Language is arguably the most prominent form of communication today, and has been so for many centuries now. Our dependency on sounds and voices is paramount to our understanding of meanings. However, we sometimes consider alternative means of communication, such as body language. The absence of voices can be at times as valuable as its presence. At a cultivated level of understanding between two people directly conversing, silence will be able to send messages that our languages hesitate with.
That isn’t to condone the saying that “words cannot explain this meaning”. Words, languages and our abilities to speak will always provide the right terms for our ideas. Yet it is at times when the alternative means are more eloquent that we come to misuse this phrase of our languages’ failure. Taking eye reading as an example of body language, it cannot be explicitly compared with language. Two distinct modes of communication can’t be evaluated on a single criterion. Hence, we are only able to compare modes of communication such as two languages, where one might for example allow the speaker less freedom.
Our ability to communicate through voices will certainly not be overtaken, but the assistance of others will make way for more sought-after meanings. Two globally known sets of emotions are fear and love and happiness and sadness. Happiness for example can certainly be detected through body language, often showing more meaning than someone saying that they’re happy. On the same token, fear can be seen through a person’s silence more boldly than a frightened person’s words. In times of high emotions, we often see people so overcome by them that they resort to silent communication, which shows a lot about its powerful ability to portray these emotions as opposed to non-silent communication.
However, those who are linguistically eloquent and cultivated will often find that non-silent communication will be more helpful. This is because only a selected few are capable of finding words in times where the average person will succumb to emotion. Fluent writers and speakers are viewed with high merit, and rightly so, due to the fact that they are capable of doing what most people are unable to do.
Although I’m paradoxically promoting other means of communication through language, the point is that the parallel use of our various sources will almost always provide better meanings. It will also allow the speaker more freedom and power in one’s speech, and that is why the world’s most famous speakers make use of their body language consistently.
