THE ABC OF BODY LANGUAGE

In an attempt to outline certain aspects of body language

and unify the science, or perhaps make body language

into a science, Dr Ray Birdwhistell has written a preliminary research manual on the subject, a manual

he calls An Introduction to Kinesics. Basically, he has attempted to
 put together an annotational system for

kinesics or body language, to break all relevant movements

down to their basics and give a symbol - much the

way a choreographer breaks the dance down into basic steps and gives each a symbol.

The result is a little like Egyptian pictographs, but hopefully not
 as hard to read. Starting with the eyes,

since they are the most common source of communication

in body language, he has decided that is the

best symbol for the open eye, fot the closed eye.

A wink of the right eye then becomes ( ), of

the left eye ( ). Open eyes are () and

so on. Dr. Birdwhistell calls each of these movements

a kine, or the smallest recordable movement.

The first premise in developing this type of notational

system for body language, Dr Birdwhistell says, is to

assume that all movements of the body have meaning.

None are accidental. Once this is accepted, we can proceed

to a study of every movement, its significance and a

means of labelling it.

I find that this basic assumption is the most difficult one

to accept. Perhaps scratching the nose is an indication of

disagreement, but it may also be an indication of an itchy

nose. This is where the real trouble in kinesics lies, in

separating the significant from the insignificant gestures,

the meaningful from the purely random, or from the

carefully learned.

When a woman sits with her legs slanted, parallel and

slightly crossed at the ankles it may indicate an orderly

mind, but it is far more likely to be an affected positioning

or even charm-school training. Certain charm schools believe

that this is a graceful and womanly pose and suggest

that women condition themselves to fall into it when they

sit. It is also a pose that allows a woman with a miniskirt to
sit in a comfortable but unrevealing position. It was also a
pose our grandmothers considered 'very ladylike'.

These are some of the reasons we must approach

kinesics with caution and study a motion or a gesture

only in terms of the total pattern of movement, and we

must understand the pattern of movement in terms of

the spoken language. The two, while sometimes contradictory,are also inseparable.To standardize body movements before making them

into kinesic pictographs, we must have a zero point or a

resting point. An arm movement, for example, is only

significant if we know how much distance it covers.

We can only know this if we set up a standard zero point.

In Dr Birdwhistell's work, he sets a zero point for

'middle-class Americans'. This is the semi-relaxed state

of the body, head balanced and facing forwards, arms at

the side and legs together. Any perceptible position is a

motion away from this zero point.

It is significant that Dr Birdwhistell limits his own work

to middle-class Americans. He recognizes that even in our

culture there is a surprising lack of uniformity in body

movement. Working-class people will give certain interpretations

to movements, and these interpretations will

not apply in middle-class circles.

However, in America there is, I think, a greater ethnic

difference in gesture than there is a class difference. Although

he does not say so specifically, I would assume

that Dr Birdwhistell is primarily concerned with body

language among middle-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestant

Americans. If this is so, it presents serious students

of the subject with an overwhelming amount of data to

learn. They must absorb not only a system of interpretation

for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans, but also one for
Italian-Americans, Jewish Americans,American Indians,
black Americans and so on. Then there

would be class lines in each of these categories, and the

total number of systems would become overwhelming.

What must be found is one common system that will

work for all cultures and all ethnic groups, and I suspect

that, with some variation, Dr Birdwhistell's system will.

Dr Birdwhistell also points out that a body movement

may mean nothing at all in one context, and yet be extremely

significant in another context. For example, the

frown we make by creasing the skin between our eyebrows

may simply mark a point in a sentence or, in

another context, it may be a sign of annoyance or, in still

another context, of deep concentration. Examining the

face alone won't tell us the exact meaning of the frown.

We must know what the frowner is doing.

Another point Dr Birdwhistell makes is that all of our

movements, if they are significant are learned. We pick

them up as a part of our society. As an illustration of the

learning power of humans he considers the most common

kinesic motion, that of the eyelid. We tend to think

that eyelid movements are reflex movements. We squint

to guard against too much light, or we blink to keep out

dust and to cleanse our eyeballs.

Contradicting this, Dr Birdwhistell cites the numerous

cases of learned eyelid movement. Fakirs in Indian

religious cults can learn to look at the sun without blinking

or face a dust storm without closing their lids. Girls

in our society learn to ' bat their eyelashes' in flirting, even

when there is no need to clean the eyeball. He suggests

that examples like these prove that not all lid movement is

instinctive and, he adds, that lid behaviour varies from

culture to culture, the same as language. An interesting fact
 here is that when a bilingual personchanges his language,
he also changes his body language,his gestures and lid movements.