106 I Can Read You Like a Book R
verbal, communication. Ah,hmmm,ick,ewww,yuck, and uh are a
few of them and roles they play in communication can vary:
ƒ They change the pace of communication.
ƒ They fill otherwise dead air, but don’t necessarily tell
you much. Watch eye movement, hands, tilt of the head,
and so on to find out if the utterance is an expression of
visualizing, disgust, confusion, creation, and so on.
ƒ Depending on what vocal quality you pick up—
strident, lyrical, coarse, breathy—you will get a sense
of the person’s emotions.
In reviewing body language, you will also pick up utterances
that relate to tone or pronunciations that seem abnormal to you.
These can be subtle aspects of speech that give away information
about a person’s port of origin. I don’t mean a full-blown Boston
accent or my Georgia-boy style of talking, I’m referring to the way
many Northern Americans and Canadians pronounce “ou,” and the
way people from Pennsylvania Dutch country have a tendency to
go up in pitch at the end of a sentence and down when asking a
question. If you pick that up, you have an extra clue about sub-
cultural influences: If the person lived in that area, or with people
from that area long enough to pick up such a regionalism, then
chances are good that the body language shows it, too.
The impact of disability
With disability comes an adaptation of human behavior in the
same sense as adapting to a new culture. Communication may take
