A Lesson in Pink: An Analysis of Nonverbal Communication in Legally Blonde There are few fields of study that are as pervasive in everyday life as the science of communication. Every interpersonal interaction, anything that can be read or listened to, even self-talk is a method of communication that can be studied, analyzed, and utilized. Books, commercials, music, and movies are more sources of communication that most never consider as a legitimate form of communication that can be learned from. Legally Blonde, a award-winning comedy starring Reese Witherspoon, is a perfect example of the importance and influence of interpersonal communication. This analysis of Legally Blonde and its character interactions explores the various components of nonverbal language, how characters utilize them to convey their thoughts, emotions, and individual personality, and how other characters interpret that nonverbal behavior. The components in the movie to be expanded on include kinesics, haptics, physical appearance, artifacts, proxemics, and paralanguage. Ultimately, this paper explores how these facets of nonverbal language can effectively communicate their own message as well as how they complement verbal language. Legally Blonde follows a young woman, Elle Woods, who is initially presented as a pink-loving, high-pitched squealing, vacuous-but-pretty sorority president. When her boyfriend breaks up with her because he “need[s] to marry a Jackie, not a Marilyn,” Elle decides that she needs to set loftier and more serious goals for her education and career in order to win him back. Elle sets her sights on Harvard Law School, where Warner, her ex-boyfriend, is attending. However, law school is an entirely new beast that Elle must conquer, a far cry from the familiar sorority houses and poolside cabanas, and she must wage the battle of a lifetime to win back her man, defend her honor, and earn that law degree. One of the opening scenes of the movie sees the bubbly Elle Woods shopping with two of her sorority sisters for a dress to wear to what she believes to be her engagement night. The haughty shopkeeper, upon seeing and overhearing Elle, Margot, and Serena, rolls her eyes, smiles at her worker, and smirks, “There’s
Throughout the first half of Communication 101: Introduction to Human Communication we have been introduced to and discussed a lot of new concepts, ideas, and terms. All of this new material has been pertinent to how humans interact with one another, while also informing us of the why and how behind these interactions as well. The amount of new information we have learned would be impossible to cover and apply to one piece of pop culture, but a lot of what we have learned is relatable to the movie 50 First Dates. This 2004 movie featuring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore features numerous examples of normative relationships and key concepts that we have learned about in class. In this paper I will not only introduce communication terms
Elle Woods was the typical sorority girl while at CULA- she loved shopping; her friends; and her boyfriend, Warner. With her father’s money on her side, Elle never prioritized her education or working. She assumed her future held a marriage to Warner and life as a trophy wife; but when Warner declares Elle a hindrance to his goals of graduating from Harvard University, she becomes determined to do the same. Realizing no amount of money could buy admission to Harvard, Elle works valiantly toward her goal and is accepted. As the movie comes to a close, the scene shifts to three years later with Elle addressing her classmates as she graduates alongside Warner. Though she does not speak excessively, Elle speaks of the passion, perseverance, and determination necessary for success. In her short, yet effective speech; Elle uses ethos and pathos to encourage her classmates to go forth in their law careers with courage and faith, and reminds them to never accept people as they appear on the surface.
Communication is everywhere. We, as interactive human beings, spend the majority of our time corresponding with others to satisfy our physical, identity, social, and practical needs (Adler, Rodman, & Sevigny, 2011). Often, this is consciously done; we search our minds for the accurate linguistic means to express our experiences, and use them to communicate with those around us. However, communication is not as straightforward and effortless as we may believe. It is, in fact, often unintentional, with 65% of it occurring as a result of non-verbal cues (Matsumoto, Shibata, Seiji, Mori, & Shioe, 2010). As mentioned by Marta Dynel (2011) in a study done on nonverbal communication, “Non verbal signs and signals ... are prevalent practically in
This is where Warner tells Elle he?s going to Harvard law to start his career and she wasn?t in his future plans. In turn Elle get depressed locks herself in her room for about a week then gets the revelation that she would just attend Harvard Law also. When Elle goes to her parents they don?t really support her, they fall into the gender stereotype that girls should do girly jobs, like fashion which was Elle?s major, be pretty get married and so forth. They don?t believe she should have to go out into the world and be smart. She studies hard to pass the LSAT?s and she sends in her video application to Harvard. This video Elle is mainly in a Bikini, and being very ?girly?, Harvard mainly accepts her application because they need to diversify their accepted applicants. Once at Harvard Elle goes to class unprepared and is excused from the class. Afterwards is when she meets Warner?s new girlfriend and fiancé Vivian who is also the reason Elle had to leave class. This is where the battle between Vivian and Elle .After the meeting Elle does a typical girl thing and goes and gets her nails done. She returns to school has another run-in with Vivian who invited her to a party, telling her it?s a costume party and it obviously wasn?t. As ?typical girl? Elle shows up to the party as a playboy bunny. There is nothing more gender specific then a playboy bunny. For comfort she turns to Warner but instead all Elle got a rude
Our society also relies on language as its major bases for communication. Our ability to communicate apart from our words plays an important part in our daily lives. We often disregard the power of body language and our facial gestures. We are expected to portray our body language and facial gestures
Verbal messages carry majority of social meaning in a conversation. It is through nonverbal cues and clues that the sender and receiver are able to understand each other and exchange a message. This paper will explore the nonverbal communication exchanged in a scene from the program New Girl during season two, episode seventeen. The plot of this episode expands upon four roommates discovering their single parking space and arguing over who deserves it. The roommates consist of four guys and one girl; Schmidt, Winston, Nick, and Jessica. Due to Nick’s seeming lack of interest, they decide he shall be the “decider” and he chooses Jessica. Nick and Jessica have recently kissed, Schmidt claiming she had an unfair advantage. Therefore, Nick gets
The 2001 comedy film Legally Blonde tells the story of Elle Woods, an upbeat and optimistic sorority girl who, over the course of the movie, transitions from a simple college student with few professional aspirations into a successful law student. Elle initially presents herself as a stereotypical sorority girl: vain, superficial, and self-obsessed. As such, she consistently faces discrimination from her friends, family, and colleagues alike. The film wants the audience to view Elle as a woman who rises up above the stereotype through hard work and intelligence, and who proves herself as a capable individual in a discriminatory society. Because of this, some view Elle as a feminist icon, a person who empowers women to achieve equality to
Elle believes her perfect life is about to get even better when her boyfriend hints that there will be changes in their future and she assumes he's about to propose. However, she is shaken when her boyfriend breaks up with her to find a girl who will be a better fit for his political aspirations. Instead of wallowing in sorrow, Elle decides she can win him back if she can only show him her serious side by chasing after him to Harvard law. Her confidence is weakened however, as she encounters difficult professors and snobby students. Nevertheless, she persisted in her studies and because of this she is given an exclusive internship. This leads her to take on challenges she never imagined she could and demonstrates the knowledge she had all along.
