Liopa: Masks show us that we all lipread

We may think that when we speak to another person, the sound of their voice is the most important way we understand them. But masks are teaching us that this might not be the case. In fact, a large part of verbal communication involves reading the context of what a person is saying – analysing their facial expressions, hand gestures, tone of voice – and it also means reading their lips. You may not have realized that you read lips, until the point when everyone's face was covered by a mask during the Covid pandemic. Suddenly, it has dawned on humans that we ALL read lips, to some extent.