Tag Archive for Proportion

Other Complex Seating Arrangements

See text for explanation.

See text for explanation.

It is possible to create a highly influential seating arrangement when we wish to influence a particularly important, but as yet undecided individual. The first person or the main presenter (Pr) should sit head-on with the “object” in the face-to-face competitive position (Ob). This competitive position aligns the “object” with the person he most expects to object with. Next, we add an affiliate (Af) to the objects left or right, that is, at the casual corner position to act as a friend, or to their side in the cooperative position (Co). The subconscious effect can be powerful if the positions are matched with the outlooks they should hold. That is, the cooperative position should play the advocate against the competitive position in cooperation with the object, except (of course) showing a bias towards agreement with the competitive position.

The affiliate can also “bait” the competitive position and control the conversation by giving up relevant points without sounding pushy. This person can demonstrate ‘the other side of the coin’ and work through the dialogue saving the object from having to voice negative positions himself. This saves him from going through counterproductive mental reasoning that can prove a damaging exercise. Powerful negotiators can use the affiliate to blow the argument out of proportion thereby forcing the object to side with the competitor and bridge the original argument. Obviously this isn’t a simple strategy and requires some advanced preparation, but when it is an important matter it is justified, not to mention fun!

Verbal Language Is Confusing, Body Language Sorts Things Out

Body language makes the intent of a message much more clear.  This 'spear thrower' isn't interested in listening to your viewpoint.

Body language makes the intent of a message much more clear. This ‘spear thrower’ isn’t interested in listening to your viewpoint.

What proportion of communication is affected by the actual words versus how the words are used and the body language that it accompanies it? I don’t know of any real metric by which to calculate this, so it’s really anyone’s guess. Suffice it to say that the vast majority of communication and meaning has nothing at all to do with words. Body language in this case gets lumped in together with other signals such as tone, pitch and word emphasis whilst we subtract the actual words and their meaning. Take the phrase “Would you prefer to lie?” as an example. If I were to emphasize the word “would” it puts the emphasis on “you”, but if I put the emphasis on “lie” it puts emphasis on the action. Confusing things further and not privy to the spelling of “lie”, one wouldn’t know if I was speaking about telling the truth or “lying”, or taking a nap or “laying”. Emphasis is used to add meaning and emotion to our speech by stressing specific words and can completely change the meaning of the sentence. This can also be done by using a higher tone, using longer stressed syllables, or increasing the volume as we speak certain words. Even in the cases above I have used a nonverbal method to emphasis words by using the italics function, a feature of this writing program that arose out of necessity.

Going back to our previous example, we also have homonym’s which are words that share the same spelling and same pronunciation but have different meanings. An example includes the word “bow” which can mean to bend forward, the front of a ship, a weapon which fires an arrow, a ribbon tied in a knot (a bow tie) or to bend outward to the sides (bow-legged). Polysemes are words or phrases with multiple related meanings. For example “bank” can describe a financial institution that handles money or it can be used to describe trust as in “We’re friends, you can bank on me.” Antagonym’s are forms of slang that actually mean their opposite. Examples of antagonyms include “bound” for a direction or heading, or tied up and unable to move, cleave can be to cut apart or seal together, buckle can mean to hold together or to collapse, clip means to attach or cut off, and so on. Other time we use words to mean the opposites. “That skateboard trick was sick” comes across in slang as meaning that it was actually a pretty good trick.

While the myriad of definitions stemming from word-use might confuse you, don’t let it bother you too much because this is the only time it actually matters. In fact, body language is the likely reason our vocabulary is permitted to be so confusing and most of us have at least a rudimentary understanding about how our bodies and verbal language coincide to produce meaning anyway. The point of raising the dysfunction that peppers verbal language is precisely because confusing word meaning plays such a minor role in our lives. When we just don’t get it, in comes body language to sort things out and bring everyone back on to the same page.

What we are looking to accomplish in this book is a higher order reading of nonverbal language to graduate from simple word meaning to get at the hidden ‘script’ that unfolds ‘between the lines’, so to speak!