body language

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Body language refers to any kind of bodily movement or posture, including facial expression, which transmits a message to the observer. Every part of the human body, either in motion or stillness, conveys a meaning which depends upon the physical, social, and cultural context of the action. The message may be deliberately intended, expressed in some sort of accepted code — as when a person points, shakes a fist, or nods the head — or they may be involuntary gestures of response, as when someone grimaces or cries aloud in pain.

Body language in history

Specific gestures, such as the ‘manual rhetoric’ of Roman orators, as well as the general carriage and deportment of the whole body, have been objects of study since Classical times. In the fourth century bc in Greece, upper-class men cultivated an upright, ‘firm’ stance and an unhurried gait, taking long strides. This distinguished them as persons of leisure, setting them apart from artisans and slaves, who had to hurry to get work done; it also distinguished them from women, who moved in a mincing manner, taking very small steps, while courtesans swayed their hips from side to side while walking. In Classical Rome, strictly moderated and limited gestures were regarded as an indication of a temperate and self-controlled character — requirements of an exemplary Roman aristocrat and orator.

Writings on body language were quite prevalent in Renaissance Europe. Seventeenth-century physiognomists like Giovanni della Porta and Charles Lebrun codified the facial expressions of emotion and character; both these investigations, and those of their contemporaries Giovanni Bonifacio and John Bulwer on gestures, were conducted on the assumption of a universal, natural language of expression and gesture which could be assumed and understood by all nations and peoples. In the nineteenth century, the work of Charles Darwin on animal and human ‘emotions’ tended to support the view that physical expressions might be biologically inherited. In turn, the physical conditions under which people live, and the bodily deportment and habitual actions they perform, have consequences for the structures of their bodies, as discovered by palaeoarchaeologists, who have used the evidence of excavated skeletons to offer generalizations about the body habits of the past. And certain modern ethnologists and zoologists such as Desmond Morris stress the similarities between the bodily movements used by humans and those observed in animals to express hostility, fear, dominance, or territoriality.

Cultural differences

However, most modern studies of body language are based on the assumption that gesture is not a universal or natural language, but the product of social and cultural contexts. The likeness, for example, between the facial gesture used by chimpanzees to express fear and subordination, and the human smile, can serve to underline the differences as well as the similarities between the two species of primates. Among humans, anthropologists such as Marcel Mauss have pointed out that even the most elementary aspects of physical behaviour, such as the ways in which people eat, sleep, walk, or sit, seem to be culturally determined, and vary greatly from society to society. This includes both the deliberate signals used by people to communicate meaning non-verbally, and also seemingly involuntary emotive or physical reactions, such as blushing or weeping.

Behaviours which have been represented as spontaneous or instinctive action expressing the emotions are revealed, under closer scrutiny, to be neither spontaneous nor transparent. They are, to a greater or lesser degree, formalized, stylized, and ordered to a specific code of meaning, which may become meaningless or inappropriate in other places or cultures, or in another context. The gesture of greeting displayed by someone who leaps, smiling, to her feet, to throw her arms around another person, may cause discomfort or even offence to a person unfamiliar with this custom; and ‘cutting’ someone, by passing by with only a distant nod, may fail to have any effect on a person who is not used to expecting displays of affection in public.

Contemporary studies

The study of body language is conducted at present mainly by anthropologists, linguists, and social psychologists, who refer to this science by the name of kinesics — the study of non-verbal communication or communicative body movements. These include the study of the ways and frequency with which people touch each other during a conversation, and the distance which they keep from each other during interactions. Linguists have regarded gestures as a form of language, perhaps even the predecessor of all human languages, and have studied the various kinds of kinesic communication used by different cultural and social groups, such as stockbrokers, beggars, and the clergy.

