The rhetoric of goodbye: Verbal and nonverbal correlates of human leave‐taking

Human communication research has identified and investigated numerous aspects of interpersonal transactions, but has largely ignored the process by which people terminate these encounters. Through controlled observation and laboratory testing, this study sought answers to the following questions: (1) What specific verbal and nonverbal behaviors are associated with the termination of communicative exchanges; and (2) Do these verbal and nonverbal termination behaviors vary according to the situational and relational constraints that bind two communicators. Twenty‐five behavior styles were scrutinized during eighty interviews. Results indicated that behavioral regularity attends leave‐taking—signalling inaccessibility and signalling supportiveness.