Kinesics and Context

Birdwhistell, Ray L. 1971. Kinesic and Context: Essays on Body-Motion Communication. Allen Lane The Penguin Press

Käesolev on esimene lugemine. Essee kirjutamiseks lähen peagi teiselegi ringile. Tuleb arvestada, et käesolevat raamatut loen ma veel mitu korda.

Kuidas laps õpib kehalise suhtlemise repertuaari selgeks. Tsitaadi lõpus on kirjeldus metakommunikatsioonist:

Even with our present limited knowledge about the process, which admittedly has been gathered by a dual process of limited observation and questionable extrapolation backward from the behavior of older children, we can generalize that the child learns his communication behavior through the incorporation of a series of modifying and interlocking patterns. Intimately associated with his enculturation and socialization, his language and his motion system provide him with contact with the problems of his environment and often with their solutions. Through this system he finds out who he is in relation to others and what his expectancies and responsibilities are. In short, it is through the various modalities of his communication system that he structures, anticipates, and is rewarded or failed by his environment. Through out-of-awareness, but clearly discrete, signals he learns the directives, the prohibitions, the encouragements, and the warnings which govern his consistent association with other members of his society. His language and his body motion system are flexible and malleable, yet, at the same time they are adaptive and functional only because they are so systematically organized. Not only do they carry instructions and descriptions and responses - reaffirmation of old understandings and directions which result in the acceptance of new ones - but also these messages are cross-referenced by statements about the messages themselves. For this insight I am particularly grateful to Gregory Bateson. The messages are cross-references by explicit and analyzable behavior which instructs as to whether the message is to be taken literally or metaphorically, as a joke, or as an unavoidable prescription. (Birdwhistell 1971: 10)

Suhtlemine on ühiskonna eeltingimus:

Most students of animal or human behavior are now prepared to agree that social life, or society, to put the statement in a different form, is absolutely an adaptive necessity for human existence. Communication, in this sense, is that system of coadaption by which society is sustained, and, which in turn, makes human life possible.
Viewed from this perspective, communication is that system through which human beings establish a predictable continuity in life. Far from being a process centrally devoted to change, most of social interaction is concerned with maintaining an ongoing equilibrium. (Birdwhistell 1971: 14)

Naeratuse tähendusest:

Insofar as I have been able to determine, just as there are no universal words, no sound complexes, which carry the same meaning the world over, there are no body motions, facial expressions, or gestures which provoke identical responses the world over. A body can be bowed in grief, in humility, in laughter, or in readiness for aggression. A "smile" in one society portrays friendliness, in another embarrassment, and, in still another may contain a warning that, unless tension is reduced, hostility and attack will follow. (Birdwhistell 1971: 34)

Teiste kohalolu tähtsus:

All kinesic research rests upon the assumption that, without the participant's being aware of it, human beings are constantly engaged in adjustments to the presence and activities of other human beings. As sensitive organisms, they utilize their full sensory equipment in this adjustment. Any particular sensory modality may have paramount definitional power in a particular communicationsituation, but these modalities may only be heuristically abstracted for study and analysis. That is, although at any punctiform moment a person may be seen to be moving or vocalizing, the study of communicational scenes reveals that all the abstractable modalities are necessary to understanding the communication situation. (Birdwhistell 1971: 48-49)

Kommunikatsioonisüsteem on mitmekanaliline:

We get an entirely different picture of communication if we recognize that communication is not just what happens in one channel. We cannot investigate communication by isolating and measuring one channel, the acoustic (that is, the sound-sending and sound-receiving channel). Communication, upon investigation appears to be a system which makes use of the channels of all of the sensory modalities. By this model, communication is a continuous process utilizing the various channels and the combinations of them as appropriate to the particular situation. (Birdwhistell 1971: 70)

Suhtlemise funktsiooniks pole ainult informatsiooni loomine ja edastamine, vaid ka interaktsiooni säilitamine:

...the conveyance of new information is no more important than what we call the integrational aspect of the communicative process. In the broadest sense, the integrational aspect includes all behavioral operations which:

1. keep the system in operation
2. regulate the interactional process
3. cross-reference particular messages to comprehensibility in a particular context
4. relate the particular context to the larger contexts of which the interaction is but a special situation

(Birdwhistell 1971: 86-87)

Tähendus sõltub kontekstist ja valitud koodist:

We do not, as yet, know enough about words or gesture or their association to know the shapes and sizes of the presently only vaguely conceptualized semiotic or communicational units. Nor do I believe that we are going to be able to weigh the effect of their words or body motion complexes in interaction until we know enough about the matrices of their occurrence to study them. As our studies approach the point where we must deal with social meaning, we need clear statements regarding the structure of the social contexts of communicational occurrences. It is difficult, if not impossible, to answer the question: What does this symbol or that gesture mean? Meaning is not immanent in particular symbols, words, sentences, or acts of whatever duration but in the behavior elicited by the presence or absence of such behavior in particular contexts. The derivation and comprehension of social meaning thus rests equally upon comprehension of the code and of the context which selects from the possibilities provided by the code structure. (Birdwhistell 1971: 96)

Kõne ja kehaliigutuste seos:

