(6165-Communication) Nonverbal Communication

For this assignment I chose to watch, “The Millers” as this is a television show that I am not familiar with. It was quite challenging to get a grasp of the characters and their relationships not having any previous background knowledge as well as not having the ability to hear what they were talking about and only relying on what I could see. The show began with two people entering what I assumed to be an open house. I was not sure of the relationship of the two people, but based on the picture, I assumed it was a mother and son. The agent walked over to them and said something that made them both laugh. This gave me the information that something was funny, but I did not know the context of what she said that made it funny. After the mother and son left the open house, they went to a different house with other characters who I assumed were other family members. I assumed they were family as there was what looked like a mother, father, son, daughter, and granddaughter. There were a lot of things that were going on that I could not keep up with, but I knew from their body language and facial expressions that they were happy, at times confused as eye brows were raised, and something bad must have happened as arms were crossed. In the next scene, the mother and son were sitting in someone’s office. I could not tell you who the character was, but it must have been someone of authority as he was sitting at a desk. During this time there was laughter and the son seemed to feel a bit uncomfortable as his body language was indicating this. The next day, the son went back to office, but this time he was acting flirtatious and the man at the desk seemed surprised and awkward with how this person was acting. The man at the desk walked over to him and they began to talk and they looked at each other with mischievous eyes making it seem like they were scheming something.  The next day, you could tell that they were getting ready to play out their scheme and you could tell by their nonverbal communication that it was not going well.

After watching this episode again, but this time with the volume on, I was able to get a better understanding of the different relationships between the different characters as you could hear the words such as; mother, father, sister, friend, director of senior's living, and boyfriend. The volume enabled me to get the context of why there was laughter, awkwardness, embarrassment, anger, and frustration between the characters. Having the ability to hear them talk let me know that the son and the man at desk did in fact have a plan, but now I knew what the plan was about and how it was going to play out. There were times when I was watching without the volume that it looked like two of the characters where yelling at each other, but once I was able to hear what transpired, they were actually excited about something. The show is a lot funnier with the volume on!!! J

If I was watching a show that I was very familiar with such as Modern Family it would have been much easier to make better assumptions as I would have background information on all the characters and their relationships. I don’t think that it would still be easy to know exactly the context of their conversations if I could not hear the dialogue between the characters, but I would have a better understanding as I am more familiar with the characters and their personalities.

This assignment reinforced within me how important our listening skills are so we can ensure that we are getting the correct information and messages. Although some of the assumptions that I made were correct, it is probably not best practice to only rely on nonverbal communication. We need to use all other forms of communication to help us decipher what is being communicated more effectively. Nonverbal communication such as body language may give me some information, but we should not rely solely on it as it does not give the whole picture of what someone may be communicating. If we only rely on nonverbal communication then miscommunication could arise which could then result in mixed messages or conflict.