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09&10 MULTILING 2008
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CHAPTER 10
Accounting for
paralanguage and
non-verbal
communication in
the educational
interpreting service
rendered at the
North-West
University
1 Context
Effective classroom communication is a
sine qua non for optimal teaching and
learning. In fact, Cazden (1988: 2) says
the basic purpose of education is
achieved through communication. In the
same vein, Keidar (2005: i) asserts that
the lecturer’s communicative ability, or
lack thereof, becomes evident in the
ways in which the message is transmitted in order to maximise the effect of the
didactic content.
This communicative act in turn is of
the utmost importance because of the
fact that it plays a vital role in enabling
learners to accept co-responsibility for
Marlene Verhoef
achieving the outcomes of the teaching
Institutional Language Directorate
and learning process. Cazden (1988: 99)
North-West University
contends that, while education as a
whole is aimed at realising intra-individual change and student learning, the
quality of classroom communication is
vitally important because it affects “the
unobservable thought processes of each of the participants, and thereby the nature of
what students learn”.
The intrinsic communicative characteristic of any teaching and learning event is
the demonstration of both verbal and non-verbal language behaviour. While the verbal version primarily accounts for interaction on content, it appears as if non-verbal
communication adds to the emotional and persuasive intent. It is in this regard that
Keidar (2005: v) says that about 80% of interpersonal information transfer is effected
by non-verbal communication, owing to its strong and decisive influence on the message as a whole. However, from research conducted by Bannink and Van Dam (2006:
284) it appears as if current research on classroom discourse does not regularly take
all the variables constituting classroom interaction into consideration: “It is not clear,
for instance, what happens to interactional behaviours that do not, in a narrow sense,
qualify as ‘the lesson’.” They contend that instances of time-out, interruptions, multi160
voiced comments, laughter and other forms of paralinguistic behaviour are largely
ignored in mainstream research (Bannink & Van Dam 2006: 284).
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