Voice professionals' non-verbal communication: what has it been researching in speech language pathology?

ABSTRACT

Non-verbal communication is part of communication and regardless intention, is always present. According to some authors, expressiveness may influence over 90% of a dialogic relationship. Each gesture or look is valuable source of information about the emotion while communicating. Speech-language Pathologist (SLP) is the professional that must seek all aspects of communication, verbal and non-verbal, altogether. Literature review was performed among the years of 2005 and 2015 in the main national SLP scientific periodic: Revista CEFAC, Journal of Communication Disorders - DIC, Pro-Fono - Revista de Atualização Científica, Journal of the Brazilian Society of Speech, Codas, Journal of the Brazilian Society of Speech Pathology and Audiology Communication Research - ACR. The SciELo - Scientific Electronic Library Online - was the platform used to look for the voice papers. 342 voice papers were found. 176 were about voice professionals and, from these only eight addressed non-verbal communication. From the eight, three were about radio and television professionals, two about teachers, two about actors, and one about college students. Despite the importance of non-verbal resources in communication, there are few SLP publications on non-verbal communication and voice professionals.

Keywords:
Nonverbal Communication; Communication; Voice; Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

RESUMO

A comunicação não verbal é parte da comunicação e está sempre presente de maneira intencional ou não. Pode influenciar, segundo alguns autores, mais de 90% a expressividade na relação dialógica. Cada gesto, cada olhar é uma valiosa fonte de informação sobre a emoção que acontece no momento da comunicação. Como o fonoaudiólogo atua com a comunicação, para um trabalho efetivo ele deve procurar trabalhar aspectos da comunicação não verbal e verbal, sempre associados. Foi realizada uma revisão de literatura entre os anos de 2005 e 2015 nas principais revistas científicas, nacionais, da Fonoaudiologia: Revista CEFAC, Revista Distúrbios da Comunicação - DIC, Pró-Fono - Revista de atualização Científica, Jornal da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia, CoDAS, Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia e Audiology Communication Research - ACR. A busca pelos números e a análise das publicações sobre voz de todas as revistas foi feita dentro da página da plataforma de busca em saúde Scientific Electronic Library Online - SciELO. Foram encontrados 342 artigos sobre voz. 176 eram sobre profissionais da voz dos quais apenas oito abordavam o tema comunicação não verbal. Desses, três se referiam aos profissionais de rádio e TV, dois artigos sobre professores, dois sobre atores e um sobre estudante universitário. Observou-se que, apesar da relevante importância da comunicação não verbal no processo comunicacional, não há muitas publicações fonoaudiológica sobre não verbal e profissionais da voz.

Descritores:
Comunicação Não Verbal; Comunicação; Voz; Fonoaudiologia

Introduction

Whether implicit or not, the non-verbal communication is always present. They represent communication signs that are not said, composing the non-verbal language, highly efficient in human communication¹. Some authors state that non-verbal communication is 93% of the expression possibilities in social interaction. Voice (intonation, grunt, hesitation noise, pronunciation, cough, sigh caused by strain) is responsible for 38% of opportunities, and body silent signs, as gestures, look, posture, facial expression, and body features, are responsible for 55%^2,3.

Non-verbal resources are powerful communication tools on the communication process and may positive or negatively influence the speech. Non-verbal language may reveal communication relation exposing truths, reinforcing ideas, favoring or not the comprehension, and emphasizing the communication. Sounds, gestures, facial expressions, body motion, art, and connotation symbols are expressions of non-verbal language⁴. The body language observation may reveal one's personality. The face reveals information, eyebrows may indicate surprise, suspicion, doubt, and may indicate people's personality ⁽⁵.

Speech-language pathologist (SLP) is the professional specialized in human communication and due to the close relation to the fields of Medicine and Education has their career focused mainly in rehabilitation. The work of rehabilitation and vocal health carries the heritage of a clinic-organicist practice closely linked to therapeutics in relation to health / illness (presence of the disorder) or to prevention aimed at minimizing its onset^6). Somehow, this type of vision has been guiding SLP therapeutic reasoning even with SLP clinic and the growth of training and communication improvement work.

On the other hand, we know that it was with the accompaniment of the voice professionals that the consultative work began as a practice for the improvement of the human communication. In counseling, voice is considered in two ways: as a work instrument that, and as such, lacks care and as expressiveness as factors implicit in vocal production that are important in the interlocution with people^7).

Voice is the work tool of these professionals and it is only a part of communication. Expressiveness has been allowing SLP work with non-verbal communication in specific contexts. To work with expressiveness means to cultivate at the same time verbal communication (text contend, written language), voice resources (voice, articulation, intonation, speech rate, pitch, loudness, resonance, and prosody), and non-verbal communication (gesture and facial expression) ⁽⁸. This type of work fits as complement to the training of professionals using body expressivity, art or media.

