Você está na página 1de 4

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Vol. 4. No. 2. March, 2012

Paper presented at the National Forum on


"Social pedagogy: research, education, practice" (March 22-23, Moscow)

SOCIAL-PEDAGOGICAL PARADIGM OF THE CULTURE OF


NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION AMONG STUDENTS
rof. I. Akhyamova
Urals State pedagogical university Institute of social education, Yekaterinburg (RUSSIA)
ABSTRACT
The article is about social-pedagogical meaning of the culture of nonverbal communication among students
and the approach to its formation.
Keywords: the culture of communication, the culture of nonverbal communication, the functions of the culture of nonverbal communication, the means and stimuli of nonverbal communication, the formation of the culture
of nonverbal communication, nonverbal manipulation, social-pedagogical functions of the culture of nonverbal
communication.
1. INTRODUCTION
One of the most daunting and widespread problems of our times is the decay of the culture of
communication. We feel necessity to announce the social-pedagogical importance of the culture of communication
for globalizing society and for every individual.
Between XX and XXI centuries the society systems that are passing through different phases of social,
economical, scientific and technical progress, turn out to be in a single integrated social space and time, in
situations that demand close and constant cooperation. As a result, when the situation of communication becomes
wider than direct human contacts, when the social importance of the culture of communication remarkably
increases, but consistency and continuity of the transfer of cumulative cultural material to the younger generation is
lost, it becomes evident that the formation of the culture of communication among young people should have
social-pedagogical orientation.
The semantic community of people of different generations continues to get narrow, because there is no
integrated social-pedagogical space that would unite people. As a consequence, there is a difference in value
preferences, behavioral models and ways of self-expression. The general loss of value of the culture of communication, the inexorable decrease of its norms becomes even more complicated as every person brings their own
patterns and norms that they have adopted while acquiring social experience into their system of behavior and
communication with the world. Brought up in different ways (in every family there are their own ideals, their own
truths), young people may wrongly interpret other peoples and their own attempts to express themselves, that
consist in gestures, behavior, clothes, etc. The meanings of messages presented during the communication dont
always coincide, and it leads to the disturbance of interaction not only between older and younger generations, but
also inside these age groups (for example, between men and women, between representatives of different
cultures, ethnic and social groups). The mistakes in understanding messages are caused by the difference in
culture level, education, status, expertise and knowledge of life.
In the communication, based on the interaction of verbal (from lat. verbalis oral, spoken) and nonverbal
components, the nonverbal, not spoken components predominate and contain the most information the musical
intonation, sound, light and color form of the act of communication, its spatiotemporal characteristics, mimicry,
gestures and poses that support or replace words. From these different nonverbal messages people get
information and transform it into mental images.
Indeed, words are not necessary to draw a conclusion about a persons age, sex, status, role, nationality,
feelings, wishes and other features. The scientists call such nonverbal signs nonverbal means or the means of
nonverbal communication. Nonverbal means of communication are necessary, always important and primary,
concerning the moment of speech expansion by nonverbal component of communication. Nonverbal means of
communication are units of nonverbal language, nonverbal symbols, signs, used by subjects of communication,
that favor self-expression, information transfer and regulation of relationships in interpersonal and intersubjective
interaction. The brain recognizes nonverbal signs immediately and integrally, and, as a rule, without intermediaries,
bypassing consciousness.
The culture of human communication is acknowledged to be a foreground aim and value of social pedagogy
as a science and field of practice. The culture of nonverbal communication, based on the use of nonverbal means
and signals, as an integral part of the culture of communication, becomes apparent in human life activity in many
ways: in compliance of communicative qualities of personality with cultural norms of society, in taking into consideration the peculiarities of the situation of communication, in ability to organize and dispose the environment, in
predictability and social acceptability of nonverbal conduct. The culture of nonverbal communication can only partly

