Communication: A Critical/Cultural Introduction, 2e Warren & Fassett
Chapter 8: Embodied Knowing and Nonverbal Communication
Lecture Outline
Chapter Summary
This chapter begins with a discussion of the body as site for knowing. In other words, we
use our body language to communicate who we are and what we know. The authors
discuss how we become who we are by defining and illustrating such concepts as
epistemic, epistemology, and body epistemology. Furthering these explanations is a
discussion of specific nonverbal communication: chronemics, kinesics, haptics, artifacts,
proxemics, and paralinguistics. The chapter closes with the impact of nonverbal
communication on our public presentations.
Chapter Goals:
Explore how the body is a site of knowing
Describe how the body can be a means of learning
Distinguish the types of nonverbal communication
Apply concepts of embodied knowing and nonverbal communication to your
everyday life and, specifically, to your public advocacy efforts
I. We use body language to communicate nonverbally through expression,
movement, and tone; nonverbal communication produces the body, as well.
a. The body is a site of knowing.
i. We learn through our bodies.
b. The body is a site of being.
i. We train and model our (and others’) bodies through cultural
participation.
c. “Body language” explores our nonverbal communication.
i. We use non-linguistic behaviors, such vocal inflections, gestures,
and space, to communicate.
II. We become who we are through our bodies.
a. Our bodies are epistemic.
i. We come to know through our bodies.
ii. The mind is part of the body and is connected in strong ways.
b. The study of “how we know what we know” is epistemology.
i. Epistemology asks us to consider how we know what we believe is
true.
ii. Truth is partial and incomplete, and our understanding of truth is
shaped and defined by the people who have bestowed the truth.
c. Body epistemology locates how we come to learn and know within our
flesh.
i. Our understandings of the world emerge from our ways of moving
through and discerning the features of the world.
ii. We are never objectively communicating the truth to anyone.
1. We are telling the truth as we understand it, as we
experienced it.
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Communication: A Critical/Cultural Introduction, 2e Warren & Fassett
2. There are multiple possibilities to any given situation,
audience, context.
iii. We must give attention to what our bodies are telling us.
iv. We are astute observers of other people’s “tells.”
d. Embodied learning points to the ways the body comes to know.
III. Our bodies and our identities are inextricably intertwined.
a. We perform our bodies in a variety of ways, such as repeated actions,
vocal habits, and external bodily manipulations.
b. Body-identity connection: Others “read” our bodies and our actions to
determine who we are.
i. Goffman suggests stigma is deeply connected to communication
about our bodies.
c. How we talk about and experience our bodies shapes our identities.
IV. Nonverbal communication is a type of “body language.”
a. It refers to the way the body speaks, without the use of words.
b. There are a variety of categories of nonverbal communication.
i. The study of how time functions as part of communication is
chronemics.
1. Chronemics spans a variety of areas, such as cultural,
organizational, and interpersonal communication.
ii. Haptics is the study of the significance of touch.
1. Touch can influence communication in familial, relational,
and power relationships.
iii. The idea that looks at how people use space to communicate is
proxemics.
1. A speaker can be perceived as a dialogic, credible,
concerned, and confident speaker if the distance – literal
and figurative – is lessened.
iv. Artifacts can be used to communicate a sense of self-concept.
1. Artifacts include physical items, such as jewelry, clothing,
cars, computers, and landscaping.
v. Aspects of our voices that modify how we say something are
paralinguistic qualities.
1. Some of the vocal variations we can modify are tone, pitch,
rate, and pronunciation, and speakers tend to modify these
characteristics in relation to context (e.g., storytelling to
small children or sarcasm used when talking to a friend).
vi. The study of Kinesics addresses our gestures, movements, and
facial expressions.
1. These movements include eye contact, nodding, and
waving hello.
c. Body Intentionality: Our bodies communicate
i. Just like verbal communication, our nonverbal communication
shapes our realities.
ii. Palo Alto Group – Axioms of communication
iii. One cannot not communicate
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Communication: A Critical/Cultural Introduction, 2e Warren & Fassett
iv. Others are reading the messages our bodies are sending
(intentionally and unintentionally).
d. Our bodies have implications for public communication.
i. It is important for speakers to acknowledge her/his feelings about a
particular topic.
1. Your body can help you make good choices.
ii. Our bodies can confirm or contradict our words.
1. Make sure your body doesn’t belie your message.
iii. Create a heightened awareness of how you feel when you
communication; become mindful of the body’s relationship to the
mind so that you can reflect and grown in communication contexts.
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