Non-Verbal Communication at Johnny Carino's

When it comes to non-verbal communication it’s not about what you’re hearing it’s about what you’re not hearing. Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. People send and interpret such signals subconsciously. Nonverbal codes are all symbols that are not words, including bodily movements, use of space and time, clothing, and adornments and sounds other than words (Pearson, 2010). According to the documentary Secrets of Body Language a History Channel documentary suggests that 93% of communication is non-verbal (History, 2009). My location for this assignment took place at Johnny Carino’s; an Italian restaurant here in Fargo. It was February 1st, Friday evening and extremely busy. It was warm, loud, and smelled of Italian food and garlic. Every employee seemed extremely busy and that’s when I took a closer look at one particular server. This server had two people she was waiting on that were from a different country. Their accent was thick and the server was having a hard time understanding. It was difficult reading her nonverbal cues, but once I started relating her cues to that of the examples in the textbook it was easier to understand. The first thing I started to notice was how her eye contact changed. According to our text “eye contact is expected. In nearly every communication situation consistent eye contact is viewed positively as a signal of confidence, warmth and attentiveness (Pearson, 2010).” Her eye contact was short after she couldn’t understand them. Verbally she was short, and seemed annoyed. The second thing I noticed was the paralinguistic features; the non-word sounds and non-word characteristics of language, such as pitch, volume, rate, and quality (Pearson, 2010). The overall features changed from friendly to frustration when the two people couldn’t communicate with their server. The volume changed from normal to loud, as well as the