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Paper Abstract: Analysis of human body language. Messages sent to nonverbal communication. Importance of people understanding how to detect and read body language. Danger of unread, hidden messages leading to misunderstandings and conflict. How infants acquire communication skills. Body language and date rape. Key differences in body language of males and females. Paper Introduction: This study will analyze human body language, or nonverbal communications, in terms of the messages sent by such language, and the reasons for and consequences of misunderstanding, or not responding knowledgeably to, such messages. The essence of the study will be the argument that an individual who seeks to live and work and relate to other human beings, in business and in personal affairs, and in as healthy and knowledgeable a fashion as possible, will become educated in detecting and reading body language. Butterworth makes clear the significance of the topic, noting both the presence of body language in infants and the relationship between early nonverbal communication and the learning of language itself. The sub-title of his article in Natural History is "finger pointing by babies is correlated with Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Trenholm, S., & Jensen, A. 54). Interpersonal Communications.Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.----------------------- 11 The study, conducted by University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman, ... While we're busy talking, our bodies are holding conversations all their own (Bodanis, 1999, 6). The sub-titleof his article in Natural History is "finger pointing by babies iscorrelated with the rate of language acquisition." He goes on to argue thatfinger pointing, which is apparently used in the animal world only byhumans, "is closely linked with speech acquisition. Some body language is obvious, ofcourse, such as facial expressions which reveal disgust or happiness.However, even with the most "obvious" nonverbal messages, the sender may bedeceptive and an individual can be fooled if he or she takes body languageat face value. Theresponsiveness or non-responsiveness of a parent to a child's nonverbalcommunication is itself a factor of the parent's communication skills, inthis case his or her ability to realize that communication through bodylanguage is being expressed by such a young being. D., (1991). 14 , 4-5. Tannen. Fast calls to mind the work of Butterworth when he notes that "thistype of body language blindness often starts in childhood" and "ten percentof all children have problems with sending and reading subtexts." Thisinability is particularly harmful in human relationships, because "mostemotional subtexts between people are communicated nonverbally, throughbody language" (Fast, 1991, p. The age when babiesfirst point (around the 11-month point, on average) is a good indicator oftheir progress in language comprehension" (Butterworth, 1997, p. Or it may simply be due to the fact that thepopular people are telling lies which the listeners want to believe aretrue. An angry father points at a dent in his new car and asks his teen-age son, "How did that happen?" (Butterworth, 1997, p. (1991). The specific aim of the pointed finger, with a child or an adult, isnot only to draw another's attention to the object pointed at, but toconnect the pointer to the world and to another human being. Clearly, the individual who is unaware of verbal messages, his or herown as well as those of others, will be at a severe disadvantage in anyrelationship, from business to romance. However, would society say the same about a person who flashed arounda roll of money in a bar, "flaunting" his or her money, and a thief sawthis as an invitation to steal that money? 8, No. The child, then, begins to learns (or begins to fail to learn) suchskills starting with as simple a gesture as a pointed finger. Lois Pineau examines the issue of date rape and, among other aspects,the role of body language and nonverbal communication in the encounterbetween the male and female and the outcome of that encounter. Oct 11, Vol.154, No. "Politicians have known for a very long time that telling people what they want to hear is a very good social tactic," Feldman [said].... Tannen is especially concerned, as is Pineau, with body language thatdemonstrates the dominance of males over females, even with neither genderis consciously aware of such messages. Nonverbals can complement, accent, repeat, substitute for, or contradict verbal messages (Trenholm and Jensen, 2 , p. In adults it can lead to an inability to relate to others, and in the job world it can be downright disastrous (Fast, 1991, p. Infants looked at their mothers, both while pointing and immediately afterward, to check whether they had succeeded in redirecting their attention (Butterworth, 1997, p. The complexity of body language and the difficulty of interpretingthat language clearly and accurately is made even more obvious by Infante,Rancer and Womack. The individual who wants to live and work as effectively andsuccessfully as possible, communicating coherently with other human beingson business and personal levels, must become aware of body language and beable to detect and read it. (1999). 