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Guest Speaker: Dr Minghuan Chu “Encoding and Decoding Hidden Meanings in Face-to-Face Communication: Understanding the Role of Verbal and Nonverbal Behaviours in Indirect Replies?”
Dr Mingyuan Chu (Chu), University of Aberdeen
Encoding and Decoding Hidden Meanings in Face-to-Face Communication: Understanding the Role of Verbal and Nonverbal Behaviours in Indirect Replies?
Host: Professor Sotaro Kita and Dr Suzanne Aussems
Abstract: Effective communication involves more than encoding and decoding the surface meanings. In everyday conversation, we often need to express ourselves indirectly to save face of our interlocutor (e.g., “Well, I think they probably have a different sense of humour to you”). Research on indirect communication has primarily focused on the linguistic elements. However, little is known about the role of nonverbal behaviours in indirect communication. Considering that indirect communication requires encoding and decoding the hidden communicative intent behind the surface meaning of speech, nonverbal cues might play a crucial role in the production and comprehension of indirect messages. Furthermore, most existing studies have investigated the production and comprehension of indirect speech separately. Thus, the production-comprehension link of verbal and nonverbal behaviours in indirect communication remains poorly understood. To fill these knowledge gaps, we conducted 6 experiments to systematically investigate the role of verbal and nonverbal behaviours in the production and comprehension of indirect replies. Experiments 1 and 2 aimed to identify the unique verbal and nonverbal cues associated with the production of indirect replies. Experiments 3 to 6 examined the contribution of verbal and nonverbal cues in the comprehension of indirect replies. Our results showed that uncertain terms, discourse markers and head tilt were closely related to both the production and comprehension of indirect replies. Moreover, the extent to which people relied on verbal and nonverbal cues to comprehend indirect replies was context dependent. The more informative the verbal/nonverbal information was, the fewer types of nonverbal/verbal cues that contributed to the comprehension of indirect replies. .
