importance of face-to-face situations
Non-verbal communication does not only play a role in face-to-face situations. It is also important in mediated communication, for example, as this is the case for telephone interpreting, where the interpreter does not see the speaker. Non-verbal communication is also crucial for every other kind of professional interpreting where the speaker cannot be seen. It is important, because even in such situations the voice itself can express non-verbal paralinguistic messages. Those messages, for example, are intonation, tone of voice, vocally produced noises or pause (see chapter 3). Then again, it has to be considered that non-verbal, communicative acts might only be fully expressed and observed in face-to-face situations, where rhetorical sensitivity is accompanied by visually perceivable emotions. As a result, this chapter will mainly consider face-to-face situations.