4, 419-27. Butterworth, G. In comparing the body postures of young men and women in all-male, all-female, and mixed discussion groups, that the men sat more or less the same way whether or not there were women present: They sprawled out in "relaxed" positions, taking up a large amount of space. A geography teacher points to various countries on a map as he calls out their names. 1 6, No. It is not anunfair leap to believe that a criminal will be more likely to seek out avictim who is more likely to react passively or with petrifying fear thanone who has a strong body boundary and would more likely fight back.Certainly a woman can be taught to carry herself with more confidence, butonly if she is aware of her body language and its potential dangers, atleast in certain vulnerable situations. "Date Rape: A feminist Analysis." Law andPhilosophy, Vol. He reports on a Journal of Nonverbal Behavior study whichconcluded that teen-agers most adept at lying are likely to be very popular people. A fair implication is that successful nonverbal communication willaffect how, when, and how well the infant acquires verbal skills. "Liar, Liar." Insight on the News. "Body Talk." Time International. This study will analyze human body language, or nonverbalcommunications, in terms of the messages sent by such language, and thereasons for and consequences of misunderstanding, or not respondingknowledgeably to, such messages. Futureresearch into body language will prove invaluable in uncovering the hiddenmessages the body sends and in helping human beings communicate moreclearly and effectively with one another to avoid misunderstandings whichare at the root of so much conflict. Goode, S. Butterworthrefers to research with babies who had just begun to point behaved when placed in a room with attractive toys just out of reach and with dolls some way off. New York: Penguin. 128, No. Thesignificance of body language can clearly be crucial in many situations. 212). Vol. In otherwords, as long as the communication is nonverbal, the male can declare thathe believed consent was present through his interpretation of body languageand other nonverbal signals.It is argued by society and the law, as Pineau points out, that the womanis in part or wholly responsible for the sexual act occurring if shedresses provocatively or in some subtle way communicates to the man thatshe seeks sex with him (Pineau, 1989, p. The complexity of the process of humancommunication can be overwhelming: While some nonverbal messages stand on their own, others work in conjunction with verbal messages. Goode covers the role of deception in body language, another areawhere it behooves an individual to become knowledgeable about nonverbalcommunication. Infante, D.A., Rancer, A. (1997). We found that the babies (seated in highchairs next to their mothers) both reached for and pointed at the nearby toys, whereas the distant dolls elicited only pointing. Humans ... have elaborate forms of body language-- including everything from the exchange of bacteria to a complex vocabulary of smells--that operate without our conscious awareness or control. References Bodanis, D. However, this correlation between popularity and successfuldeception certainly has to do also with the desire of people to believesomebody they like or admire. [found] a strong link between popular teen-agers and those who are best able to pull off a lie. 66). If it is thisdifficult to determine who is communicating effectively, who is caring forthe other's needs, who is right or wrong, then how much more difficultwould it be to answer in a legal setting the same questions with respect todate rape? You Just Don't Understand. Tugging on her mother's jacket, a small child, too young to talk, points her index finger at a puppy in a pet shop window. 66). and an outstretched index finger. Itcan be easily misinterpreted and then used against the person who engagedin it, whether he or she was even conscious of it in the first place. 14). . She refers to a businesswoman'scomment that an all-woman's meeting is more relaxed then a mixed-gendermeeting, and a man's response that to him both types were the same. Men and women, saysTannen, see the world and communication from such different perspectivesthat it is as if they exist in entirely different realities. The women ... As Butterworth writes,the simply gesture of a finger-pointing child is one of the first steps ina long journey of education and communication: In the beginning was the Word . Tannen seeksabove all to make both genders aware of body language and its meaning inorder to advance communications between the genders. (1989). 236). Emblems: movements that are functionally equivalent to words[such as the thumb held out for hitchhiking]; Illustrators: movements usedin conjunction with words to assist receiver in comprehension [such as armmovements emphasizing words]; Affect Displays: movements that expressemotions [such as a shaking fist]; Regulators: movements used to regulatethe interactions between people [such as holding an open palm up to atalker's face to silence him]; and Adaptors: behaviors which once served aspurely physical need, but have been adapted to serve other needs [such asscratching the head which once dealt with an itch and now means confusion](Infante, 1997, p. If theinfant's finger pointing is ignored, the infant may lose the incentive tolove to the next stage of the acquisition of communication skills. Obviously, learning how to express oneself through body language, andhow to detect and interpret others' body language is a long process, not asdifficult as learning a verbal language, but certainly with its ownsubtleties and complexities. 