CJ Zimmerer
“Chapter
5 Nonverbal Communication: Kinesics”
:34 – 2:30
This
short clip from the famous cartoon series “Looney Tunes” is a simple yet very effective example of one
of the many types of nonverbal communication that are ever present in our
world; kinesics. Other than the sound of the Roadrunner’s “beep-beep” there are
no words throughout the entire cartoon. Even though it is a cartoon and is made
purely for entertainment and laughter it is easy to see some of the concepts
pointed out by Julia T. Wood in Interpersonal
Communication: Everyday Encounters.
Kinesics,
according to Wood (2010) “refers to body position and body motions, including
those of the face” (pg. 126). In the cartoon the Coyote exudes great confidence
and enthusiasm with his body language when beginning his “wily” schemes to hunt
down the escape artist Road Runner. But as the Road Runner continues to foil
the Coyote’s plans it is easy to see the mood of the Coyote change. He becomes
very dejected and seems to lose all hope as he continues to be crushed by
falling boulders and blown up by “ACME” bombs. The Coyotes begins to slouch,
show hopelessness in his eyes, and moves at a completely slower pace than in
the beginning of his schemes. One of the major nonverbal he gives us is in his
eyes and face. Just as Wood (2012) says “our faces are intricate messengers.
Our eyes can shoot daggers of anger, issue challenges, or radiate feelings of
love” (pg. 127). You can feel the
mischief in Coyote’s eyes and even more so the pain and despair once crushed
and blown up.
Even
though kinesics seems to be an ever changing form of communication, and there
are millions of ways that people communicate in this way there will always be
certain emotions, messages, and feelings that are easy to see like the Coyote
shows.
References
Wood, Julia T.
(2012). Interpersonal Communication:
Everyday Encounters. (Seventh
Edition) Boston, Massachusetts. Wadsworth.
You made the comment in class today that even though these cartoons rarely (if ever) say a single word, audiences can still understand perfectly well what's going on and how the characters feel. What I'm interested in figuring out is what it says about us when we can tell how downtrodden and discouraged the Coyote is feeling, yet we still laugh at him whenever an anvil is dropped on him or he falls off a cliff. It's all fine and well to react that way to a harmless mediated example, but what would happen if we did the same thing in real life? Is there a possibility that cartoons like this are conditioning us toward bullying behaviors without us even noticing?
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