Demonstrative Communication Paper Demonstrative communication is a type of communication that observes nonverbal cues. With today’s technology many forms of communication continue to change on a day-to-day basis. We tend to rely on this for our main form of communication. We are living in a word where new forms of digital communication are happing almost every day. For example e-mail, instant messages, and text messages. Because of technology, we lose face-to-face communication that we have been used to: we can no longer observe the receiver and their responses or reactions to conversations. One would think that we spend most of our time talking, in reality we spend most of our time communicating non-verbally, or through demonstrative communication. Albert Mehrabian
(Menrabian & Weiner, 1967) discovered that 55% of the meaning people send is contained in facial expressions, 38% of the meaning is contained in voice and only seven percent of the meaning is contained in words. There are several ways we communicate demonstratively such as eye contact, tone of voice, facial expressions and gestures, personal style, use of time, use of space, and touch. Each of these are examples of a characteristic of nonverbal communication and can define us in a certain way, which that allows others to get to know something about a person from a distance, beyond the words we say. The most common forms of demonstrative communication, used by us, include body language, facial expression, and tone of voice. These nonverbal expressions can either emphasize what we are saying or contradict what we are saying. Many behaviors, such as a person is conversing to someone who had arms folded and presupposing he is just self-protecting. Actually, this may imply that they are just feeling cold or merely at ease. Telling an employee he or she did a good job on a project while simultaneously crossing your arms and rolling your eyes, your nonverbal communication may be contradicting your verbal communication. Tone of voice can change completely the meaning of a verbal message. This type of demonstrative communication could be referred as the Inconsistency Ad Hominem.” Sometimes a person’s claim seems inconsistent, not with previous statements, but with that person’s behavior. This type of reasoning, where we reject what somebody says because what he or she does”. ( Moore & Parker, 2009) An example would be an alcoholic telling another alcoholic to stop drinking and he responds as” you do too “. Many times we are completely unaware that our nonverbal communication is affecting the way that people perceive us. For example, some older adults may perceive “tattoos” on young ladies as a sign of lack of respect for their body or themselves that she is