Social Communication
Social communication is the use of verbal, nonverbal, and written language in social contexts. People seem to know the rules, but there are no written rules. How very confusing.
In order to establish and maintain relationships with others, social communication skills are crucial.
Examples of social communication skills:
Reading body language and facial expressions.
Recognizing changes in prosody that have behavioural implications.
Taking the perspective of a communication partner and modifying your language and body language accordingly.
Demonstrating altruism.
Telling stories in the correct order.
Adequate conversational skills that not only include providing information about yourself but also asking your communication partner about themselves.
Topic maintenance.
Turn taking in conversation.
Why do these skills matter in the context of relationships?
Reading body language and facial expressions allows us to make predictions of how our communication partner is feeling or what they’re thinking about.
Recognizing changes in prosody can allow us to understand whether the communication partner is happy, sad, mad, bored, etc. And provides information on what to do next.
It’s important to tell our communication partners about ourselves but it is also important to ask them about themselves. This demonstrates that you are interested in them and their life, not just your own.
Topic maintenance is important so that the communication partner can follow along and participate. Remaining on topic allows for conversations to flow easier and can lead to getting to know our communication partner deeper.