Inspection of the wrorking transcript of the linguistically and kinesically recorded data revealed repetitive and apparently systematic body of behaviors directly associable with the vocalic stream. That is, there seemed to be some systematic regularity in the movements people made when they talked. These in both shape and structural activity seemed distinguishable from the clearly structural kinesic particles which occur both concurrently and apart from the flow of speech. (Birdwhistell 1971: 116-117)

Sõnadesse "üleuskumine":

What I am trying to say is that men have not communicated with each other by spoken language alone any more than they have lived by metabolism. Speech contributes to the total communication process; the metabolic process is but one aspect of the vital process.
One last, practical note: if this is so, there is a good reason why Johnny has so much trouble learning to write. Writing must derive and abstract both spoken and body motion activity. If Johnny is taught that he is only dealing with lexicallu bound speech material, he has to deny reality to be literate. The multimodal universe of television may teach him this and he may very well revolt against the teacher who overbelieves in words. If our formulations are correct, the grammarian must turn to body motion for data to make sense out of a number of areas now hidden in the parts of speech. (Birdwhistell 1971: 127)

While body motion behavior is based in the physiological structure, the communicative aspects of this behavior are patterned by social and cultural experience. The meaning of such behavior is not so simple that it can be itemized in a glossary of gestures. Nor is meaning encapsulated atomistically in particular motions. It can be derived only from the examination of the patterned structure of the system of body motion as a whole as this manifests itself in the particular social situation. (Birdwhistell 1971: 173)

Birdwhistell haarab ka prokseemikat:

Interpersonal space variations are in part extensions of kinesic activity and are often definitional of communication situations. (Birdwhistell 1971: 177)

Siin nimetab ta denotatiivse sõnaraamatu koostamist (nagu tehakse kehakeele aimekirjanduses) esimeseks "kandja" (nagu märgi-kandja) ahvatluseks (The "Carrier" Temptarion):

This derives from a linguistic naiveté which assumes that each gesture, whether as gross as a thumbed nose or as tiny as a first-degree right lid droop, has a "real" meaning just as "words" are supposed to have. If the investigator succumbs to this, his attention is directed into a kind of "lexicon" wherein he draws up lists of moves and their meanings only to discover that most human being are kinesically illiterate and move improper English. (Birdwhistell 1971: 186)

Kineesika:

A product of systematic social interaction, the kinesic system is a social system. Out of the range of muscular adjustments produced by a human being, some are utilized by the social system for communicational purposes. Thus, to say it simply, no human body produces a kine (least kinesic unit); it moves or adjusts in a set of muscular relationships. In social interaction, certain of these have demonstrable special utility in the communicational process. That is, under analysis, they emerge as kines. Every visible body movement, accordingly, is not a kine any more than every audible noise made by the vocal apparatus is a phone. Only after analysis has revealed that the presence or absence of a given movement in a particular context systematically affects the interactional process do we assert that that movement has kinesic significance. (Birdwhistell 1971: 193)

Kultuur, korrastus, süsteem:

A kine is an abstraction of that range of behavior produced by a member of a given social group which, for another member of that same group, stands in perceptual contrast to a different range of such behavior. While, theoretically, within certain limits provided by the physiological structure, a given complex of muscular reactions may produce a continuous series of positions, in actuality, any social system patterns these into a discontinuous or discrete series for reception or reproduction. Thus, while, for example, the membership of culture A will report only 2 degrees of lid closure, culture B may recognize as many as five. As a skilled spectator under optimal conditions, I can record or reproduce 15 degrees of lid closure quite distinct from each other, but most middle majority informants "see" only three. (Birdwhistell 1971: 193)

The final answers to "What does X mean" can only be arrived at when all of the other social systems interacting in any situation are equally thoroughly analyzed. (Birdwhistell 1971: 227)

Immenentselt (loomuomaselt) kodeeritud käitumine näib Birdwhistelli käsitluses kandvat nime instrumentaalne käitumine:

In the Cigarette Scene, the acts of lighting the cigarette, Gregory's manipulation of the match, and Doris' adjustment of her shoe strap may be termed instrumental behavior. Moreover, the fact that Doris and Gregory are seated for an extended conversation is, at one level, instrumental. To say that an act is instrumental, however, does not define it, in itself, as without signal or message value. The performance of any act in the presence of others must be comprehended as having the stamp of individual and social practice. Yet, at this writing, acts such as walking, smoking, eating, knitting, woodworking, still must be filed as "instrumental" and/or "task oriented" until we know more about their communicative structure. (Birdwhistell 1971: 231)

Kirjandust:

• Bateson, F., and Mead, M. 1942. Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. New York: Special Publications of the New York Academy of Sciences. Vol. II
• Harris, Marvin, 1964. The Nature of Cultural Things. New York: Random House.
• Caroll, J. C. 1953. The Study of Language: A Survey of Linguistics and Related Disciplines in America. Cambridge: Hardward University Press
• Kluckhohn, C. 1949. Mirror for Man. New York: Whittlesby House, McGraw-Hill. London: McGraw-Hill, 1963
• Knapp, P. H. 1963a. Expression of Emotion in Man. New York: International Universities Press
• LaBarre, W. 1954. The Human Animal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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• Luria, A. R. 1961. The Role of Speech in the Regulation of Behavior. London: Permagon Press
• Morris, C. W. 1938. Foundations of the Theory of Signs. London: University of Chicago Press
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• Ruesch, J. 1951. COmmunication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry. New York: Norton.