It is believed that there is a close connection between speech and nonverbal behavior. Hence, nonverbal behavior plays an indispensable role in improving understanding and interpretation of speech. On the other hand, the ability to distinguish between important and unimportant information is key to understanding academic lectures. Therefore, it would be interesting to explore if there is any connection between importance marking speech and its associated nonverbal behaviors. To this end, the present study sought to investigate the functional use of speech-associated nonverbal behavior for signaling importance in 120 academic lectures, utilizing the Persian SOKHAN corpus. Conducted in two phases, the analysis revealed that lecturers deploy a range of nonverbal cues—including proxemics, oculesics, chronemics, vocalics, locomotion, and kinesics—to accentuate key information. The results indicated that it is not the presence of a particular nonverbal behavior that signals importance, but rather a shift or change in these behaviors.