This editorial cartoon depicts an airline delay, in which the attendant declares to offer the stranded person peanuts as “compensation.” The situation relates to the chapter “Nonverbal Communication” in Survey of Communication Study in numerous ways. The concept of chronemics is present here. Under the section “Types of Nonverbal Communication,” chronemics is described as “the study of how people use time.” In this case, the airline is delayed, or “not on time.” Inferring that the people are from the United States, where punctuality is valued, the airline delay could be interpreted negatively by the person who was stranded (“stranded” also denotes a negative meaning).

This cartoon can also be connected to the section “Differences Between Verbal and Nonverbal Communication.” On one hand, verbal communication is “linear”; on the other hand, nonverbal communication is dependent on the context of the situation. Specific to this cartoon, although the communication from the attendant to the stranded person is verbal, nonverbal communication may also be present, as factors such as the lateness of the airline and the verbal confirmation of only offering peanuts as “compensation” may reflect negatively on the airline company as a whole.

Connecting the concept of chronemics to myself, as someone who comes from a Chinese household and growing up in America, I value punctuality and tend to apply it to my life. For example, while I could understand that things outside our control could happen and affect our punctuality, I think that someone who is chronically late to meetings isn’t showing respect to the people at the meetings. As someone who has worked in many collaborative settings, punctuality is important for getting things done effectively and timely as a group.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.