How would you communicate with someone non-verbally?

My fists with their face. BAM.

I have done it with drawings on one occasion and gestures on others,. It helps to have a context and maybe some props. Do you have a specific situation or message in mind?

Eyes often transmit feelings that words can’t address, body language also can tell a lot.

the eyes ... they are like windows to my soul
that’s why sometimes, when I’m feeling hurt, I wear sunglasses

I would whip out the telepathy.

It would depend on what I wanted to communicate, and to whom. Love to my husband? I’d use touch… (I often do this, anyway). My name to a deaf person? I can finger spell in ASL, and use it as needed. Anger at one of my kids? The glare. >:|

If we’re talking about more complicated communication, I guess I’d use a combination of sign language and gestures… kind of like Charades with subtitles!

The middle finger says enough for me.

Smile, nod, wink, kiss

Mime, Thats always a fun one! especially in the middle of a very busy high street. The looks you get are pricelss!

Our unconscious body language does this all the time. The conscious use of body language is very rare.

There are many ways. Care to sample some?
But first, perhaps we should discuss the “anger”...wtf?

There subtle ways such as your receiver to decode your body language. Drawings or pictures would be best for people who are unable to read. Most of the time I just use my hands. :)

Are you asking how do you translate words into some correlate in body language? Are you asking whether concepts delineated in words can also be expressed in some other way—say through smells or sights or sounds or touches?

I’d use all those mechanisms to communicate. In fact, I already do. Every day. However, I can’t easily translate my non-verbal communications into words. The reason they are non-verbal is that they do not fit into words.

@augustlan What glare? I must see this glare…

@daloon I’m interested in the smells you use.

@Sarcasm Oh the usual—mostly pheromones, sweat, cooking smells. Sometimes flatulence or other elimination processes. Those last seem to communicate a pretty clear message. In any case, people tend to react quite strongly when they detect those odors. You can figure out what the message is, if you’re good at translating the non-verbal to the verbal.

I thought this question implied more than just basic emotions. I found myself in this kind of situation in Paris when I had bought a newspaper for 1 franc (Le Figaro, reporting the death of Pompidou in a huge headline) and handed the vendor what I thought was a 10-franc note. She gave me 9 francs change.

When I got back to my hotel I realized that I had given her my last 100-franc note and had been shorted by 90 francs. I panicked because my cash was running low and I had absolutely no way to get any more. (This was before credit cards, ATM debit cards, cellphones, etc. I didn’t even have resources back home that I could have drawn on.) My tiny scrap of tourist French was not equal to the occasion. I managed to draw a shaky six-frame comic strip illustrating what had happened and hurried back to the newsstand, trembling with anxiety, expecting a blank stare and defeat, knowing there was nothing more I could do.

Instead the vendor barely looked at the drawing and rushed to hand me 90 francs, chattering rapidly in a somewhat indignant manner. I managed to make out that she was telling me I had run off before she finished giving me my change and she had thought I was stupid or crazy.

I managed plenty of “mercis” and “merci beaucoups“and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

That’s the most complicated situation I ever handled without benefit of a common language.

I think the eyes can say a lot. I use that technique at family gatherings. If I need to tell my sister something quickly before she humiliates herself in front of one of my family members who happen to be standing right there, I use my eyes. She gets it. Thank God.

Note to self: Work on the glare. Apparently not very effective.

@augustlan – it scared the heck out of me!

<g> for @rooeytoo.

@Jeruba What is <g>? /is slow

@mangeons It’s what old people like my dad hip youngsters use to emote the verb “grin”.

@Sarcasm lol4rl thanks for the answer. : )

Yes, except it’s a noun.

But you are grinning, no?
It’s not that there is a grin sitting on the table, it’s an action you’re doing.

No, it’s on my face, of course. Where is your grin when you grin? When I grin [verb], there is a grin [noun] on my face. I said “Grin for @rooeytoo.” I might have said “A grin for @rooeytoo,” and then there would have been no possibility of ambiguity because “a” is a noun marker.

you can use sign language, body language, hand gestures, and facial expressions. I communicate with non-verbal people at my job, and this is what seems to work of me.

You can stomp your foot, jut your hip out or sigh loudly. Eye rolling was pretty big when I was growing up.

Semaphore has worked for me in the past but more often than not, people get in the way of the flags and it gets a little frustrating.

That reminds me Morse Code

—.— -. .—. .. ... .—-. .. ... . -.. -.—

The dashes all run together here.