What Is Paralanguage? And How Can You Use It to Give Better Presentations?

We speak paralanguage when we gasp, sigh, clear our throats, change our tone, whisper or shout, emphasize certain words, wave our hands, frown or smile, laugh or cry, string vocal identifiers like un-huh and ah-hah between our words, or speak faster or slower.

Mehrabian suggested that when people speak to us, we absorb a mere seven percent of what they are saying through the words they use.

We derive 55 percent of the meaning from their body gestures and posture and physical clues, and 38 percent from the tone and inflections of the words they present.

We cannot trust our bodies to speak as one with our words. They will betray us, with breathless gasps, with hurried words that depict our nervousness, with incredulous expressions even while we nod agreement.

In our everyday communications, most of us use paralanguage as a kind of shortcut to delivering certain messages. We use our arms and hands to say good-bye, we encourage people to come closer by beckoning with our finger, we hold our hands up, palms forward, to tell people to back off, and we shrug to indicate we don’t know the answer.

In speeches, by altering our tone and using gestures, we can highlight what we are saying and emphasize what we want our audiences to remember.

The one thing that paralanguage does not do effectively is cross cultural barriers. Gestures that may mean one thing in Western cultures, for example, may mean something completely different in the Far East or Middle Eastern cultures.

If you make presentations, you need to be aware of the impact of your paralanguage. It’s a good idea to practice your remarks in front of a mirror, discerning your natural gestures and facial expressions and determining if they are augmenting your message, or detracting from it.

Read more here: http://blog.visme.co/what-is-paralanguage/

1. Paralanguage?
What is
And How Can You Use It to Give
Better Presentations?
we gasp, sigh, clear our throats, change our tone, whisper or
shout, emphasize certain words, wave our hands, frown or
smile, laugh or cry, string vocal identifiers like uh-huh and
ah-hah between our words, or speak faster or slower.
We speak paralanguage when
When people speak to us,
we derive 55 percent of the meaning
from their body gestures and posture and
physical clues, and 38 percent from the tone
and inflections of the words they present.
55% 38%
we absorb a mere 7%
of what they are saying
through the words they use.
7%
We cannot trust our bodies to speak as
one with our words. They will betray
us, with breathless gasps, with hurried
words that depict our nervousness,
with incredulous 
expressions even 
while we nod agreement.
most use shortcuts to delivering messages. We ask
people to come closer by beckoning with our finger,
we hold our hands up to tell others to back off, and we
shrug to indicate we don’t know the answer.
In our everyday communications,
In speeches,
by altering our tone and
using gestures, we can
enforce what we are
saying and emphasize
what we want our
audiences to remember.
The one thing that paralanguage does not do effectively is cross
cultural barriers. Gestures that may mean one thing in
Western cultures, for example, may mean something completely
different in Far East or Middle Eastern cultures.
Beware the culture caveat
Practice your paralanguage
If you make presentations, you need to
be aware of the impact of your
paralanguage. It’s a good idea to
practice your remarks in front of a
mirror, discerning your natural
gestures and facial expressions and
determining if they are augmenting
your message, or detracting from it.
Created With Visme
Based on the article
What Is Paralanguage? And How Can You Use It to
Give Better Presentations?
By Ashish Arora
BAD
But in the culture of Maasai
in Kenya, spitting on
newborns and brides is
considered a blessing.
Spitting on a person is
considered a sign of disrespect
and insult in the North American
and European cultures.
Tone & InflectionsBody LanguageWords
GOOD
http://blog.visme.co/what-is-paralanguage/