nonverbal comm from movie

Stephanie Mott
COMM 324
Assignment #4
9/28/09
Tess and Jane are sisters. Jane has liked her boss, George, but has never told him. Tess moves in with her sister and meets George at Jane’s work party. Tess and George start dating and George asks Tess to marry him. Jane has been planning a wedding for her sister Tess. Kevin is a reporter for the newspaper and he has been flirting with Jane (Tess’s wedding planner) as he has been developing the article. Kevin discovered while visiting the wedding party to develop the article that Jane is in love with the man Tess is going to marry. Jane denies it and after the wedding they go their separate ways. Jane discovers that she thinks she is falling in love with Kevin after this while Kevin is at work covering his last wedding. So she finds out where it is and it turns out it is on a boat. So she goes on the boat to tell him how she feels.


Kevin is talking to people on the boat and he has his back toward the microphone where Jane is about to speak. Jane and Kevin are about 30 feet from each other. Janes says Kevin first and last name into the microphone. Once Jane and Kevin physically find each other, they make eye contact through the whole encounter unless they need to break eye contact to see where they are going.

When Kevin hears his name, he turns his head back about 90 degrees and squints for a second to see where the noise came from. As he is squinting he also opens his mouth about a half a centimeter. When his head has moved about 90 degrees in the opposite direction to the people that he was having the conversations with a minute before he seems to turn his head back in the direction of the people he was talking to (make a very small and quick jerk to the right) and then slowly continues turning his head and body to the left toward Jane. It looked like the person that was across from Kevin in their conversation was letting his head move by gradually releasing his head from a piece of string and then once Kevin realized it was Jane the person that was releasing the string started pulling the string towards themself causing Kevin to make a small and very quick girk jerk to the right with his head and then the person releases the string again and he starts moving his head to the left toward Jane again.

Simultaneously, he turns his body halfway around so that he his full chest is facing toward her. As he turns around he keeps his hands at his sides. As he turns his head around his facial expressions change more than once. His eyebrows go up vertically and this forms a crease about a half inch above his eyebrows, his eyes expand, his chest expands a little bit, his body leans slightly back, his head leans noticeably back,

As he turns he opens his mouth about an inch and then starts to close it. But instead of fully closing it, he says “Oh my God”. He says it slowly and sort of in an ominous tone. Then he walks about four steps and two feet toward her. Next he holds his right hand up so that the bottom half of his right arm is fully extended and his hand is parallel to the side of his head. He smiles with his mouth closed so that dimples form on both sides of his cheeks and a circle indentation forms under his eyes. His eye pupils move to the right, left and then back to the middle and then he puts his hand down.

Jane looks excited and embarrassed when she realizes that he is paying attention. She looks excited become she moves her shoulders and back behind her so that she is standing up straighter. She smiles which makes her look excited but it is not a genuine smile so it makes her look embarrassed too. She has her hands clasped in front of her. Her voice is in an average person’s volume but it sounds fragile. It sounds fragile because her voice is constantly stopping and starting during her first five words. As she says her first five words most of the words either sound like she is starting to laugh when she says them or at the end of the word her voice becomes noticeably lower.

Kevin’s facial and body expression change after Jane starts talking to him. It looks like he makes one sigh because he moves his shoulders and head up and down once. His mouth opens so that there is about a centimeter between the top and bottom lip. His cheeks are the opposite of being puffy like a babies. Is that called sunken? His eyes and eyebrows move closer together. From the angle that I am seeing him at it looks like the start of one of his eyebrows is connected to his eye.

Jane still looks embarrassed because she is smiling every time she is not talking but it doesn’t look like a genuine smile. When Jane starts saying complete sentences, she lifts her shoulders up so that her hands are no longer clasped together but instead are less than one inch apart and are formed into fists. Before Jane says the next statement she looks like she is going to sigh because she looks like she is taking a breath and lifts her shoulders up and then back down but she starts the next sentence instead of sighing. This make her seem like she is in a nervous state. When she says she “I didn’t want to hear it”, she shakes her head to the left and right about a half of an inch. When she says “He was right about all of it” she moves her head back slightly. In addition, when she says these two statements she moves her left hand that is in a fist to the left and her right hands that is in a fist to the right like she is pulling on a piece of rope. This makes her seem nervous and slightly embarrassed. She is fidgeting her head in different directions which makes her look nervous and embarrassed.

Once she says this, Kevin changes his facial expression. He looks surprised. He looks happier because his face looks like it has more color. His cheeks look less sunken/more puffed out. His eyes and eyebrows are about their normal distance apart.

23 1:38

As she is trying to start her next sentence, Jane moves her head to the
Then a bubble spot gets put on Kevin.


Kevin starts walking toward her (probably at the rate of about one step per second) and



Face
Eyes Rapid opening of the eyes
EYEBROWS raising of eyebrows
Mouth opens rapidly, jaw drops, teeth about an inch apart
all of these appearing is relatively rare what is most common is just slight raising of the eyebrows

Posture
Backward head and torso leans
Straight forehead with raised arms


EMBARASEMENT
A large portion of the nonverbal behaviors that display embarrassment are analogic requests for forgiveness used to retain dignity in embarrassing circumstances (Andersen 157). Some behaviors are planned to maintain dignity (Andersen 157)