MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA
their gestures are directed towards them. Conspicuous hand movements
are understood as an expression of impoliteness. Verbs in the future
tense are accompanied by subtle gestures forward and verbs in the past
tense by backward movements. While speaking, anchormen use not only
involuntary, unconscious and automatic gestures, but also such gestures
that possess an independent meaning. The most frequent gestures are
gestures which mean “o.k.”, “here”, “there”, “here you are”, “let me”, “excuse
me”, “congratulations”, which, however, can be interpreted differently in
intercultural media communication.
The most subtle coincidence of verbal and nonverbal communication
is manifested in facial expressions. Anchormen use them in situations
when they want to capture the viewer’s attention not only through their
verbal expression, but also when it is desirable to send out social signals,
or when it is necessary to lend subtlety and discreetness to words.
Eyes play the most important role in facial expressions. Through their
gaze anchormen divide their speech act into smaller segments, make
their expression more dynamic, follow the guests if and to what extent
they understand and signal when they are to give the loor to them. A
gaze at one guest should not last for longer than seven seconds and
should focus on the partner’s eyes, mouth or whole face. Anchormen
should not look up and down the guests as if they were examining their
whole igure. Figuratively, we could say that anchormen should not know
what shoes their guest is wearing. The anchormen who spend more than
70% of the time gazing at the guest while he is speaking display a strong
interest in the guest and in what he is saying. If they devote less than 20%
of the time to such gazes, they show lack of interest. With regard to this,
Adam J. Jackson has pointed out that the speaker who more frequently
looks right during communication is an emotional and sensitive person,
and the speaker who looks left more often is assertive, cautious and
suspicious. 21
Verbal and nonverbal means are interconnected also in media
communication to such an extent that they can barely be separated from
each other. It can be concluded that anchormen always communicate
both verbally and nonverbally and purely verbal media communication
is an illusion in real life.
21 JACKSON, A. J.: Oční znamení. Praha : Nakladatelství Alternativa, 1996, p.
175.
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