Communication covers a broader terrain than most of us
realize. Since language is one of man’s
most distinctive characteristics, we sometimes slip into the error of thinking
that all communication must be verbal.
Executives and administrators – whether in education, industry or
government – are especially prone to this fallacy. This, of course, is not surprising, for the
world is largely a verbal one.
To
persist in this narrow view of communication is folly. Yet few training programs escape such folly;
most of them ignore the entire range of non-verbal communication, the muted
language in which human beings speak to one another more eloquently than with
words. Spoken and written language can
be compared with blowing the trumpet with its throat open; non-verbal language
can be compared to music played with a mute in the horn. In the first place, the notes come out sharp
and clear; in the second, they may be muffled but certainly no less evocative. (Anyone who has ever listened to the muted
trumpet of Louis Armstrong or Jonah Jones can testify to this effect.)
To avoid the narrow view we must start by recognizing that man
communicates to his fellow man with his entire body and with all his
behavior. We shall not discuss verbal
communication; enough has been said about it.
Instead, we shall confine our remarks to muted language: the language of the eyes and hands, of
gesture, of time and of status symbols, of unconscious slips which betray the
very words we use.
Excerpt
from "Muted Language," by Prof. Andrew W. Galpin, University of Utah, The School Review, vol. 68, no. 1, Spring 1960, pp. 85-104, University of Chicago Press.
Illustrations:
Top
and Bottom: Masaccio, The Expulsion From Eden, Brancacci Chapel, Sta.
Maria del Carmine, Florence, 1426-27.
Center:
Judean desert limestone mask, pre-pottery neolithic B, circa 7th millenium B.C.
9 in. (22.8 cm.) long.
Jonah
Jones Quartet -- Jumpin' With Jonah (link).