190 | PART B. SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Vol. 4. No. 2. March, 2012

be reflected in gestures, poses, facial expression. In fact, its a wide spectrum of cultures, united by peoples
sensual experience: visual, sound, chrono-proxemic, kinetic, olfactory, osmetic cultures.
The culture of nonverbal communication has huge social-pedagogical meaning for a person through the
whole life, and its especially important for young people. Besides the value-normative function, examined above,
the culture of nonverbal communication performs other functions.
The adaptive function of the culture of nonverbal communication facilitates orientation and adaptation of
young people in the visual environment that constantly influences us by stimuli (and the overwhelming majority of
them are nonverbal signals). The acceleration of the processes that take place in outer space causes the acceleration of the processes of individual adaptation. The mechanisms of processing environmental stimuli and the images
obtained from such processing act with gradually applied load. Modern younger generation, marching with the
times, needs to endlessly renew the system of images, to retrain and continuously change the approach, so that
they would keep the ability to adapt. In the past the older generation, adapted to relatively stable conditions of
environment, could keep the system of images for a sufficiently long time, but now the forced reduction of the
duration of all possible connections is one of the conditions of modern world.
Though external changes demand that young people should reach a new level of elasticity, not to be
forgotten, that the potential of every particular person to perceive the stimuli, collate them and form images on their
basis is also a physiological process, which means that it has a certain limit caused by hereditary factor. The
transcendence of individual abilities to perceive and analyze nonverbal information shatters sense organs and
results in superexcitation of consciousness and finally to a breakdown. Search for the most optimal and effective
speed of vital activity that would give them the ability to stay within limits of adaptability is a serious problem of
modern people. In such conditions the culture of the perception of nonverbal information as a part of the culture of
nonverbal communication, carrying an adaptive meaning, becomes essential for the younger generation. Its
necessary to develop deliberate preparedness for the changes that happen in life.
The social function of the culture of nonverbal communication consists in the ability to neutralize socially
unacceptable ways of interaction, states, attitudes (displeasure, aggression) and to present socially desirable
expressive masks (cordiality, attention, tolerance) to create a positive moral and ethical image for other person. In
the usage of encoded and uncoded signals in the process of communication the culture of nonverbal interaction
becomes apparent.
For example, though the sensory stimuli of natural environment are information messages, they are also
uncoded nonverbal signals. These messages werent created for the purpose of being transmitted to someone, and
the way people perceive them doesnt depend on one or another social code a set of stipulated signs and
definitions.
However, people also get encoded information messages from outer space. Encoded information is the
information that can only be understood by people who know the code. All the languages, including nonverbal
language are codes, and the information transferred by such language is encoded.
As the society grows and gets more complex, the number of codes for transmission of images from one
person to another increases. The comparative amount of uncoded information received by a modern young person
decreases respectively. In other words, today the most of our system of images is based on the perception of
information messages specially made by people, and not on the observation of uncoded phenomena (for example,
natural phenomena).
The adoption of the culture of nonverbal interaction becomes an effective social-pedagogical vaccination
against the virus of manipulation that has deeply imbued the present-day reality. The encoded information received
by a young person in post-industrial society is, as a rule, structured and edited. In addition, the transmission of
encoded information in proceeded by mass media, which means that the messages are skillfully composed and
preliminarily adjusted by PR specialists. Such preliminarily adjusted nonverbal messages contain maximum
amount of nonverbal information and serve the purpose of suggestion and manipulation. Any suggestion is directly
connected with management and manipulation of peoples consciousness and is a forcible entry into individual
mind, thoughts, ideas without direct participation of persons ego in this process.
It is well known that manipulation in people management is a suggestion that is proceeded by penetration
into psychic sphere without logical persuasion, i.e. without individuals active participation in comprehension,
acceptance or non-acceptance of somebody elses ideas (V. Bekhterev). Suggestion and manipulation are
executed generally by nonverbal means, by the flow of encoded information that bypassing consciousness has a
great influence on human sense organs sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste.
In the past, when people learned nonverbal languages, nonverbal culture of their society, they could use
them from cradle to grave, but today their relationships with nonverbal codes constantly change, becoming more
and more temporary. In other words, to stay socially successful, young people need to know nonverbal codes and
be able to orient and the culture of nonverbal communication helps them.
The culture of nonverbal behavior as another important part of the culture of nonverbal communication
performs the regulative function: it enables the personality to self-realize, reveal and fulfil itself, keeping within limits
of social values and norms. The culture of nonverbal communication manifests itself through the choices of the
whole range of actions that make young persons behavior socially successful, attractive. Its hard to imagine the
process of socialization and entering into the culture without such nonverbal masks.
How many people think about the culture of nonverbal communication? We have to state the presence of
considerable nonverbal incompetence in the modern world, and its also an unconscious problem of the younger
generation. In our times there is a cultural bias in favor of verbalization that is conducive to this problem. The
famous proverb is now said back to front: words, not deeds. This approach is demonstrated by those who have to
make the running in our society legislators, politicians at all levels, spokesmen. Forced verbalization and

