Different forms of communications. (Free Post)

As the saying goes, “It’s not about what you say; it’s about how you say it.”

Non-verbal communication is indeed a powerful way in expressing yourself. As all of us should have known by now that non-verbal communication involves sending a message to the receiver without words conveyed. Have you ever said something stupid to your other half and he/she merely rolled eyes without giving a verbal reply? Or have you ever told a bad lie to your mummy and she raised an eyebrow? Well, these are just typical examples of non-verbal communication which occurs frequently in our lives.

With some thought, I came to realise that non-verbal communication can be categorized into two different forms; intentional and unintentional. Well, which category of non-verbal communications do you think each of the earlier examples fall into? This, I would say is another story. It is psychology, which I do not want to delve into, especially when I am rushing my COMMUNICATION assignment. ): However, this little pondering that I just had did give me another realization; certain types of non-verbal communications can actually fall into both intentional, and unintentional. One of them would definitely be body language. In some circumstances, your body language does truly express your thoughts and feelings. For example, if you are one who is extremely afraid of the supernatural world, you will definitely cringe, or even scream loudly if you see a ghost. This is when body language falls under unintentional non-verbal communications. Such cases usually occur to children, whose adolescence caused them to be more self-centered. They therefore tend to not hide their feelings and whatever usage of body language would most likely be the true interpretation of their thoughts and feelings at that point of time. However, body language does fall into intentional non-verbal communication as one grows older. This is when maturity steps in, which complicates one’s character and thoughts. As one grows older, there will be more circumstances where his/her body language is not a true representation of his thoughts and feelings, as it could act as a tool to achieve certain purposes. For example, when a young man goes to a nightclub, his body language would suddenly become that of an “alpha male”. He may purposely walk at a slower pace or suck in his tummy in order to achieve his purpose; maximize his sex appeal. Such is an example of body language which falls under the category of intentional non-verbal communications.

During this time when different forms of non-verbal communication fill my mind, I suddenly thought of The Morse Code. It is a type of character encoding that transmits telegraphic information using rhythm and it uses a standardized sequence of short and long elements to represent the letters, numerals, punctuation and special characters of a given message. To me, it is a form of non-verbal communication as words are not being used to convey messages. And it definitely falls under intentional non-verbal communication. (You cannot “unintentionally” apply the Morse code?) The Morse code is definitely a very powerful and sophisticated way of communication and it is usually applied to achieve a purpose of huge importance. It is usually used to convey a secret message to another party.





From the movie, “Infernal Affairs”, the mole of the police force actually joined a particular secret society in order to spy on them. However, the method he uses to give out information of the activities of the secret society has to be extremely discreet in order not to put himself at risk. He can’t possibly just take out his cell phone and calls his superior in the police force, especially in the midst of certain dangerous gang activity. Therefore, he uses the Morse code to communicate with his superior and sabotaged the gang in many instances. That came to be very useful in many occasions of the movie. And eventually, not only did he manage to survive in the gang for a long time, he became the right hand man of the gang, trusted by the leader, and earned great respect from his fellow gang members. At 1:26 of the video posted, the Morse code is being used.
P.S. This is an awesome movie! A Must watch. (:


BUT, in the communication notes, it is written that non-verbal communication uses the right brain, while the application of the Morse code involves the left brain. However, again, the Morse code definitely does not involve any words. So is the Morse code non-verbal communication or verbal communication? Or is it neither?