Discuss the relevance of nonverbal communication in the context of COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID- 19 pandemic has harshly pretentious the way people communicate with each
other .Safeguard measures to limit the spread of the virus involved a shift in the communication pattern
when it comes to greetings and handshake .The situation required people to acquire salutations that do
not need physical contact ,such as signals and hand on the chest .In addition , attention on personal
space and social distancing increased , telecommunication witnessing a huge rise , business meetings ,
conferences , and educational activities shifted to effective communication via social media , such as
Whatsapp ,Skype and Microsoft teams. Face to face communication was majorly affected by the
pandemic .The need for face masks as an important protective measure to decrease the spread of virus,
had an effect on communication therefore facial expressions and gestures play a major role in ease
dyadic communication, conception and the delivery of planned message. Wearing of face masks made it
difficult seeing and understanding people’s expressions during conversations and decreased the impact
of communicated material.

COVID-19 is defined as an illness caused by a novel coronavirus which now called severe acute
respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2; formerly called 2019-nCoV), which was first identified
amid an outbreak of respiratory illness cases in Wuhan in China .WHO (2020) declared the COVID-19
outbreak of global health emergence and it was first designation since declaring H1N1 influenza as a
pandemic. Hence forth MIRRIAM WEBSTER defines COVID-19 as a mild respiratory illness that is caused
by a coronavirus which is transmitted chiefly by contact with infectious material or objects or surface
which is contaminated by the causative virus, and is characterized especially by fever, cough and
shortness of breath which may progress to pneumonia and respiratory failure.

Communication is a Latin word which means to share information between oneself and another. It
includes the sharing of ideas , concepts , imaginations , behavior’s and written content .Communication
is simply defined as the transfer of information from one place to another, this transfer of information
can be conducted in different ways yet showing complexity in some aspects that’s according to Ojomo
(2004) .In communication we have verbal , nonverbal ,listening and visual communication however in
this essay we are going to look into nonverbal communication and how it works during the COVID-19
pandemic .

Nonverbal communication is the process of conveying meaning without using words either written or
spoken and it is very powerful in terms of understanding oneself and others ,such that it involves
physical behavior of the bodies like eye contact , posture ,gesture and many more .These
communication tells us about the person’s true state of mind (Navarro 2008,2011) (Charles Darwin
1872) ,nevertheless nonverbal communication can be very misleading in other ways because one might
think is right but equally wrong . FB Mandal (2014) states that nonverbal communication is whereby
someone will be using body language and it will tell how they feel and what they think.

The use of face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic has brought benefits and non-benefits which are
difficult in breathing ,sweating and interpersonal communication ; they conceal peoples facial
expression whereas it prevents the spread of the pandemic from one person to another .It is now
difficult to see the emotions of the individuals because the face mask turn us into poker players with
inexpressive faces , covering the middle ,lower face which helps a lot in recognizing emotions .By this
people are now feeling insecure ,disheartened and even psychological troubled ,Matuschek ,C(2020) .It
has become a big challenge in the medical sectors because patients are unable to respond how they feel
due to masks .

As we go further with the essay people are not able to use the proxemics during the COVID- 19
pandemic since it is believed that it can minimize the spread .It is believed that it is a host of public
health measures targeting in minimizing social interaction based on touch or physical proximity . Social
distancing measures has altered the use of space with the closure of places of work, learning, leisure,
and many more. The covid-19 has limited people’s territories and public life because they no longer
share space with close friends and even with other family members because it has become a barrier
(Ahmed, F.2018).

In conclusively , even though the COVID-19 pandemic has struck humanity ,imposing restrictions on
nonverbal communication as well as on peoples personal lives , interpersonal communication is a
human gift that cannot just vanish so easily and no matter the disturbance it will always remain among
people .Moreover , wearing of mask and social distancing might be a barrier to nonverbal
communication but it helps to prevent the pandemic from spreading further and causing damage and
death in the society .
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