Abstract
The current study aims at shedding light on horn honking as an effective channel of non-verbal communication that expresses far more meanings than just aggression and road-related messages. An overview of the use of horn honking in ten different countries is given. The overview shows that horn honking has indeed proven itself as cultural phenomenon essential in the daily lives of many people. The car horn is much more than a mere tool of warning for danger or complaining about some wrong. Many drivers use horn honking as a language, Morse codes, or a medium of communication to express a variety of meanings some of which reinforce social relationships. The overview is discussed from a cultural point of view. A recommendation for more attention to this neglected channel has been made. It needs to be listed as a channel of non-verbal communication or at least be considered as a sub channel of the physical environment.
Highlights
Communication, as a scientific field of study, is so pervasively important in all walks of our life that many different disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, political sciences, philosophy, linguistics and even medicine are interested in it, study it, and add to our general knowledge about it
The current study aims at shedding light on horn honking as an effective channel of non-verbal communication that expresses far more meanings than just aggression and road-related messages
A recommendation for more attention to this neglected channel has been made. It needs to be listed as a channel of non-verbal communication or at least be considered as a sub channel of the physical environment
Summary
Communication, as a scientific field of study, is so pervasively important in all walks of our life that many different disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, political sciences, philosophy, linguistics and even medicine are interested in it, study it, and add to our general knowledge about it. While verbal communication often refers to communicating meaning through the use of words, non-verbal communication refers to “all phenomena with a communicative value that are not part of verbal communication” (Surkamp, 2014: p.14) It is a process of generating meaning using some means or behaviors other than spoken or written words (Burgoon & Hoobler, 2002; Communication in the Real World, 2016; De Vito, 1989; Knapp, Hall, & Horgan, 2014; Morreale, Spitzberg, & Barge, 2007; Tripathy, 2017). As is stated by Greene, nonverbal communication is “everything we do except the words that we use” (cited in Burgoon et al.: 2016, p.11) This means that we communicate a variety of messages non-verbally when we widen our eyes, smile, frown, gesture, touch or move closer to someone, wear certain things, or raise our voices. The hypotheses suggested here is that “in many countries, horn honking is a cultural phenomenon that communicates much more than road-related meanings and should be listed as another channel of non-verbal communication”
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