Body language forms an indispensable element in social interaction. Facial expression and bodily movements can amplify, modify, confirm, or subvert verbal utterance, expressing meanings which elude or surpass verbal language. Thus it is a key to the inner psychological and emotional state of the performer: centuries before Freud, early modern writers on decorum discussed the slips or ‘leakage’ demonstrated by unintentional body language which contradict or undermine the overt declaration or utterance of the speaker.

Gestures also define manners of behaviour sanctioned in collective sensibilities, the general codes and rites which transmit cultural norms. Body language is thus also a key to some of the fundamental values and assumptions, the mentalité which underlies any society. It permits the passage from ‘nature’ (the biological body itself) to ‘culture’, signified through comportment, demeanour, and the myriad signals and gestures which people employ to express meaning, both deliberate and inadvertent, to each other or even to themselves. And in many formal contexts — liturgical, legal or ceremonial — the speaker's posture and bodily movement may be more important than the words uttered. Body language is extremely important, particularly in non-literate or semi-literate societies, in which commitment is made through ritual gestures, formal spoken words, and symbolic objects. Gestures transmit secular and spiritual power; they make such transmission public, and give political and religious actions a living image.

Social and national distinctions

Additionally, body language is an important ingredient in social differentiation; differences in physical comportment play a significant part in separating social groups from each other, and in fostering feelings of mutual hostility or alienation. For instance, the dignified gravity or refinement esteemed by the elite as signs of superior breeding could be seen as arrogance and affectation by the masses; conversely, the warmth or openness valued by some people could be despised as coarse and heavyhanded by others. This also figures in the creation of cultural differentials between nations. Different languages involve different facial and bodily movements, and there are other, more qualitative judgements and distinctions. As post-Reformation northern Europeans began to employ a more restrained and subtle gestic repertoire, they tended to look with distaste upon the more obvious facial expressions and explicit gestures of southern Europeans. It has been pointed out that the stereotype of the gesticulating Mediterranean fits well into the overall symbolic ordering of the north-south divide, which roughly follows the anatomy of the human body: the south, or the lower parts, are associated with passion, physicality and spontaneity, and the north with the rational faculties, and control of the emotions.

Gender differences

Body language reflects differences of gender as well as of class and nationality. Prescriptions for the physical behaviour of women are often different from those of men. Characteristically, women are encouraged to look modestly downward, to walk with small steps, be more restrained in facial expressions than men of their class, and to eat smaller portions of food. Gestures of female assertiveness, like standing with arms akimbo, or legs widely spaced, are regarded, particularly in societies with strong power differentials between the sexes, as unbecoming and aggressive, imitative of male behaviour.

Outward and visible signs

We tend to try to overcome as prejudice what until recently was an oft-stated fact: that the outward appearance of a person is an image of the inward personality and character — dress, gestures, comportment, any motion of the body, are indicative of the inner person. This aesthetic-cum-moral conviction that external bodily behaviour manifested the life of the soul, existed in the Middle Ages and beyond. In medieval Christian Europe, a human being was thought of as double, consisting of a soul and a body, an invisible inside and a visible outside, linked by a dynamic relationship. Gestures figured or embodied the dialectic between inner essence and outer appearance, since they were supposed to express to the viewer the secret movements of the soul within. Thus, bodily control exemplified internal harmony and the superiority of the mind to the body, while inappropriate or excessive gesture was either condemned as clumsy, or disparaged as ‘gesticulation’. These ‘bad’ gestures, transgressive of limits imposed by ethics and social custom, were opposed to virtuous gestures, such as those of charity, penance, and piety, through which salvation could be reached.

Purity and shame

Theories exist as to why variations or changes in bodily behaviour occur: in the 1930s, the sociologist Norbert Elias propounded his very influential argument, based mainly on north European Protestant sources, that, after the relative freedom regarding the body in the Middle Ages, early modern Europe saw an increasing inhibition of bodily impulses. This took the form of a rising threshold of shame or embarrassment surrounding physical functions, and an enhanced concern over the restraint or control of both these and the expression of emotion. Also influential in recent work have been the theories of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, who has argued that, in most societies, the body is a symbol of social relations, and that the control of bodily expression customary in a society is more or less strict according to the degree of group pressure upon the individual.