4). Deborah Tannen, in her book You Just Don't Understand, explores someof the subtle misunderstandings between men and women as they try tocommunicate even about the most mundane matters. 14). Again, if thechild's pointing is not acknowledged and/or given a positive response ofsome sort, usually from a parental figure, the child will begin to lose itsdesire and motivation to develop his communication skills. Tannenwrites that multi-discipline research demonstrates that women make more adjustments than men in mixed groups.... . Perhaps also, suggests a presidential watcher, a pause, a grin and a coy bite of the lower lip (Goode, 2 , p. Body Language in the Workplace. Men were found to most often dominate mixed meetings, showing thatbody language is an expression, often unconscious, of the internal realityof an individual and his perception of others' realities. "Female submissiveness,nonverbal behavior, and body boundary definition." The Journal ofPsychology. Would the victim of such arobbery have to prove that he or she aggressively resisted the robbery? (1994). 4, 14-17. 419). Richards and McAlister examine one area where ignorance of bodylanguage can be literally life-threatening. Clues to lying include blank expressions, little or excessive eye contact, shrugs and scratching.... Building CommunicationTheory. The essence of the study will be theargument that an individual who seeks to live and work and relate to otherhuman beings, in business and in personal affairs, and in as healthy andknowledgeable a fashion as possible, will become educated in detecting andreading body language. (1997). 16,No. Their study examines thehypothesis that "submissive women may be more vulnerable to criminalvictimization because they present certain cues of vulnerability" and findsthat "submissive women exhibited more controlled body movements and morebody-concealing clothing than did dominant women" and that "highly femininewomen are more likely to have weak body boundaries than are moreandrogynous women" (Richards and McAlister, 1994, p. drew themselves in, assuming "ladylike" postures, when there were men in the group, but relaxed and sprawled out when there weren't (Tannen, 1991, p. 14, 6-16. 217, 2 9-22 . If the child is not able to learn suchbody language, he or she may well grow up to be an adult unable to connectemotionally with other adults. Fast, J. Perhaps if a man who cheats on his wife believes President Clintondidn't really have sexual relations with "that woman," then he will seehimself as not really unfaithful to his own wife. "Starting point." Natural History, May,Vol. The myriad messages flowing through the bodynot only from the conscious mind, but also from the body's autonomicprocesses (such as smells and involuntary responses), make humancommunication far more complex and much richer than most imagine. Pineau, L. 229). This may be due to the desire to have such aperson to like them, which will not happen if they call the person a liar.It may have something to do with the fact that charming or beautiful orsexy people are not held to as high a standard of truth-telling as peoplewithout those qualities. & Womack, D. In allmatters related to communication, healthy interactions in which gesturesare recognized and receive responses will lead to further efforts atcommunication and additional acquisition of skills. Trenholm and Jensen introduce the concept of decoding, which refersto the action of an individual as he or she attempts to make sense of thebody language of others. Richards, L., & McAlister, L. The question arises, then, when we consider a popular teenager inschool or a popular President in the White House, why we would believe aperson who is obviously lying? (2 ). For a person well versed in body language,this might seem passe, but Julius Fast notes that The inability to learn the body language that sends out definite subtexts is not unusual, but it can be very destructive. Her argumentis that society and the law need to shift the emphasis away from forcingthe woman to prove "an episodic act of resistance" to the man having toprove the sexual act was accompanied by an effort to communicate with thewoman with respect to her desire to have sex, what she wants or doesn'twant in sex, whether she is having her desires met, and so on. Jan 31, Vol. New York: Ballantine. We may simply not be adept at reading bodylanguage. Butterworth makes clear the significance of the topic, noting boththe presence of body language in infants and the relationship between earlynonverbal communication and the learning of language itself. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. While much of human body language is accessible to our consciousunderstanding as we interact with one another, Bodanis reminds us that agood deal of such language remains beyond our awareness or control: You may think that words are the best way to get your message across, but the subtle vocabulary of the body can speak volumes.... (2 ). 16). These authors refer to the typology of Ekman andFriesen, which includes five varieties of body movements sending five typesof messages. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.