Baku, Azerbaijan| 191

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Vol. 4. No. 2. March, 2012

narrowing of emotional sphere among young people, evisceration and poor development of individual nonverbal
repertoire, growing among users of social networks, especially among younger internet users. The minimization of
nonverbal messages sent to a real or imaginary interlocutor, connected with abilities (or, more exactly, disabilities)
of computers to promptly (as it is in real interpersonal communication) send nonverbal messages in their variety.
On the other hand, computers as machines cant read emotions and nonverbal signals of interacting people.
Nonverbal communication by means of computers is reduced to pushing buttons (that mean for example smile or
sadness). Young people get out of the habit of using and perceiving nonverbal means, signals and stimuli of the
environment in the context of real events with their diversity, they dont cultivate the culture of nonverbal
communication.
The formation of the culture of nonverbal communication as individual and always unique set of nonverbal
signs that people use in everyday life and that create their nonverbal behavioral repertoire spontaneously continues
during the whole life, and its connected with accumulation of nonverbal experience. The culture of nonverbal
communication is enriched not only by individual communication (the round of relations, situations associated with
emotions, social institutes that influence the communication) but also sociocultural aspect (intercultural and crosscultural connections).
As our images of reality change faster and faster, and the process of transmitting images quickens, these
changes affect the system of codes that we use. The languages also transform, and so does the language of
nonverbal communication that is changing considerably faster than before. Thus many gestures go out of use or
acquire new meanings, colors quickly lose topicality, music changes at an incredible speed. Inconstancy and fast
changes can also be seen in art. Today our society undergoes the times of divergence and ambiguity, sometimes
even confrontation of both individual and collective cultures of nonverbal communication.
The paradox is that even though the right-braining of thinking increases, the culture of nonverbal
communication of younger generation steadily decays, as there is no system of transfer of knowledge and
accumulation of intelligence in this field. No due attention is given to the formation of the culture of nonverbal
communication that would let people build effective interaction, purposefully using the necessary range of means of
nonverbal communication.
Its reasonable, useful and topical to purposefully influence the culture of nonverbal communication among
the most socially active, foremost, promising part of the population students - by pedagogical means. The
process of the formation of the culture of nonverbal communication among students will be successful if its
correlated with inner values, preferences, opinions, personal qualities, and is conducted in concordance with
expectations, demands, values, stereotypes and standards that are inherent in the society and culture in which
young person lives, and also if certain organizational-pedagogic conditions are created. These conditions are:
considerable intensification of communicative direction by actualization of the components of nonverbal communication in the process of education; the application of pedagogy to the educational environment by the expansion of
the range of means of nonverbal communication and their purposeful use in at material, emotional, mental levels of
the educational environment.
The result of the formation of the culture of nonverbal communication among students is modern young
person, who possesses the culture of value-mediated, sensible nonverbal perception, interaction, behavior and the
use of means of nonverbal communication in the activity on the basis of developed knowledge, communicative and
nonverbal competence.
The social-pedagogical direction of the process of the formation of the culture of nonverbal communication
is thus supported by the drive for the expansion of the borders of the significance of this culture for the society and
its members, who cultivate the changing system of human relations. The social-pedagogical paradigm is present in
the functions (value-standard, adaptive, social, and regulatory) that are realized by the culture of nonverbal
communication.

192 | PART B. SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Copyright of International Journal of Academic Research is the property of International Journal of Academic
Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the
copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.

Você também pode gostar