Cross-cultural surveys demonstrating the variability of bodily gesture and facial expression are supplemented by the experience of travellers to other countries, or even those who see films or listen to music from other parts of the world. It is possible that, given the facilitation of long-distance travel in the later twentieth century, and the globalization of culture, especially in urban centres which everywhere tend increasingly to be cosmopolitan in their products and attitudes, that certain of these differences have begun to diminish. Cultural homogenization occurs relatively rapidly in certain aspects (usually confined to the socioeconomic elites) such as fashions in dress, eating of ‘luxury’ food items, or the importation of foreign words or decorative objects. Yet it tends to take place much more slowly on the level of bodily expression and facial gesture, which entire peoples take rather longer to absorb and alter.

A world of gestures

Body language is both the most basic, fundamental form of expression used by human beings to communicate with one another, and at the same time a part of a highly sophisticated and culturally specific system of coded signals, in which bodily and facial movement play at least as important a part as verbal utterance. It encompasses an infant grimacing in distaste at an unfamiliar or unpleasant sensation; the careful timing and co-ordination of bows between two Japanese of equal rank; and the complicated series of insulting hand gestures which pass between altercating drivers in Brazil.

— Natsu Hattori

Bibliography

• Bremmer, J. and Roodenburg, H. (ed.) (1993). A cultural history of gesture. Polity Press, Cambridge.
• Elias, N. (1939). The civilizing process. Blackwell, Oxford.
• Mauss, M. (1979). Sociology and psychology. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
• Schechner, R. (1993). The future of ritual: writings on culture and performance. Routledge, London

See also facial expression; gesture.

A form of non-verbal communication using movements and positioning of body parts. In sport, confidence, for example, is often conveyed through posture and eye contact. See also eyeballing, kinesics.

The expression of feelings by means of postures or gestures. Flamboyant body language is characteristic of primates but most animal species use gestures to demonstrate their attitudes to other animals and to the environment generally.

• Aspects and Components of Appearance - body language: gestures and mannerisms, both intended and subconscious, that communicate one’s feelings
• Mental States, Processes, and Behavior - body language: body movements, positions, and gestures that communicate an attitude

For other uses, see Body language (disambiguation).

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Body language is a form of mental and physical ability of human non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals almost entirely subconsciously.

James Borg states that human communication consists of 93 percent body language and paralinguistic cues, while only 7% of communication consists of words themselves;^[1] however, Albert Mehrabian, the researcher whose 1960s work is the source of these statistics, has stated that this is a misunderstanding of the findings^[2] (see Misinterpretation of Mehrabian's rule). Others assert that "Research has suggested that between 60 and 70 percent of all meaning is derived from nonverbal behavior."^[3]

Body language may provide clues as to the attitude or state of mind of a person. For example, it may indicate aggression, attentiveness, boredom, relaxed state, pleasure, amusement, and intoxication, among many other cues.

Contents 1 Understanding body language 1.1 Physical expression 2 How prevalent is non-verbal communication in humans? 3 Proxemics 4 Unintentional gestures 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Understanding body language

The technique of "reading" people is used frequently. For example, the idea of mirroring body language to put people at ease is commonly used in interviews. Body language can show feelings to other people, which works in return for other people. People who show their body language to you can reveal their feelings and meanings. Mirroring the body language of someone else indicates that they are understood.^{[citation needed]} It is important to note that some indicators of emotion (e.g. smiling/laughing when happy, frowning/crying when sad) are largely universal;^{[citation needed]},^[4] however in the 1990s Paul Ekman expanded his list of basic emotions, including a range of positive and negative emotions, not all of which are encoded in facial muscles.[11] The newly included emotions are:

A study in body language.

