLAWICK, P., BAVELAS, J. B., JACKSON, D. D.: Pragmatics of Human
Communication. New York : Norton, 1967, 288 p.
9 EKMAN, P., FRIESEN, W. V.: The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behavior:
Categories, Origins, Usage, and Coding. In Semiotica, 1969, Vol. 1, No. 1,
p. 49-98.
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