Body language

Body language, as the name implies, is a language, a means of communicating meaning nonverbally through gestures, posture, and movements. Some definitions also include facial expressions, touch, embellishments (for example, clothes, hairstyles, and tattoos), and paralinguistics (tone of voice, loudness, inflection, and pitch) as well. The term has been in use since 1885, but as far back as the late fourth century BCE the Greek philosopher Theophrastus included nonverbal behaviors in his thirty character sketches. Around the mid-nineteenth century, scholars in biology, anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and other fields began studying nonverbal cues. It was American anthropologist Ray L. Birdwhistell who pioneered the sustained scientific study of posture and body movements, for which he coined the term kinesics. Experts disagree about how much of communication is nonverbal, but they agree that the nonverbal cues account for more than half (estimates range from 65 to 95 percent) of total communication. In the twenty-first century, body language is studied not only by anthropologists, biologists, linguists, and psychologists but also by researchers in fields ranging from literature to dance to business. The study of body language, which offers information about political debates, courtship behaviors, and the physiology of power, also continues to fascinate the general public.

Brief History

In first-century Rome, the rhetorician Quintilian advised orators to use specific gestures to make them more powerful speakers. English physician and philosopher John Bulwer in Chirologia and Chironomia, published in 1644, declared gestures a natural and universal language. But the study of body language more properly might be said to have begun in 1872 with the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Darwin concluded that the muscle actions humans use to express primary emotions such as anger and fear were a product of natural selection and were universal—observable in nonhuman primates and other animals, as well as in humans.

Beginning in the 1920s, anthropologists and linguists demonstrated an interest in culturally learned nonverbal communication. The modern study of body language began in 1952 with Ray Birdwhistell’s seminal book, Introduction to Kinesics: An Annotation System for Analysis of Body Motion and Gesture. Birdwhistell, borrowing terminology from the field of structural linguistics, proposed that the study of movement be awarded scientific status. He chose the term kinesics from the Greek word for motion, as an appropriate name for this new field that would focus on the way in which certain body movements and gestures serve as a form of nonverbal communication. Birdwhistell estimated that the average person recognizes and understands about 250,000 facial expressions. He concluded that over 65 percent of communication takes place through nonverbal means. Birdwhistell disagreed with Darwin’s observations and insisted that body language was not universal, but rather comprised learned behaviors and varied from culture to culture. He concluded that there are 50 to 60 kinemes (larger, significant body movements) that are culturally universal, but the same gesture can be used in numerous cultures with a different meaning in each. Birdwhistell noted that all humans smile, but he pointed out that different cultures attach a different significance to the smile.

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In the 1960s and 1970s, psychologist Paul Ekman challenged Birdwhistell’s conclusions. Although he did not deny that nonverbal language was culturally learned, Ekman argued that cross-cultural research supported Darwin’s ideas of inborn, universal facial expressions. Ekman and his colleagues conducted the “universality studies,” including work with preliterate tribes from New Guinea, that yielded evidence of six universal expressions—anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Body language scholars in the twenty-first century tend to see the views as reconcilable, viewing nonverbal communication as shaped by biology and culture.

Experts point out that the American okay sign means “a—hole” in Brazil, and the thumbs-up sign signaling approbation in the United States is, in Iran, the equivalent of the digitus impudicus (“impudent finger”) that the Romans used to insult one another—a sign one may still observe in traffic jams and elsewhere in the United States. At the same time, researchers have observed that Olympic and Paralympic athletes across many cultures, including those born blind, lift their arms in a high V and raise their chins as a sign of victory.

More than any academic examination of the subject, Body Language, the 1970 book by prolific writer Julius Fast, is credited with bringing the term—and a persistent interest in nonverbal language—into popular culture. Promising that the book could make the reader “a more perceptive human being,” Fast introduced the “new science” of kinesics and referred to research that shed light on dating practices, family dynamics, and business deals. The book remained on the New York Times Best Sellers list for twenty-two weeks immediately after its publication. It has never been out of print, and a 2014 electronic edition offered an updated, revised version.

Neuroscience research during the “decade of the brain” (1990–2000) further revealed the link between gestures and speech and the ways nonverbal language is both experienced within the body and adapted for social communication. Such discoveries stirred new interest in the field among scholars. Pop-psychology articles and seminars on how to use body language to affect personal relationships and career advancement garnered less media attention, and reports on research that offered new information or new technologies that used body language were featured more often.

Among the studies covered in popular media was a 2010 study showing that certain “high power” positions, such as sitting with arms behind head and legs outstretched, held for two minutes, increased testosterone (the hormone linked to power and dominance in the animal and human worlds) by 20 percent and decreased the stress hormone cortisol by 25 percent. In a different kind of research, face recognition technology and depth-sensing cameras developed by Microsoft were used to create a tool to aid clinicians in diagnosis of depression and stress disorders and to create games that help children with autism understand and express emotions. Meanwhile, people proclaiming to be body language experts proliferated on social media such as YouTube, creating popular videos in which they claimed to read the expressions and nonverbal cues of well-known public figures.

The analysis of body language was also prominently used in forensic science during the twenty-first century. Many police departments and federal law enforcement agencies employed body language consultants to help law enforcement use such techniques as a tool to evaluate people's intentions. Still, experts warned that much of the claims about nonverbal communications, especially those dispensed by the media, do not have the support of scientific evidence and can contribute to misinformation.

Bibliography

Beattle, Geoffrey. Visible Thought: The New Psychology of Body Language. Routledge, 2003.

Birdwhistell, Ray. Introduction to Kinesics: An Annotation System for Analysis of Body Motion and Gesture. University of Louisville, 1979.

Fast, Julius. Body Language. Evans, 1970.

Firth, Niall. “Depressed? Computers Know What It’s Like.” New Scientist 216.2910 (2013): 18–19.

Greenfieldboyce, Nell. “Victory or Defeat? Emotions Aren’t All in the Face.” Morning Edition. NPR. 29 November 2012. Web. 6 May 2014.

Hodson, Hal. “I Know Just How You Feel.” New Scientist 221.2959 (2014): 18.

Kelly, Morgan. “Don’t Read My Lips! Body Language Trumps the Face for Conveying Intense Emotions.” Research at Princeton, News Archive, 15 January 2013. Web. 6 May 2014.

Kendon, Adam. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge UP, 2004.

Matsumoto, David Ricky, Mark G. Frank, and Hyi Sung Hwang, eds. Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Sage, 2013.

Skibba, Ramin. "The Truth About Reading Body Language." Popular Science, 8 Oct. 2020, www.popsci.com/story/science/body-language-analysis/. Accessed 3 Oct. 2024.