Use of Paralanguage and Kinesics
The use of kinesics and paralanguage in everyday life is the most
prominent use of persuasion we use subconsciously. They are used
subconsciously because you may not know what they mean. Which can
cause cultural tension if you do something that may seem harmless to you
but may be a great insult to another culture. Paralanguage has many forms
such as whistling which can be used by many people as a means of
entertaining by whistling a song or even in American culture used to hound
women on the streets because they appear to be attractive. These two uses of
persuasion I will discuss about in my paper. I will discuss the history of
both and also how they are used today in everyday life.
To start of with I will define kinesics. Kinesics is articulation of the
body, or movement resulting from muscular and skeletal shift. This includes
all actions, physical or physiological, automatic reflexes, posture, facial
expressions, gestures, and other body movements. Body language, body
idiom, gesture language, organ language and kinesic acts are just some terms
used to depict kinesics. In ways that body language works in nonverbal acts,
body language parallels paralanguage. Kinesic acts may substitute for
language, accompany it, or modify it. Kinesic acts may be lexical or
informative and directive in nature, or they may be emotive or empathic
movements. Posture is one of the components of kinesics. Posture is broken
down into three basic positions: bent knees, lying down, and standing.
Artists and mimes have always been aware of the range of communication
possible through body stance. But there are some cultural differences in
posture positions. Most people use the bent knee position to eat, but while
the Romans used to eat lying down. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark
described the sleeping posture of the Tibetans before World War II. He said
that the local men slept outside at night huddled around the fire, hunched
over on their knees with their faces resting in their palms.
In 1932, William James did a study of expression of bodily posture.
He recognized the relationship of facial expression, gesture, and posture. He
declared that studying each one independently was justified for the purpose
of analysis, but they should be recognized as a whole unit that function as an
expression. He devised four basic kinds from 347 different postures in his
experiment. The four basic kinds are: approach, withdrawal, expansion, and
contraction. Approach referred to such things as attention, interest, scrutiny,
and curiosity. Withdrawal involved drawing back or turning away, refusal,
repulsion, and disgust. Expansion referred to the expanded chest, erect trunk
and head, and raised shoulders, which conveyed pride, conceit, arrogance,
disdain, mastery, and self-esteem. Contraction was characterized by forward
trunk, bowed head, drooping shoulders, and sunken chest. Studies have
identified postural behavior with personality types and ways of life, for
example relaxation, assertiveness, and restraint; and have noted the
correlation of certain kinds of movement in sleeping and waking acts.
Posture is a substantial marker of feminine and masculine behavior. The
relationship of posture to sex gestures is obvious in the stereotypes in U.S.
advertising. Posture is an indicator of status and rank and is also a marker of
etiquette. In a study of Roman sculpture and coinage, Brilliant demonstrates
that posture identifies the noble and the peasant. In Western culture one was
taught to stand when an elderly person enters the room.
The face seems to be the most obvious component of body language,
but it is certainly the most confusing and difficult to understand. Modern
studies of facial expressions dates back to the nineteenth century, starting
with Charles Bell, who in 1806, published Essays on the Anatomy and
Philosophy of Expression: As Connected with the Fine Arts. Charles
Darwin's, The Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals, in 1872, was
apparently influenced by Bell's earlier work. Facial expressions are like
sentences in human language, they are infinite in variety. The relationship of
facial expression to other components of body language and to language
itself, is sparsely examined and such observations as have been made are
recent. It does not take very extensive scientific study to observe that a
smiling face makes a sentence sound different from a sentence articulated by
a sorrowful, droopy physiognomy. There are five basic physical descriptions
of facial expressions: neutral, relaxed, tense, uplifted, and droopy. The
neutral could result in various expressions such as pleasure, mask, respect,
thoughtful, and quiet attention. The relaxed could result in love, pleasure
and submission. The tense results in fear, surprise, determination, contempt,
and extreme interest. The uplifted could result in happiness, anxiety, rage,
religious love, astonishment, attention. Finally the droopy, in distress,
suffering, grief, dismay, and shock. Facial expression may portray the actual
emotion felt and accurately accompany the speech. On the other hand, facial
expression, as with other body language and nonverbal components, may
contradict the verbal expression, thus giving the real message. One's facial
expression may be practiced and may thus be made convincingly to lie, along
with the speech act, about one's real feelings. Artists and clowns have
effectively exploited facial expressions and gestures as social weapons and
entertainment.
The eyes and mouth, it is generally agreed, carry the heaviest load of
communicative and expressive manifestations. When the eyes of two
persons meet there is a special kind of communication. This special kind of
communication is not always desirable. In some cultures the Evil Eye , the
direct stare, is one of the worst possible social and/or supernatural offenses.
The term eye contact is used to identify this special relationship. Eye contact
is one of the closest possible relationships. It can be used as a "regulator" in
conversations in an informal kind of way, and it can be used in a more
precise signal, for example, between the chairman of a meeting and a
member who is asking for the floor. At the end of a social evening, couples
may signal "Let's go!" only by eye contact. Deaf persons are insistent on eye
contact in teractions; they depend heavily on kinesic movement to
supplement the "conversation." The avoidance of eye contact also signals
something meaningful. Looking away contributes to maintaining
psychological distance. Other eye behaviors are symptoms of abnormalities
in human beings, such as excessive blinking, depressed look, dramatic gaze,
guarded gaze, and absent gaze. The blink frequency can be a measure of
tension, or even of sobriety as some researchers have concluded.
