MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

TRANSCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA ART
‘nonverbal communication.’ There is only communication”. 13 Twenty
years later, Jürgen Streeck and Mark L. Knapp wrote that classifying
communication into verbal and nonverbal is misleading and outdated. 14
Although one can to a certain extent agree with these opinions, I shall
use these terms and explore the mutual relationship between verbal and
nonverbal means of communication. I understand the coincidence of the
verbal and the nonverbal as interplay of meanings transmitted through
different sensory modalities, which cannot be differentiated if only the
term “communication” is used.
As far as the awareness of verbal and nonverbal communication is
concerned, Poyatos 15 is inclined to think that partners are more aware
of verbal than nonverbal means in the process of communication and
the listener tends to interpret the speaker’s nonverbal means rather
than his/her own. Michael Argyle, 16 on the contrary, claims that
communication partners lay more emphasis on the nonverbal component
of communication than on lexis and syntax. When verbal and nonverbal
information are contradictory, the nonverbal information has a greater
effect on the interpretation. 17 People tend to believe spontaneous
nonverbal cues rather than words. 18 My previous research 19 has shown
that the extent of relying on verbal and nonverbal communication
depends on the proxemics in the irst place. The smaller the distance
between partners is, the more often they use nonverbal means and the
bigger emphasis they put on them. As the distance increases, so does
the signiicance of the verbal component. The importance of nonverbal
means, on the other hand, decreases. Listeners then put more emphasis
on the standard form of the speech act and the intonational structure
of the speech than on body language. In any proxemic theory there is a
13 KENDON, A.: Review of the book Kinesics and context by Ray Birdwhistell.
In American Journal of Psychology, 1972, Vol. 85, No. 3, p. 443.
14 STREECK, J., KNAPP, M. L.: The interaction of visual and verbal features
in human communication. In POYATOS, F. (ed.): Advances in Non-Verbal
Communication. Amsterdam : Benjamins, 1992, p. 5.
15 POYATOS, F.: Interactive functions and limitations of verbal and nonverbal
behaviors in natural conversation. In Semiotica, 1980, Vol. 30, No. 3-4, p.
211-244.
16 AGRYLE, M.: Bodily Communication. London : Methuen 1988, 363 p.
17 ŠKVARENINOVÁ, O.: Rečová komunikácia. Trnava : UCM 2014, p. 10.
18 BURGOON, J. K., BULLER, D. B., WOODALL, W. G.: Nonverbal communication:
The unspoken dialogue. New York : McGraw-Hill, 1996, 536 p.
19 ŠKVARENINOVÁ, O.: Rečová komunikácia. Trnava : UCM 2014, p. 59-63.
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