“Face” A rich source of communication

“Face”

A rich source of communication

By AROOSH MALIK

 The American heritage defines communication as,

“The exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, signals, writing, or behavior.”

There are different ways through which a person can communicate with others and face is one of them. The face is the “organ of emotion” and we try to read facial expressions to understand what others are feeling. . It is perhaps the most powerful “channel” of non-verbal communication. It provides vital clues to our own feelings and those of the people around us e.g. Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Fear, Anger, Disgust, Desire, Excitement, Confusion & Concentration.

Facial expressions are an important channel of nonverbal communication. So we can not refuse the importance of the expressions provided by face.  The role of facial expressions in person-to-person interactions remains substantial.

Messages of the face that provide commentary and illustration about verbal communications are significant in themselves. Facial expressions provide different mode for understanding the private, hidden side of the inner person, a side which may not be accessible in the form of verbalizations, actually face is a link between expressions and emotions and face does not always tell the right story.

Attention is some of the emotions conveyed by facial expressions. Such expressions may be intentional or unintentional, but much of the time our facial expressions are unintentional. Thus the face gives off clues as to our reactions of other people’s remark.

 It looks impossible to avoid expressions for certain emotions, even when it would be strongly desirable to do so. For example, when a person is trying to avoid insult to an individual he or she finds highly unattractive and shows a brief expression of disgust.

The face is used to complement verbal and nonverbal responses. Through it, every one can emphasize, magnify, replace, minimize or support the messages to each other.

The face is also an important channel of identity, friends and acquaintances can recognize us before a word is said. In addition, the face is perhaps the most important human art object.

Some people say that the face is the primary means of communication next to speech. It is because that we heavily rely on our facial cues in the talking with others to obtain feedback about how well our ideas are being received. Our facial expression changes constantly as we talk and these changes often are hard to keep up with.

The human face is a commanding, complicated, and at the same time confusing source of information. It is a multi-message system which conveys a variety of information that we want to share.