Feature Communication Articles
- Articles Index
- Become A Brilliant Conversationalist: Using Probing Questions Guide
- Credibility: Knowing The Difference Between "Understanding From The Outside" and Understanding From The Inside
- Finding The Sweetspot Between Overly Positive and Overly Negative
- Communicating With Or Managing The Overly Positive Or Negative Employee
- Are YOU A Social Media Bore? Probably!
- Why Is There So Little Questioning Used In Social Media Conversations?
- When The People Who NEED The Feedback Are The Least Likely To "Hear" It
- Why I Don't Thank People For Leaving Comments On My Social Media Content
- Gallery: Graphic Meditations On Verbal Abuse and Verbal Violence
- When And How Praise Can Be Toxic
- It's Not What You Say. It's What You Do NOT Say That Makes a Huge Difference with Conflict and Communication
- Focus On Communication In The 2016 Presidential Campaign
- Improving Communication Via The "Less Is More" Principle
- NEW Instructional Video: Delivering Bad News And Minimizing Backlash
Communication Topics
- COMMUNICATION HOME
- The Power of Language Tutorials
- Communication General Questions
- Assertive Communication & Listening
- Communication Styles
- Practical Communication Techniques, Tips, and Advice
- Communication That Creates Conflict - Eliminating Firestarters
- Communicating With Groups and Public Speaking
- Non-Verbal and Paraverbal Communication
- Social Media & Technology
- Communication, learning from goofs, gaffs, and oopsies!
Relatiionship Killer Crossword Puzzle
Challenge yourself and learn about destructive communication with this unique free puzzle.
Interested in SMALL BUSINESS?
Visit our newly revamped Small Business Resource Center to learn about starting and sustaining a successful small business.Featured - Relationship Rescue!
Special Help: Learn To Communicate With Even The Most Upset People and Customers
.
Bacal nails it! While more are messing with the entanglements of Customer Satisfaction which leads to no where...he addresses the specifics head on and focuses on the greater picture and ultimate goal of the Customer Experience which leads to Loyalty. Excellent job! (Macy in Oklahoma, 2013)
One of the best things I learned from this book is how to turn a negative experience into a positive one. Using the tools from this gem of a book I have calmed people down, turned bad situations into good, and kept customers who would have otherwise left us and written ten nasty reviews in their wake. It is so empowering to be able to do that, rather than feel awful and abused. This is a must buy, must read for people who work with customers day in and day out. Do it for your own sanity, and to help improve your own job performance and satisfaction! (E. Meehan, California, 2012)
Anyone who serves the public should have this book. It gives advice for everyone from the order taker at the fast food restaurant to higher level management. It also gives different techniques for different situations (ie retail store, office, call center etc.) I have only had this book for a few weeks and already I have improved my customer service skills. It's a wonderful tool. (Lisa S. NJ)
Available As Instant Download At
What is Paralanguage?
Paralanguage contains much meaning in our communication
All of us are aware that the meaning of what we say is contained, in part, in the words, or what we say, but that HOW we say things also contains powerful messages. The word, "Yes", for example, can mean completely different things (even in the exact same sentence), depending on HOW it is said.
The "how" something is said is referred to as paralanguage, which includes intonation, emphasis, word and syllable stress, and so on. Specifically, paralanguage can be broken down as follows:
Vocal Qualifiers
The non-technical term, tone of voice, means the same thing as vocal qualifiers. There are various things that can vary, and that affect our perception of tone of voice; increasing loudness or softness (of a syllable, word phrase or sentence) is one obvious one.
A second set of vocal qualifiers involves raised or lowered pitch, which can convey things like fear, anxiety or tenseness, or designate a question.
Third, there's spread register and squeezed register which refers to the spreading or compressing of the time interval between the pitches when one speaks.
Another is rasp, or openness, which has to due to with the muscular tensions in the larynx when someone speaks. A tenseness will result in a more raspy type of utterance for example, a kind of choked sound, while openness is the opposite.
Then there's drawling or clipping which is associated somewhat with accent, and whether the speaker is drawing out individual syllables or clipping them. This is most noticeable if you compare a native English speaker to someone who has learned French, or German first.
Finally, tempo can be increased or decreased. Speaking quickly tends to communicate urgency or a high emotional state. Slow tempos give the impression of uncertainty. It's worth nothing that interpreting all of these vocal qualifiers requires knowing the speaker's baseline communication.
Vocal Differentiators
This category of paralanguage refers to another way that how one says something can be influence by how it is said. Examples of vocal differentiators are crying, laughing and breaking, where breaking refers to speaking in a broken or halting manner. Clearly a phrase uttered by a crying person will mean something different than once said by a laughing person.
Vocal Identifiers:
These refer to the small sounds we make that are not necessarily words per se, but have meaning. For example, ah-hah, un-huh, and huh-uh.
All of these non-verbal (but tied to the voice) characteristics strongly affect how something is extracted by the other person, and how we interpret the words. They provide an additional context, and a very important one. The key here is that we need to understand that how we say things can be more important than what we say. When looking to diagnose conflict, always look at these to determine if the how is the cause, rather than the what.