How real people communicate

As a scientist of conversation, people often ask me about many aspects of human communication. Some questions draw upon commonly-held myths about the way we speak. For example, if I am showing an audience how customer service works over the telephone, people ask about ‘body language’, and the limits of the voice-only mode. They ask about the relative status of talking versus what our bodies do to communicate. And their questions often reveal a presupposition about the answer. Body language, it is assumed, has primacy over words. Our words transmit one message, but our bodies leak another. Actions speak louder than words......