Paralanguage

Paralanguage are the nonverbal elements of the voice. they could include laughing, crying, how intense a person speaks (such as yelling or whispering), pitch, and the ability to speak fluently (saying uh's and um's)

Though it has much to do with speaking paralanguage is actually nonverbal and could give away a lot. If I want to go hang out with my friends and my girlfriend tells me "Fine, go ahead" her actual meaning of that sentence could change drastically depending on the tone she uses and that is where paralanguage comes in. My girlfriend could say, "fine go ahead" with a happy tone to indicate that it is okay for me to hang out with my friends, or could give a sarcastic tone to indicate she would rather I not.

Or if I were to go up and present infront of class, if I stuttered my speech, using a lot of um's and uh's it could indicate to my professor that I may not know what Im talking about, or that I have practiced enough, or that I am nervous.

Below in this link, is a video to a scene from the TV show Scrubs the perfectly shows an example of paralanguage in aciton.

1 comment:

  1. Oh, I can so relate. If I tell my bf that i'm going to stay at my friends' place and he knows it's a guy, he won't even answer me with words if it really bothers him. He just goes, "mmm hmm... yeah, ok." or he says, "ohhh..." and stops mid sentence. I swear it gets so annoying, I just want to yell at him "if you don't want me to go then man up and say so!"

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