Singers, actors, radio and television professionals receive training and guidance while working on the importance of expressiveness, and the role of verbal and non-verbal communication. The SLP advisory work with singers, actors, and journalism professionals is without a doubt improved, however, in the SLP clinic, it is still used the adequacy model⁹. Despite the announcement of expressivity, SLP insists in training abilities on the clinic practice.

To learn how to divide the communication responsibility to non-verbal requires training and practice. There is relation between voice and body gestures that follows the oral message, but when they are not compatible to the speech or simultaneous, there might be a conflict in the message, however this tool is not used while working with high voice demand professionals¹.

It is necessary to improve non-verbal skills in voice professionals, clients, and people, during coach, clinic, habilitation, and re-habilitation. In the attempt to show non-verbal communication as object of SLP practice the purpose of this study is to search in the literature and analyze SLP papers about non-verbal communication and voice professionals.

Methods

This study is based on the search of papers in literature. Because this is a literature review, it was not necessary to submit the study to the Ethic Committee approval. Literature review was performed during 2016, March 5^th through 10^th. The main SLP scientific periodic, from 2010 January through 2015 December, were consulted. The selected periodic were: Revista Distúrbios da Comunicação - DIC, Revista CEFAC, Pro-fono Revista de Atualização Científica, Jornal da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia - JSBFa, CoDAS, Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia, and Audiology Communication Research - ACR. The platform used to research was Scientific Eletronic Library Online - SciELO.

All the issues from 2010 through 2015 of the periodic were consulted and the titles, abstracts, and full article if needed (introduction, methods, results and conclusion), were analyzed. At first, title was analyzed and selected the ones that had voice as theme. Secondly, based on title, the papers about voice professionals were selected. Thirdly, still based on title, papers about expressiveness or voice professionals' communication were selected. Therefore, after analyzing the abstract, papers about non-verbal communication were selected. Selected papers were in database and classified by title, publication year, periodic, volume, issue and abstract.

Figure 1:
Analysis and evaluation of found articles' research chart

Results

171 papers were analyzed in all the periodic. The distribution per periodic was 33 papers in DIC - Distúrbios da Comunicação, 53 in Revista CEFAC, 21 in Revista Pró-fono, eight in Jornal da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia, 18 in CoDAS, 24 in Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia, and 12 in ACR.

Table 1:
Number of periodics and papers researched between 2005 and 2015 classified according to year and periodic

In the first phase of literature review, analyzing the title in periodic index, 342 papers were about voice and 176 were about voice professionals.

From the 176 papers found, 18 had professional communication and/or expressivity in the title. After analyzing the abstract, the number of papers about non-verbal communication and voice professionals decreased to eight. Excluded from the sample were the publications that were not about non-verbal communication or expressiveness, published outside the time range determined in the research, foreign publications or publications about the theme that were produced by other field than SLP. From the final eight papers about communication and voice professionals, three (37%) were about communication in radio and television graduation^10-12. Two (25%) were about non-verbal communication and teacher^13,14, two (25%) about non-verbal communication and actor^15,16, and one (12.5%) about non-verbal communication and college students communication performance¹⁷.

Table 2:
Number of papers about voice in the last 10 years in the SLP Brazilian periodics

From the eight selected papers, six (75%) were published in Distúrbios da Comunicação periodic in the following years: three in 2014, two in 2013, and one in 2010. One paper was published in Revista CEFAC in 2010, and one in ACR in 2014.

Three from the eight selected papers had as theme verbal and non-verbal communication in television journals, two were about actor expressivity, other two about expressivity of college teacher and one about Law School students' expressiveness. Any paper talked about non-verbal communication exclusively. The selected papers were about expressiveness and non-verbal communication within it.

Figure 2:
Chart having the papers about non-verbal communication classified by year and periodic.

Discussion

Several authors from different fields of knowledge have been studying non-verbal communication for over ten years, Education^13,18, Health^19,20, Psychology²¹ and SLP^22,23 for instance, researching about the body language, feelings expression, and non-verbal in autistic subjects.

Nursing was the field that most published about non-verbal communication and embody the concept to professional practice. The publications are non-verbal as health care^24-27, palliative care^28,29, intensive therapy centre^30,31, non-verbal of elderly facing pain^32,33, non-verbal of blind mother and the baby^34-36.

Non-verbal communication could be considered as a work tool, and it is important that SLP do face it as one, embrace its specificities and apply it to all interventions. Voice practice, whether therapy or coach, usually works with voice quality, intelligibility, projection, and articulation, features that are responsible only for 38% of communication process.

