The Importance Of Verbal Communication

1531 Words7 Pages
Before radio was invented, the only form of mass communication was done through writing with books, letters and newspapers. Meaning that politicians that were ugly and very poor speakers like Abraham Lincoln, could only be successful if they made a good enough print copy. Then, the radio area gave an easy entry to success to people like Winston Churchill, who had a good command of the spoken word but would have struggled in today’s visual area. Politicians of the 21st Century understand that in politics, image, appearance and the way they present themselves are important so they hire body language consultants to help them come appear as more honest and caring, even when they are not. The quote mentioned above is what high-profile politicians, actors and successful spokespeople use in order to prepare themselves before going in front of big audiences and also, what is the most common sentence used in body language and public communication books. This phrase was the result of a study made in 1950s and backed up by research made on the years to come. They conducted that the “total impact of a message is about 7% verbal and 93% nonverbal (38% tone of voice and 55% body language)”. (Pease, A and B, 2004) But in order to better understand how this works, we need to explain how verbal and nonverbal communication work separately and how they generate meaning when put together. Verbal communication is the act of sharing information, ideas, thoughts and needs using words of a