Dimensione corporea emozionale nell'atto comunicativo : come le emozioni contribuiscono al messaggio

Abstract

The intent of this paper is to analyze the contribution of emotions, as an act of nonverbal communication, to sensemaking. Actually, the focus of our analysis is not on the psychology of emotions but rather on the semantics and pragmatics of facial expressions, which encode emotions and/or the state of mind, and how facial expressions communicate meaningfully. To study this empirically, an advertisement of the Swiss bank CLER, whose message is completely based on nonverbal communication, was presented to 20 students of the Faculty of Communication Sciences of Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). The qualitative analysis of the acquired data shows how the bodily expressions of emotions, called affect displays (Ekman & Friesen 1969), transport directly, effectively and efficiently a meaning.