Nabeel Akbar Mokal Sardar

How does Umberto Eco’s model apply to the encoding and decoding of nonverbal communication in relationships? Nonverbal communication is the act of sending and receiving meaningful information without using words. A substantial part of our everyday communication is via nonverbal means. Components of social skills include appropriate verbal utterances as well as a variety of non-verbal behaviors such as facial expressions, body position, posture, movement, hand gestures, paralinguistic cues and complex behaviors such as walking away or telling someone that you will call back and failing to do so[ CITATION Fic01 \l 1033 ]. They are not only used to lay emphasis on verbal communication but are also means of communication by themselves. However, on a scientific level, this process is much more complex. It involves encoding and decoding of the sent and received information. The subject of this paper is to understand the processes of encoding and decoding nonverbal communication in relationships and how Umberto Eco’s model applies to them. To fully understand the purpose of this study, it is essential to discuss the various types of nonverbal communication mediums that exist in detail. One such medium is facial expression. It is, arguably, one of the most significant types of nonverbal communication. Consider the importance of a smile in conveying your happiness or a frown in conveying your displeasure. Another is hand gestures. Deliberate and involuntary movements and signals can be seen in everyday conversations and can be used to emphasize on verbal communication or be used as a method of communication by themselves. The third medium is paralinguistisc. This includes communicating feelings and emotions through use of changes in tone, loudness, infliction and pitch in verbal communication. Another medium of nonverbal communication is the use of body language and posture. This includes actions such as crossing legs, sitting up straight and ‘walking with purpose.’ Also, communication through eyes is an important aspect of nonverbal communication. This includes staring, blinking, rolling eyes and other such movements. Another aspect of nonverbal communication is touch. It includes holding hand for re assurance, hugging for comfort, slapping for anger and other such actions that need physical contact. Last, but may not be the least, medium of nonverbal communication is appearance. The way a man is dressed, the way his hair is style, the kind of make up a woman has put on can all indicate the kind of mood the person is in. One thing to note is that the importance and frequency of use of these mediums may depend on person to person and tend to reflect personality and character. For example, an ambitious person may choose to be well dressed to work in comparison to other or a woman with self-esteem issues may choose to wear more make up than others. Also, usage of these mediums may reflect cultural, religious and social background. For instance two men holding hands in the Indian sub-continent is considered a sign of friendship while doing so in the UK may be perceived as a sign of homosexual interest. “Nonverbal behavior has been related, by at least one experiment or theory, to almost every conceivable aspect of the human condition, e.g., to the personality, psychopathology, cultural back ground, social class etc. Most popular for the theoretician and experimenter to test, has been the contention that emotions are expressed through nonverbal behavior”[ CITATION Ekm67 \l 1033 ] Some may ask, what is the relevance of these nonverbal channels of communication or how accurate are they in conveying the message? The answer is fairly simple. If signs are an external manifestation of an internal state, it makes no sense to inquire whether they are true or false, for if the internal state did not exist, the signs would by definition be absent[ CITATION Buc02 \l 1033 ]. The importance of nonverbal channels is underlined by Argyle (1975) and Mehrabian (1972), who have shown that who have shown that when the verbal and nonverbal channels conflict, much more weight is given to the nonverbal part[ CITATION Nol80 \l 1033 ]. This can be illustrated by two very simple examples in the form of questions – What will the receivers opinion be based on when the sender is using comforting words while using the eye roll movement? What will the receiver understand about the sender’s feelings for the receiver if a verbal promise is not fulfilled? Watzlavic, beavin and Jackson (1967) view the verbal component as carrying the basic content of the message, whereas the nonverbal channels carry the “relationship or command” part of the message, including the way a message is to be interpreted[ CITATION Nol80 \l 1033 ]. Therefore, it is not only an important but an essential component of communication in general. Now let us move on to the subject of encoding and decoding nonverbal communication. Encoding is the ability to send a message in such a way that the intention of the communicator is clearly recognizable in the message, and decoding is the ability to recognize accurate cues present in a message or situation[ CITATION Nol80 \l 1033 ]. The relationship between the two, in lay man terms, is that the sender is responsible for encoding while the receiver is responsible for decoding the information. Misunderstandings derived from the encoding process may be related to lack of social skill or lack of expressivity whereas, decoding can be affected by factors such as the attitude one has to the person with whom one is interacting, preconceived prejudices, mood or relationship history, and attitude of the topic being discussed, all of which can result in misunderstanding of the message[ CITATION Nol80 \l 1033 ]. Much of the existing research focuses on the sender’s ability to encode and transmit nonverbal information that can be interpreted by others and on the ability of the receiver to decode and understand information sent by others. However, there are conflicts in the existing studies about the nature of the relationship between encoding and decoding. They may be attributed to the process with which the study has been carried out. Studies that reported a negative relationship dealt with spontaneous facial