"Would you take offense if I had the gall to plant a kiss on this beautiful shoulder?"
"You'll figure that out soon enough after the deed."
Flirting is an expression of sexuality and a common form of social interaction whereby one person obliquely indicates a romantic or sexual interest towards another. It can consist of conversation, body language, or brief physical contact. It may be one-sided or reciprocated (encouraged) with intentions of getting to know that person on a higher level.
Flirting may involve speaking and acting in a way that suggests greater intimacy than is generally considered appropriate to the relationship (or to the amount of time the two people have known each other), without actually saying or doing anything that breaches any serious social norms. This may be accomplished by communicating a sense of playfulness or irony. Double entendres, with one meaning more formally appropriate and another more suggestive, may be used.
While some of the subconscious signs are universal across cultures, flirting etiquette varies significantly across cultures which can lead to misunderstandings. There are differences in how closely people should stand (proxemics), how long to hold eye contact, and so forth.[1]
Purpose
People flirt for a number of reasons. It is often used as a means of indicating interest and gauging the other person's interest in a relationship. Alternatively, it may simply be a prelude to casual sex.
In other situations, it may be done simply for amusement, with no intention of developing any further relationship. This type of flirting sometimes faces disapproval from others, either because it can be misinterpreted as more serious, or it may be viewed as "cheating" if the person is already in a romantic relationship with someone else.
Origin and history
The origin of the word flirt is obscure. The Oxford English Dictionary (first edition) associates it with such onomatopoeic words as flit and flick, emphasizing a lack of seriousness; on the other hand, it has been attributed to the old French conter fleurette, which means "to (try to) seduce" by the dropping of flower petals, that is, "to speak sweet nothings". While old-fashioned, this expression is still used in French, often mockingly, but the English gallicism to flirt has made its way and has now become an anglicism.
During World War II, anthropologist Margaret Mead was working in Britain for the British Ministry of Information and later for the U.S. Office of War Information,[2][3] delivering speeches and writing articles to help the American soldiers better understand the British civilians,[4] and vice versa.[5] She observed in the flirtations between the American soldiers and British women a pattern of misunderstandings regarding who is supposed to take which initiative. She wrote of the Americans, "The boy learns to make advances and rely upon the girl to repulse them whenever they are inappropriate to the state of feeling between the pair," as contrasted to the British, where "the girl is reared to depend upon a slight barrier of chilliness... which the boys learn to respect, and for the rest to rely upon the men to approach or advance, as warranted by the situation." This resulted, for example, in British women interpreting an American soldier's gregariousness as something more intimate or serious than he had intended.[2]
Communications theorist Paul Watzlawick used this situation, where "both American soldiers and British girls accused one another of being sexually brash", as an example of differences in "punctuation" in interpersonal communications. He wrote that courtship in both cultures used approximately 30 steps from "first eye contact to the ultimate consummation", but that the sequence of the steps was different. For example, kissing might be an early step in the American pattern but a relatively intimate act in the English pattern.[6]
Japanese courtesans had another form of flirting, emphasizing non-verbal relationships by hiding the lips and showing the eyes, as depicted in much Shunga art, the most popular print media at the time, until the late 1800s.
Types
Flirting may consist of stylized gestures, language, body language, postures, and physiologic signs which act as cues to another person. Among these, at least in Western society, are:
- Eye contact, batting eyelashes, staring, winking, etc.
- "Protean" signals, such as touching one's hair
- Giggling, or laughing encouragingly at any slight hint of intimacy in the other's behavior
- Casual touches; such as a woman gently touching a man's arm during conversation
- Smiling suggestively
- Sending notes, poems, or small gifts
- Flattery
- Online chat is a common modern tactic, as well as other one-on-one and direct messaging services
- Footsie, the "feet under the table" practice
- Teasing
- Staging of "chance" encounters
- Coyness, affectedly shy or modest, marked by cute, coquettish, or artful playfulness
See also
References
- ^ "Spiegel Online: Scoring a German: Flirting with Fräuleins, Hunting for Herren"—Jun 05 2006
- ^ a b Mead, Margaret; William O. Beeman (ed.) (2004). Studying Contemporary Western Society: Method and Theory. New York: Berghahn Books. pp. 145, 149. ISBN 1-57181-816-2.
- ^ Mead's article, A Case History in Cross-National Communications, was originally published in Bryson, Lyman (1948). The Communication of Ideas. New York: Institute for Religious and Social Studies, dist. by Harper and Brothers. OCLC 1488507.
- ^ e.g. Mead, Margaret (1944). The American troops and the British community. London: Hutchinson. OCLC 43965908.
- ^ e.g. Mead, Margaret. "What Is a Date?". Transatlantic 10 (June 1944). OCLC 9091671.
- ^ Watzlawick, Paul (1983). How Real Is Real?. London: Souvenir Press. pp. 63–64. ISBN 028562573X.
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