1. Amusement
2. Contempt
3. Contentment
4. Embarrassment
5. Excitement
6. Guilt
7. Pride in achievement
8. Relief
9. Satisfaction
10. Sensory pleasure
11. Shame

Body language signals may have a goal other than communication. People would keep both these two in mind. Observers limit the weight they place on non-verbal cues. Signalers clarify their signals to indicate the biological origin of their actions. Verbal communication also requires body language to show that the person you are talking with that you are listening. These signals can consist of; eye contact and nodding your head to show you understand. More examples would include yawning (sleepiness), showing lack of interest (sexual interest/survival interest), attempts to change the topic (fight or flight drivers). Rudolf Laban and Warren Lamb add much to this about dancers. Mime artists such as Booff Show utilize these techniques to communicate entire shows without a single word.

Physical expression

Physical expressions like waving, pointing, touching and slouching are all forms of nonverbal communication. The study of body movement and expression is known as kinesics. Humans move their bodies when communicating because, as research has shown^{[citation needed]}, it helps "ease the mental effort when communication is difficult." Physical expressions reveal many things about the person using them. For example, gestures can emphasize a point or relay a message, posture can reveal boredom or great interest, and touch can convey encouragement or caution.^[5]

• One of the most basic and powerful body-language signals is when a person crosses his or her arms across the chest.^[6] This can indicate that a person is putting up an unconscious barrier between themselves and others. However, it can also indicate that the person's arms are cold, which would be clarified by rubbing the arms or huddling. When the overall situation is amicable, it can mean that a person is thinking deeply about what is being discussed, but in a serious or confrontational situation, it can mean that a person is expressing opposition. This is especially so if the person is leaning away from the speaker. A harsh or blank facial expression often indicates outright hostility.
• Consistent eye contact can indicate that a person is thinking positively of what the speaker is saying. It can also mean that the other person doesn't trust the speaker enough to "take their eyes off" the speaker. Lack of eye contact can indicate negativity. On the other hand, individuals with anxiety disorders are often unable to make eye contact without discomfort. Eye contact can also be a secondary and misleading gesture because cultural norms about it are very widely. If a person is looking at you, but is making the arms-across-chest signal, the eye contact could be indicative that something is bothering the person, and that he wants to talk about it. Or if while making direct eye contact, a person is fiddling with something, even while directly looking at you, it could indicate that the attention is elsewhere. Also, there are three standard areas that a person will look which represent different states of being. If the person looks from one eye to the other, then to the forehead, it is a sign that they are taking an authoritative position. If they move from one eye to the other, then to the nose, that signals that they are engaging in what they consider to be a "level conversation" with neither party holding superiority. The last case is from one eye to the other and then down to the lips. This is a strong indication of romantic feelings.^{[citation needed]}
• Disbelief is often indicated by averted gaze, or by touching the ear or scratching the chin. When a person is not being convinced by what someone is saying, the attention invariably wanders, and the eyes will stare away for an extended period.^{[citation needed]}
• Boredom is indicated by the head tilting to one side, or by the eyes looking straight at the speaker but becoming slightly unfocused. A head tilt may also indicate a sore neck or Amblyopia, and unfocused eyes may indicate ocular problems in the listener.^{[citation needed]}
• Interest can be indicated through posture or extended eye contact, such as standing and listening properly.^{[citation needed]}
• Deceit or the act of withholding information can sometimes be indicated by touching the face during conversation. Excessive blinking is a well-known indicator of someone who is lying. Recently^[when?], evidence has surfaced that the absence of blinking can also represent lying as a more reliable factor than excessive blinking.^[7]

Some people use and understand body language differently, or not at all.^{[citation needed]} Interpreting their gestures and facial expressions (or lack thereof) in the context of normal body language usually leads to misunderstandings and misinterpretations (especially if body language is given priority over spoken language). It should also be stated that people from different cultures can interpretate body language in different ways.