expressions, meaning, that the subjects were unaware that their expressions were being recorded. Studies that reported the existence of a positive relationship, however, dealt with vocal and facial expressions that were enacted by the subjects on demand by the experimenter. Also, there were studies that showed no relationship between encoding and decoding. This may be because the magnitude of the relationship may be too small or the method of analysis was unable to detect it such as if the experiment sample was too small[ CITATION Zuc75 \l 1033 ]. One aspect to consider in the study of nonverbal communication is the role it plays in daily life and relationships and how relationships affect the ability to encode and decode messages. Often we see and hear the completely honesty, openness and communication are the pillars of all relationships – from marital to parental. Nonverbal behaviors, and particularly, expressions of support and caring, are as relevant to the development secure attachment bond between partners as they are to the development of a secure bond between caregiver and child[CITATION Nol05 \l 1033 ]. This is evident in all relationships including platonic friendships. If a husband is unable to communicate to his wife, his feelings and affections for her, she is likely to feel insecure about the relationship. One important social context for the development of nonverbal encoding and decoding abilities is what Bowlby (1969/1982) called attachment relationships—interpersonal relationships in which one person’s emotional security depends on another person’s sensitive, responsive support and caregiving[ CITATION Sch05 \l 1033 ]. So what is the relationship between encoding and decoding successfully and relationships? In terms of sensitivity or decoding ability, those who are secure in attachment should be relatively accurate in their decoding and sensitive to expressions of both positive and negative effects in comparison to those that are insecure, who are more likely to decode ambiguous messages in line with their biases. Attachment security/insecurity can also effect an individual’s willingness to express their emotions particularly emotions particularly in relation to discomfort and distress, and in relation to seeking support and comfort from others[ CITATION Nol05 \l 1033 ]. … This implies that the encoder’s perception of the decoder’s emotional availability and responsiveness are active factors in encoding. One of the strongest assumptions underlying the study of interpersonal communication is that nonverbal communication ability and relationship satisfaction are positively correlated[ CITATION Koe02 \l 1033 ]. The ability to confess love with a smile, to express care with a hug and to show support with a pat on the back play key role in improving the satisfaction of the people in relationships. A reason for this is that most relational information is not exchanged at the content level of the messages, rather it is contained in the nonverbal behavior that accompanies verbal messages and, therefore, the success of relational negotiation in which couples engage depends on decoding each other’s’ nonverbal communication[ CITATION Koe02 \l 1033 ]. A friend who is better able to decode his or her friend’s message is more likely to understand the friend and improve the friendship. This applies to all relationships, and thus, it is of the utmost important that the receiver’s ability to decode is developed. However, just decoding is not enough. It is also important to decode the reasons underlying the nonverbal emotional cues. One important differentiation that they need to make is if the nonverbal effect in the message reflects the sender’s feelings about the relationship or partner or if it is unrelated to the partner or relationship[ CITATION Koe02 \l 1033 ]. This is especially important in situations where the receiver only senses the sender’s discomfort, and there is no verbal proof of it, because misunderstandings may arise due to the inability to read and differentiate between cues relevant and irrelevant to the specific relationship. There are some questions that need to be addressed at this moment. Is a person good at decoding, necessarily, good at encoding? What psychological factors may affect the ability to encode and decode? In response to the first question, “No evidence was found, however, of a relationship between the ability to judge others and proficiency at decoding one’s own nonverbal displays. Further, those persons whose nonverbal behaviors were most easily discriminated by other were themselves relatively poor judges of the displays of others and vice versa[ CITATION Lan70 \l 1033 ].” In answer to the second question, one reason may be that a labile person or a person who associates pain and punishment with free expression may not overtly display emotion as he or she has learned to inhibit such displays of an extended period of time. Having discussed various aspects of nonverbal communication and developed an understanding of its key concepts, we can now move to the main question of this study: How does Umberto Eco’s model apply to the encoding and decoding of nonverbal communication in relationships? The spread of information and communication technologies and the advance of ‘new media’ characterized by the influence of media languages (multi-modality), the intervention of the user in the (text) interaction and, in more recent years, the consolidation of collaborative environments (web 2.0) have been reflected in the theoretical production of semiotics[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. So why do we study semiotics, an old discipline from the 1960s, in relation to ‘new media’ and communication today? The theory of semiotics may be old but it still may teach us a lot about the ‘new media.’ We cannot just throw away almost one hundred years of media research or, in this case, the long tradition of linguistics, semiology and semiotics[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. Semiotics, as many scholars believe, is not the ‘science of signs’ but a theory of sense production and interpretation. It operates with theoretical models of meaning creation and interpretation strategies. In other words, semiotics studies objects (texts, discourses) to arrive at processes (sense production and interpretation)[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. The theory of semantics embraces all cultural communication processes and provides a set of codes that govern the systems that makes these and other processes possible. Umberto Eco is one of the first names that comes up in the study of semantics and is a pioneer in the subject. He is known for introducing a division in semantics. He considered that semiotics can be studied from two perspectives. The first is known as general semiotics and considers psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy of language, anthropology and so on. The second approach, known as specific or applied approach, involves applying the concepts of the first approach to different phenomenon[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. Eco (1975) also defined two boundaries or thresholds for semiotic scientific intervention. The lower threshold is constituted by basic perceptual activity in which interpretation is still not fully developed; the upper threshold refers to cultural systems. In the first case, to understand these phenomena semiotics is confined to a dialogue with the psychology of perception, cognitive sciences and so on; in the second case, the main interlocutors are anthropology and sociology[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. This aspect of his theory directly compliments the processes of encoding and decoding in relationships as it implies that all forms of communications have limitations. These limitations, like in the process of encoding and decoding, are based on social, cultural, personal and even socio economic factors. Therefore, semiotic categories can be helpful for describing interactive micro situations or for studying extensive cultural issues in computer-mediated communication[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. This applies today as the amount of human interaction using computer as a medium is at an all-time high and continuously growing. At the end of the 1960s the first semiology, characterized by an automatic application of Saussure’s oppositions (significant/significate, syntagma/paradigm, etc.) to non-verbal systems, was almost exhausted[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. Today, the world and means of communication are as different from that in the 1960’s, as a car is different from a bicycle – both are means of transportation but use drastically different technology. Mass media existed back then and because of it being accessible across cultures and borders, it was gradually making semiotics redundant. In his book, Lector in Fabula, Eco broke the tradition of the theory of mass communication and theory of information – both models characterized by a lineal conception of transferring information – and refined a new proposal that included the following concepts (Eco 1979, 1984): Readers do not ‘decode’ texts: interpretation is a cooperative process in which the text’s author ‘provides something’, but readers must collaborate in constructing the meaning The text is the home of a conflict between the author’s strategy (model or implicit author) and the reader’s strategy (model or implicit reader) Texts are ‘lazy machines’ that need to be activated by the reader. When interpreting the text, readers apply frames or scripts to find meaning and make the text work Readers may interpret a text, but they may also over interpret it, ‘putting more than necessary to make it work. In this case readers are not interpreting but using the text (and opening the doors to Peirce’s unlimited semiosis) Eco proposes a theoretical mutation from the dictionary to the encyclopedia. While the dictionary is still based on code logic (one expression ¼ one meaning), the encyclopedia proposes a complex and networked model of semantic processes [ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ] Computer-mediated communication practices like virtual communities (Fraticelli 2004; Mascio 2003; Vittadini 2004), online museums (Piani 2003), online branding (Ferraro 2002; Marmo 2003; Scolari 2008a), web navigation (Cosenza 2004; Santaella 2004) and videogames (Bittanti & Eugeni 2004; Galofaro 2003; Maietti 2004; Scolari 2008b) have also been included in the agenda of recent semiotic research[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. These practices have, today, become a part of our daily routine and play an integral role in how humans interact with humans and even how humans interact with machines. As it (computer-mediated communication) can be easily transported from one text to another and as it is a unique combination of traditional semiotics and cognitive sciences, Umberto Eco’s theory of interpretation is behind many of these works[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. This, current, age is often referred to as the age of communication and information. Changes occur in technology, almost, on a day to day basis that change the way we live, the way we behave and the way we interact. Semiotics had to keep up with these changes in order to stay relevant. Even though semiotic engineering was developed in the 1990s, it is still anchored in ] Eco’s theory of codes and sign production as introduced in the Trattato di Semiotica Generale (1975)[ CITATION Sco09 \l 1033 ]. His theories and explanations regarding the transfer of information are relevant today not just in human to human interaction but also in human to machine interaction as he was able to define, in his day, the mechanics behind what factors affect perception and how members of groups based on demographic, socio economic, educational, geographical and behavioral factors perceive them even today. Bibliography Buck, R., & Vanlear, C. A. (2002). Verbal and Nonverbal Communication: Distinguishing Symbolic, Spontaneous, and Pseudo-Spontaneous Nonverbal Behavior. Journal of Communication . Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1967). Perceptual and Motor Skills. Southern University Press. Fichten, C. S., Wright, J., & Amsel, R. (2001). Verbal and Non Verbal Cues in Daily Conversation and Dating. Journal of Social Psychology. Koerner, A. F., & Fitzpatrick, M. A. (2002, March). 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