Interpersonal communication is primarily dyadic, meaning it involves two people. There are examples of this everywhere, from two coworkers who are becoming close friends to two people entering a romantic relationship. Interpersonal communication is all around us, especially romantic relationships. As a result, many of the movies we watch have examples of interpersonal relationships which reflects the ones in our own lives. This paper will highlight the relationship between Wade and Vanessa from the movie “Deadpool,” relate it to the concepts we have learned in class, and illustrate how we can learn from it.
Nonverbal communication plays an essential role in any conversation. Individuals who are aware of nonverbal actions during conversations can more effectively interpret what is being communicated.
It is impossible to get through life without communicating. Better interpersonal communication skills help us success in different aspects of our life. He’s just not that into you is the movie that I will analyze. In this movie, there are nine main characters and they live intertwine with one another either by being a friend, a couple, friend of a friend. In this paper, I will explore how Gigi is using interpersonal communication on the evolution of personal relationship; and how she applies better communication skills in her relationship with others. Terms that I will apply and analyze in the films are: Perception, stereotype, mind reading, prototype, verbal communication, and the ambiguous of language, the abstract of language,
She gains some confidence and starts to speak up in class. One of her Professors, Professor Callahan is a lawyer in his own firm is offering an internship for four students for a new case he is working on because his caseload is rather large. Callahan asks for Elle's resume, which happened to be pink and scented, because of an excellent argument she debated and won in his class. The internship winners were posted an Elle was picked, along with Warner, Vivian, and a friend of Vivian's. The case that the firm is working on is another prime example of gender roles. The case is about a fitness instructor (Brooke) who is obviously beautiful but is accused of murdering her 60 year old husband. Elle knows all about Brooke and states from the beginning that she felt Brooke was innocent. Elle visits Brooke in prison to get her alibi; Elle brings Brooke a basket of "goodies" which included make-up, flowers, and a cosmopolitan magazine. Brooke wanting to tell Elle what she was doing doesn't want anyone else to know because Brooke having a fortune due to her fitness empire, was out getting liposuction, which is another gender issue for women trying to maintain the generic appearance stereotype. Elle keeps her promise and never tells anyone about Brooke's alibi. Proceeding on to other gender references in the movie Elle goes with Emmett, another lawyer working on the case in Callahan's firm, (who happens to think Elle is cute) to the dead mans ex-wife's spa
Nonverbal communication covers all aspects of communication beyond words. It is anything from body gestures to the way words are spoken. The tone, demeanor, hidden meaning behind words, mix that with body language and what is creates in nonverbal communication elements. Even clothes and personal appearance can send a nonverbal message. Nonverbal communication accounts for nearly 65-93% communication means (Wood, 2014). One area where nonverbal communication sent a negative, incorrect message is the movie Erin Brockovich. The clothing of the main character sent the message that she was uneducated, white trash. This could not be further from the truth. She was an intelligent, single mother who saw a problem where nobody else did.
Any communication interaction involves two major components in terms of how people are perceived: verbal, or what words are spoken and nonverbal, the cues such as facial expressions, posture, verbal intonations, and other body gestures. Many people believe it is their words that convey the primary messages but it is really their nonverbal cues. The hypothesis for this research paper was: facial expressions directly impact how a person is perceived. A brief literature search confirmed this hypothesis.
Few realize how loud their expressions really are. Be kind with what you wordlessly say.” A quote from a popularly known author, Richelle E. Goodrich. We speak not only from our words but from our expressions. Many time, these expressions are unknown and are just caught upon from our surroundings. Our brain takes in this information and we do not really know how these expressions developed. In our day to day verbal activities, we follow up with so many non-verbal ques like the sounds we make following our words, or the way we pronounce these words. The use of pitch and pace of our voice and words to make interesting conversations. The clothing we wear based on the social norms we follow or just based on our culture or traditions. The use of our distance to known and unknown people. The use of eye contact to express the level of intensifications, the actual emphasis of the emotion running in the brain at the time. The uses of pauses in our speech and the judging of the expressions on other peoples faces. Misjudging of emotions carried along with another emotion because of the lack of understanding of mixed emotions, to give which emotion the priority during that situation. This media analysis focuses on the nonverbal communication and its different aspects in the movie “Inside Out”. Inside out is a movie about a girl and the five major emotions that control her life based on daily situations she faces. This movie is enriched with nonverbal communication as the emotions are