The mouth is a remarkable communicator, both on the obvious and
subtle levels. In fact, most mouth movement is not associated with sound at
all. If the eyes are the "windows of the soul," certainly the mouth is the very
door. The grimace, in contrast to the movement made by a tic, is voluntary
and within the control of the person who does it. Pouting is a well-known
kinesic act of children. Sticking out the tongue among the children of
Western cultures is a widely-known expression of insult. Protruding the
tongue, however, has other meanings. It is a component of a negative
response among the aborigines in Queensland and Gipp's land where a
negative is expressed by throwing the head of a little backwards and putting
out the tongue. Tongue movements may take place naturally when one is
thinking deeply or preoccupied with writing or silent reading - such behavior
when one is alone is known as "autistic behavior." Jaw movement also
occurs in moments of concentration, and in addition when the person is
carrying on some activity with an opening and closing motion. The hands, of
course, are of paramount interest here with a seemly endless array of
possibilities which different cultures utilize in various ways. In some
cultures specific hand gestures number in the hundreds. Movement of the
head conveys various meanings depending upon the tilt, uprightness, thrust
from the body, and side movement.
Paralanguage is some kind of articulation of the vocal apparatus, or
significant lack of it, for example, hesitation between segments of vocal
articulation. This includes all noises and sounds which are extra-speech
sounds, such as hissing, shushing, whistling, and imitation sounds, as well
as a large variety of speech modifications, such as quality of voice
(sepulchral, whiny, giggling), extra high-pitched utterances, or hesitations
and speed in talking. People from all different walks of life recognize that
the human voice communicates something beyond language. These effects
are referred to by impressionistic descriptions such as "tone of voice," "voice
quality," "manner of speaking," or "the way he said it." There are modifying
features which can occur independently, such as crying and laughing,
groaning, and whining. These are "vocal characterizes" which one "talks
through" when they accompany language. The sounds used in language are
referred to as segmental sounds or phonemes. They are produced by the
articulatory organs of speech and each has a particular articulatory phonetic
description. Fricative sounds occur frequently in paralanguage, perhaps
because of the air expired air movement is of much importance in
paralinguistic. A surprising amount of paralanguage makes use of sounds
which might be considered more dramatic and exotic than the language
sounds. These sounds are trills and clicks and sounds modified in exotic
ways, which without the modification might be considered ordinary. Trills
are a kind of iterative articulation; that is, repetitions of a flap articulation by
the movable parts of the speech mechanism. Any part of the speech
apparatus which can move may be involved in a trill, whether it be the lips,
tongue, cheek, uvula, velic, or vocal cords.
The click sounds are made by causing a suction of air in the mouth
cavity. These percussive-like sounds are well documented as speech sounds
in several languages, but, like the kiwi bird in New Zealand, they occur in
only one geographical area of the world. The type of modification when the
lips are involved, or puckered, is called labialization, and in speech sounds is
used in French, German, Scandinavian, and many other languages. In
English this type of rounded lip modification is known as "baby talk."
Palatalization is a kind of modification made by the blade of the tongue in
contact with the palate. It occurs very commonly in Slavic languages.
Nasalization is a kind of modification which permits air to escape through
the nose while pronouncing an oral sound. Nasalized vowels occur in the
language structure of French, but in English occur only in paralanguage.
Nasalization also occurs in strong emotions of love and hatred due to the
swelling and shrinking of the nasal membranes in these circumstances.
Pharyngealization is another modification and is produced in the back of the
throat. It results from opening up the area of the pharynx by tongue
movement. This occurrence is noted in the Arabic language. Muscle
constriction is a tightening of the vocal apparatus which produces sounds
known as "fortis" in language systems, in contrast to sounds made in relaxed
manner, which are known as "lenis." Constriction of the vocal cords is said
to occur in a special kind of speech among the Amahuacas of Peru.
There are extra-speech sounds used for communication which are
treated here, never occur, as far as has been recorded, in any language system
of the world. This group, non-language sounds, includes such "noises" as
the whistle, the kiss, the yell, the groan, clapping of the tongue, various
percussive sounding noises made with mouth air articulated by the lips and
tongue, but not to be confused with mouth clicks, and a variety of imitative
noises, such as the bilabial "pop" when the champagne cork is released.
Whistling as a communication device is world-wide, from spontaneous,
expressive whistling for joy, or "whistling in the dark," to simple signals
across distances, such as among mountain climbers in the Alps who call for
help by whistling. The kiss is a bilabial voiceless click which is articulated
in the manner of the other clicks actually used in languages which were
described previously under specific language sounds. Kempelen classified
kisses into three types, according to their sounds: the kiss proper, a clear-
ringing kiss, coming from the heart; the weaker kiss, from an acoustic point
of view; and a loathsome smack. The kiss is used in greetings and in
affectionate display, but also has other functions with communicative value.
The yell, and variations of it as expressed by the scream, shout, roar, howl,
bellow, squeal, holler, shriek, or screech, are effective non-speech
communications, difficult to describe technically, and almost impossible to
duplicate the effect of in other kinds of communication media. The
Confederate Yell, during the Civil War, was a ulant yell that was the signal
for the Confederate troops to charge at the enemies.
The use of paralanguage in today's society is very prominent. We use
paralanguage with children when we tell them to be quiet by saying "shush."
If we see something disgusting we can make a gagging sound which shows
disapproval. We also use kinesics today a lot too. We use the "O.K." sign to
signal that everything is fine. We even have body language for vulgar words
that many people today seem to use a lot. The study of these two topics can
help a lot in understanding what people are really saying in today's society.
Without the understanding of kinesics or paralanguage we would not be able
to help bridge the gap between certain cultures or even each other. We need
these two non-verbal communication techniques to survive.
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