How prevalent is non-verbal communication in humans?

Some researchers^[who?] put the level of nonverbal communication as high as 80 percent of all communication when it could be at around 50-65 percent. Different studies have found differing amounts, with some studies showing that facial communication is believed 4.3 times more often than verbal meaning, and another finding that verbal communication in a flat tone is 4 times more likely to be understood than a pure facial expression.^{[citation needed]} Albert Mehrabian is noted for finding a 7%-38%-55% rule, supposedly denoting how much communication was conferred by words, tone, and body language. However he was only referring to cases of expressing feelings or attitudes.

Diagram of Edward T. Hall's personal reaction bubbles (1966), showing radius in feet

Proxemics

Main article: Personal space

Introduced by Edward T. Hall in 1966, proxemics is the study of measurable distances between people as they interact with one another.^[8] The distance between people in a social situation often discloses information about the type of relationship between the people involved. Proximity may also reveal the type of social setting taking place. There is an intimate zone reserved for lovers, children and close family members. This zone is between six and eighteen inches. 1.5 to 4 feet is the distance that friends or associates will generally be within. That is, people that are close but not necessarily on a regular touching basis. Between 4 and 12 feet is the zone for more social environments. These are familiar people such as co-workers or someone else that is seen occasionally throughout the week. The outer end of this zone is reserved for newly formed groups, and new acquaintances. The last zone accruing between 10 and 25 feet and is known to be public distance. This area of space is used for speeches, lectures and theater; essentially, public distance is the range reserved for larger audiences or for people that are not familiar.^[9]

Unintentional gestures

See also: Proteans (body language)

Recently^[when?], there has been huge interest in studying human behavioral clues that could be useful for developing an interactive and adaptive human-machine system. Unintentional human gestures such as making an eye rub, a chin rest, a lip touch, a nose itch, a head scratch, an ear scratch, crossing arms, and a finger lock have been found conveying some useful information in specific context. Some researchers^[who?] have tried to extract such gestures in a specific context of educational applications.^{[citation needed]} In poker games, such gestures are referred to as "tells" and are useful to players for detecting deception or behavioral patterns in an opponent(s).

There is also a huge interest in learning to avoid any unintentional gesture that might leave a negative impression on the onlookers. A large number of people are starting to attend special sessions on controlled body behaviour and take advice from expert sociologists. Learning good body language, such as living styles of foreign people, is important during interaction in any sort of global community.

See also

• Gesture
• List of gestures
• Posture (psychology)
• Paul Ekman

References

1. ^ Borg, James. Body Language: 7 Easy Lessons to Master the Silent Language. FT Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-13-700260-3
2. ^ "More or Less". 2009-08-14. BBC Radio 4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lyvz9. 
3. ^ Engleberg,Isa N. Working in Groups: Communication Principles and Strategies. My Communication Kit Series, 2006. page 133
4. ^ see also wiki on "Lie to Me"
5. ^ Engleberg,Isa N. Working in Groups: Communication Principles and Strategies. My Communication Kit Series, 2006. page 137
6. ^ "Closed body language". Changingminds.org. http://www.changingminds.org/techniques/body/closed_body.htm. Retrieved 2011-10-31. 
7. ^ Post. "The Times | UK News, World News and Opinion". Timesonline.co.uk. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article742788.ece. Retrieved 2011-10-31. 
8. ^ ^ Hall, Edward T. (1966). The Hidden Dimension. Anchor Books. ISBN 0-385-08476-5
9. ^ Engleberg,Isa N. Working in Groups: Communication Principles and Strategies. My Communication Kit Series, 2006. page 140-141

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Body language

• Body language is of particular importance in large groups by Tarnow, E. published 1997
• Hess Pupil Dilation Findings: Sex or Novelty? Social Behavior and Personality, 1998 by Aboyoun, Darren C, Dabbs, James M Jr
• Understanding body language

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