Real Communication An Introduction

Can you tell a compelling, believable, and heartwarming love

story in just four minutes—without using any words? The Academy Award–

nominated Up does just that (Docter & Peterson, 2009). After opening with a

simple meet-cute between young, quiet Carl and adventurous, talkative Ellie, the

sequence that follows offers a montage of life moments, explained simply and

graphically: they express affection by holding hands and devotion by the cross-

my-heart gesture of their childhood. Their dreams of children are symbolized in

visions of baby-shaped clouds, and as those dreams are crushed, their grief is con-

veyed by Ellie’s silent sobs and Carl’s quiet gestures of comfort. As the years go by,

their plans to travel are shown with paintings and brochures; the financial strug-

gles that thwart them are explained in tiny vignettes that detail home repairs,

car troubles, and medical bills. Relying entirely on nonverbal behaviors—

beautifully crafted and rendered by the artists at Pixar Studios—and set to a

mesmerizing musical score, the sequence manages to clearly convey the events

and emotions that shaped these two characters’ decades-long romance, as well

as Carl’s loneliness and isolation after Ellie’s death, without a word of dialogue.

The filmmakers at Pixar were no strangers to near “silent” films—their

previous offering, the equally stunning and compelling WALL-E, included virtu-

ally no dialogue for the first forty minutes, in what the British newspaper The

Independent called “a masterclass in non-verbal communication” (Quinn, 2008,

para. 7). During those scenes, the film not only managed to create compelling

characters out of a pair of robots and a lone, unspeaking cockroach, but also to

explain a fairly complicated story line of environmental devastation in a simple,

accessible way.

chapter

Nonverbal

Communication

4

The Nature

of Nonverbal

Communication

Functions of

Nonverbal

Communication

Nonverbal

Communication

Codes

Influences on

Nonverbal

Communication

IN THIS CHAPTER

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