Chris Rock during his live specialsSince ancient times, people have been inclined to non verbal forms of communication rather than verbal ones. When we communicate, we express a great deal of ourselves to who ever we are talking to. Not just the words that come out of our mouth. Our clothes, our hair, our posture, and movements of our limbs and so on. verbal communication sends the immediate and the most direct message that one wants to send across. What our body language does, is adds flavor to the conversation making it more dynamic and interesting.
The narrowed field i want to draw attention on is comedy. Everybody loves comedy. Ok, maybe not those with a weak heart but everyone else does. And maybe excluding 'emo people'. Verbal and non verbal comedy are both used very widely. verbal comedy can be basically cracking a joke. Everyone cracks jokes. My teachers tells them, my therapist tells them and my friends won't shut up. But if we look closely at the people around us, it is physical humour that is more prominent.
If you walk down a street and some one is making his friend or someone that he knows laugh, he is not looking forward with a straight face, perfect posture, unless the joke calls for that. He is jumpy with alot of expressions to his face which actally is the more powerful tool to make people laugh. Stand up comedy does not actually mean what it says. If you go to a comedy club, you will see that although their primary role is to just tell jokes, they have physical movements to go along with the jokes so as to get it to sink more into the audience and ultimately recieve the greatest prize to a comedian, laughter.
So, to a comedian, which is more improtant? both. If he or she does not talk, where is the joke? and if he just stands at one corner and blabbers away, then why should i pay to come to a comedy club? a mixture of both should make the room go 'LOL'.
http://blog.themavenreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/chris_rock.jpg
"Verbal communication sends the immediate and the most direct message that one wants to send across. What our body language does, is adds flavor to the conversation making it more dynamic and interesting."
ReplyDeleteThis is a good point i would say unless the communicator did not mean what he/she said because it is not difficult to send a contradicting message consisting of a approving verbal message accompanied by a disgusted facial expression or defensive posture.
I don't really agree with this though,
"He is jumpy with a lot of expressions to his face which actually is the more powerful tool to make people laugh."
In my opinion, sometimes, comedians effectively inject a jaw breaking humor with a poker face and it could make you double over. It all boils down to preferences i guess. :D
yup your right shayne.. maybe i was a bit too extreme on the jumpy and the more powerful tool part. And yes, there are also preferences. Some may like a genre of comedy more or not at all and there are some that are universally liked. for example, death and taxes jokes. but i would say from my observations of comedians, a jaw breaking humor with a poker face might be tough to do. unless the punchline requires a poker face or that guy is really good :)
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