Reading Body Language - Para Language

How words are pronounced is most important than their literal meaning. There’s strong relation between vocal and physical expressions - condition. We cannot pronounce words the way we want until everything required for same is perfectly combined or arranged - consciously or unconsciously. This is what we call as science of PARA LANGUAGE.

As like paying keen attention to visual clues while reading body language, listening to voice also gives insight of person’s emotional and physical state. Like making gestures by hand, we also modulate our voices depending upon different circumstances, conditions, and needs. The emotional and homeostatic processes are deciding factors for same.

Humans have very well developed system for creating different sounds and vary tone, volume and speed of pronunciation. Torso, throat, oral cavity, lips, jaws, tongue, rate of breathing and facial muscles play different roles altogether. Physical movements, level of energy, body mass and hormones also add to them. Kind of sound we create while talking is like a signature.

We can roughly co-relate the physical and mental state of persons shown in following images with kind of voices they would be interacting with.

Domination - A police officer talking in firm tone and uniform pitch would be standing upright, bluffing his chest, stiffening neck and perhaps putting hands on hips or holding them on back.

Exhaustion - A lady speaking in monotonous and sluggish voice (on telephone) might be physical exhausted, feeling sad or nervous, sitting alone and consoling herself.

Play time - A laughing, twittering and singing boy in joyous tone would be surely making merry, playing, jumping and dancing.

Gossip - Two colleagues whispering (behind your back) would be sitting close to each other and may not be making any gestures and meeting gaze with other.

Conflict - Yelling and shouting couple (at neighborhood) would be making aggressive gestures, clenching fists, bearing teeth, crossing hands on chests and fiercely gazing towards each other.

Convincing - A salesman buttering up your boss to place an order or sign a contract would be slightly leaning forward, titling his neck at once side and smiling.

Study of PARA LANGUAGE is most useful when we cannot observe somebody face-to-face.

Related Articles:

1) Basic emotional expressions 2) Body Language Brain 3) Reading Body Language - Clusters 4) Reading Body Language - Congruence 5) Reading Body Language - Proxemics  6) Reading Body Language - Context 7) Reading Body Language - Micro Expressions 8) Body Language - Common Postures 9) Body Language - Common Facial Expressions 10) Reading Body Language - Common Hand Gestures

Reading Body Language - Micro Expressions

By experience and age, people learn to control autonomous facial expressions, movements, and gestures with very micro and swiftly appearing give away. It’s just like a novice speaker trying to vent nervousness while delivering speech to large group of audience. We can sense tiny tremors, jerks or shift in tone of voice if we listen more carefully.

Why says I'm afraid?

Unlike normal or macro expressions, micro expressions appear and disappear within fraction of a second. Sometimes, expressions are miniaturized to keep them unnoticed. Unlike inexperienced or untrained observers, experts can instantaneously crack or zoom into micro expressions. Also, they can be monitored while running video clip at lower frame rate or watching photograph.

Micro expressions can bring surprising turns while interpreting body language because they are emotional outlets of actually what somebody tries to suppress or hide from others. Learned and volunteer control (cortical control) still let their trails appear as much as for 1/4 fraction of a second as per pioneer emotion and facial expressions scientist Prof. Dr. Paul Ekman (University of San Fransisco, United States). He and his colleagues have developed very reliable tool called as Micro Expressions Test Tool (METT) that let you learn and detect micro expressions online. You can test your skills by following this link that takes you to demo test. 

She killed her husband?

Interrogators and lie detectors mostly rely on micro expressions because smart liars can confidently make claims that ordinary people easily believe. A suspected woman arrested for murder of her husband boldly claims, "I really don't have any idea about him. I hope that he'll come back very soon". 

Husband? My foot...

While saying it, she turns contemptuous for fraction of a second. If she really cares about her husband then why she expressed hatred or disrespect? Something must be wrong in their relationship. Expert interrogator can possibly get her confession by asking serious questions.

 

No need to check time

In social environments, we can see people managing to cope with distressing moments by replacing clearly apparent expressions by their miniaturized versions. A veteran project leader in a software company slightly touches wrist watch but doesn't look at it while addressing to farewell party. Actually, he replaces “hands-crossed-on-chest” posture to defend himself from anxiety of somebody being hurt by his words unintentionally.

(Special thanks to Craig James Baxter (CJB), my friend and UK's leading Body Language expert.)

Related Articles:

1) Body Language Brain 2) Reading Body Language - Clusters 3) Reading Body Language - Congruence 4) Reading Body Language - Proxemics 5) Reading Body Language - Context 6)  Reading Body Language - Para Language 7) Body Language - Common Postures 8) Reading Body Language - Common Facial Expressions 9) Reading Body Language - Common Hand Gestures 10) Learning micro expression is really useful? 11) Watching chess players

Reading Body Language - Context

Like Cluster, Context makes nonverbal message more clear to understand. CONTEXT is an environment, background or situation according to which it should be interpreted. Without context, reading body language would drastically mislead us.

Let's see how an environment can give different meaning to an expression.

There are two different persons taking out their frustration following sequence of events – one person is standing in audience gallery watching a football match whereas another person is a senior police officer standing inside the police station with his colleagues. Both of them are in completely different environment to express their feelings and emotions in reaction to something. Context plays very crucial role in understanding what they want to convey actually.

Both of them suddenly yelled and smashed fist on palm. Smashing a fist on palm is taking out frustration over (unexpected) failure or shortfall – we punch on palm because we cannot punch anybody else for consequences.

A young football fan smashed his fist after watching an ace player misses the goal post during last few minutes of second half. He took out frustration because of expecting that his favorite team shouldn’t loose any opportunity to win over its opponent.

A police officer listens that a criminal who was arrested after a year long pursuit succeeded to escape from prison a few minutes ago. He smashed his fist on palm, yelling “Damn it!”. He took out frustration because all efforts he and his team took to arrest that criminal were lost suddenly.

Related Articles:

1) Body Language Brain 2) Reading Body Language - Clusters 3) Reading Body Language - Congruence 4) Reading Body Language - Proxemics 5) Reading Body Language - Micro Expressions 6) Reading Body Language - Para Language 7) Body Language - Common Postures 8) Reading Body Language - Common Hand Gestures