Voice area has been transformed through the years. Voice professionals practice field is broader, but still close related to rehabilitation. On the voice clinic practive there is still the tendency to break up and reduce voice to parameters and features that are able to be regulated, controlled and disciplined, as pitch, loudness, speed, body posture, and resonance focus for instance. To this organismic heritage, the focus is frequently in voice, as tool and issues related to voice production, disturbances, improvement and/or heal³⁷. This tendency does not take in account the integrity, dynamic and complexity of voice production and the relation to interactive context, for instance. This literature review showed more than half of papers (10 to 18) with expressiveness in the title did not talk about non-verbal communication. Expressiveness, at first close related to oral communication, have been broader embodied to SLP practice with voice professionals, but the publications are still focused on oral expressivity.

Seeing things is as important as hearing them. As the word or phrase, gesture is part of communication resources used by the human being to express emotion³⁹. Emotions determine quality of life. The author reports the presence of emotion in all relationships as job, friendship, family interactions, intimacy, and teacher-student relationship. Regarding teachers, while extending expressiveness to non-verbal communication, teacher may improve the relationship with students, because the gesture or movement may be valuable source of information about emotion and the others' feeling for the moment.

Teachers, telemarketer, religious leader, high voice demand professionals are frequent needing care and searching for SLP clinic, and often need voice rehabilitation. Teacher expressivity, as media and art professionals, may complete communication performance, decrease voice waste and keep students attention¹³, and can so on.

The authors of the current study understand that while working with expressiveness they are dealing with verbal and non-verbal communication. It means to work broader communication, to include all responsible features in human communication. About non-verbal, the others' body language awareness and the ability to understand it create the persons own body language and provides more self-control and more efficient communication process⁴⁰.

The SLP is going to work with non-verbal language when recognizing body signs of emotions and the signs of art patients/clients (singers, actors, broadcasters, journalist), as the high voice demand professionals (teachers, telemarketers, salesperson), and other voice professionals (speakers, lawyers, politicians, etc). Their work with non-verbal communication is going to happen when seeking in the other body signs of communication: things said, meant, readiness to listen the answer and build the relationship¹. To every person and communicator, whether therapist, voice professional or not, is crucial to know and recognize the talker (student, public, viewer, audience, patient, client) and to establish empathy.

Therefore, this literature review is useful to reflect field features and to point out the need to produce studies about non-verbal communication, especially about the inter-personal communication of voice professionals. Thus, it is going to be possible to enlarge empiric and scientific knowledge about communication skills in this specific context. The importance of SLP act to discuss the non-verbal communication as interpretative resource is clear. It is necessary to produce discussion beyond health promotion, client attention and perception about voice and casual changes and deviation.

Final Considerations

The number of Brazilian periodic about voice is significant, but few are the papers about verbal and non-verbal communication in voice professionals. Nursing has been studying non-verbal communication for years and taking it as crucial work tool in communication, whether professional or affective relations. SLP not effectively looking to non-verbal as communication tool calls the attention. In this literature review, the first Nursing non-verbal communication papers are from 2002 and 2003. The first SLP papers about non-verbal communication are from 2010, 2013.

In the eight papers, the best features described are oral and vocal expressiveness. Non-verbal communication analysis and description were modest in comparison to oral and vocal expressiveness.

Television journalists were the professionals more studied in the papers about non-verbal communication, present in three of the eight selected papers.

If all the publications about voice and television journalism in the last ten years were taken and found only these three papers about non-verbal in expressiveness it would demonstrate the lack of interest of the SLP to non-verbal communication.

If it is considered the number of publications about the tele journalism voice over the last ten years, to find only three of these that are about non-verbal communication, alerts the authors again, regarding the lack of attention given to the matter.

As for the number of publications about teachers' voice, and the final sample with only two papers arguing about non-verbal communication is also alarming.

The necessity of more studies regarding voice and non-verbal communication exists, but above all, there is the necessity to understand the importance of this communication during the it's process and approaching the non-verbal as a working tool.

To admit the non-verbal as fundamental part of communication in SLP clinic and professional voice therapy/advisory is crucial.

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• Source of aid: aid of CNPQ agency

• ERRATUM

  In this article, “Voice professionals’ non-verbal communication: what has it been researching in speech language pathology?”, with DOI number: 10.1590/1982-021620161865116, published in the journal Revista Cefac, 18(6):1447-1455, in abbreviation of the author’s name Marta Assumpção de Andrada e Silva:
  Where it was:
  Silva, MAA;
  Read:
  Andrada e Silva, MA

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Nov-Dec 2016

History

• Received
  06 May 2016
• Accepted
  20 Sept 2016