Sarah Trenholm does a great job with explaining communication concepts through her book. She address the positive impacts and methods of communication as well as the negative impacts of miscommunication. Throughout this class, I found many concepts interesting such as the concept of listening, nonverbal communication, public communication etc.
But if I must choose one to talk about, I will discuss the nonverbal communication concept where your physical appearance does affect other people's impression of you and how they communicate with you. For an example, one of the physical appearance concept is how people prefer to communicate with people based on their body type. For an example, some people prefer to only talk to thin and frail people, also known as ectomorph. Also, the way you dress can affect the way people view and talk to you. Desmond Morris (as cited in Trenholm 2008) clothing or the way you dress serves 3 major function: comfort protection, modesty, and cultural display. I find this to be really true. People will dress to be comfortable and be modest with their body. Some may not dress that way because they are portraying a side of their culture. I watching the movie Mean Girls and found dress and body type truly does have an affect on other people's perception and communication with you, especially in grade school. Kids have a certain perception and favor towards what is "cool" therefore they choose to only hang out with other people who dress "cool" and ignore those who are not. Then those are not as "cool" become isolates or outcast in their own community. It's strange really. But then this gets me thinking, who defines what is "cool?" I believe that it is the mass media that defines what is cool and what is not through their television shows and their advertisements. Getting into that topic is another post, so I'll leave I'll leave it at that.
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I really like your analogy to what we interpret as nonverbal communication to how we perceive physical appearance. I would have to agree with you how the media defines what is "in" and based on that, we as a society then associate with our ingroups or outgroups. Usually when you think of nonverbal communication, you begin thinking of body language and simple gestures but you did a good job of pointing out how certain people only interact with those of a specific body type
ReplyDeleteYou can even relate this to people who play sports. Typically athletes surround them selves with athletes because not only do they have a common bond in what they like, but also the physical appearance that comes with that mold.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteGood post. I agree that we all tend to judge each other off of appearance. The way that we decide who we want to converse with or get to know is based on physical appearance, and I think that those that deny this wouldn't be being honest with themselves. I also agree that the movie mean girls helped to show how much physical appearance means to us. The media has a strong influence on what we see as being "cool" or attractive. The young girls in the movie were obsessed with appearing cool and refused to hang with those that didn't appear the way that they did. It is something that goes on everyday and kids can be very cruel to those that don't fit the cool or popular image.