Effective Use of Paralanguage in the Workplace

Paralanguage is related to the use of subtle messages that includes tone, prosody, intonation, tempo, syllable emphasis, and other hints that create additional meaning beyond the words themselves. Knowing and understanding how paralanguage influences clarity can help in creating more effective conversation in the workplace. Managers who are capable of creating higher levels of congruency between the words they use and the paralanguage associated with those words can increase their communication effectiveness and organizational influence. Most information comes from non-verbal aspects of communication and alignment between these two concepts creates congruence. A study of university lecturers helped identify that those who used appropriate pitch, loudness, variability, pauses, and fluency increased audience satisfaction (Md Zani, et. al, 2011). The audience paid more attention and were more focused on the concepts. This helps ensure that the messages not only came across well