The Politics of Gesture

Braddick, Michael J. 2009. Introduction: The Politics of Gesture. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 9-35.

At the heart of the academic case for 'thick description' lies the ambiguous meaning of a physical movement - a boy 'rapidly contraching his right eyelid'. A simple observation (it is said) will not disclose the meaning of the signal - a twitch, a wink, or a parody of somebody's conspiratorial wink might all appear the same. Only an ethnographic analysis will disclose the meaning, or meanings, of this movement to those at the scene. Of course, for almost all historians the kind of ethnograptic analysis invited by this point of departure is impossible but the thought has been influential in the reading of particular texts. In Dornton's celebrated essay on the massacre of cats in Paris in the 1730s, for example, a similar methodological move is made: 'when you realise that you are not getting something - a joke, a proverb, a ceremony - that is particularly meaningful to the natives, you can see where to grasp a foreign system of meaning in order to unravel it'. The inexplicit of unstated meaning of action or utterance is what discloses the cultural frame to the observer; or, close analysis of the explicit reveals the conceptual underpinnings which make it seem possible, or natural, for participants. Here there is, perhaps, a connection with the Cambridge school of intellectual history, informed by Austin's writing on speech acts and intent on recovering the 'illocutionary force' of particular texts through contexualization, including an attention to what is not said, or to the particular choice made among available means of expression. The oft-remarked convergenge of social, political, and cultural history has as a central concern the importance of the implicit and unstated to an understanding of what was going on, and what it meant to participants. Non-verbal communication in face-to-face encounters is cruciar to that enterprise, and this volume explores how far historians might get in entering that terrain. (Braddick 2009: 9-10)

There is a connection between nonverbal communicatian and cultural meanings, and it is possible to better understand both (a given) culture and behaviour through analysing how people make sense of their (and others') actions. The approaches it this collection are "implicitly concursive," that is, they read closely the historical accounts of what people thought about behaviour and compare these to each other in order to arrive at a clearer statement of how a certain form of behaviour functioned in a given time and place.

It is a presumption of the following essays that gestures can be powerful means of communicatin affirmation and solidarity and, for the same reason, can be powerful means of expressing dissent. Class, gender, and generational relationships are all expressed and reproduced in gestural codes; so, too, are ethnic identities. Such codes are therefore central to the process of structuration described by Giddens: through individual actions we express, and reproduce, breader social relationships (structures). By the same token, transgressive gestures, or infractions of gestural codes, such as failing to take off a hat, or an over-familiar use of the handshake, can modify or even tnasform the patterns of social interaction, leading to a more coercive expression of authority. Gesture, in other words, can be the battleground over which divergent visions of social and political order are fought. Youth cultures and partisan identities are expressed non-verbally, in presentations of the self, which can also serve to sicence challenges to established values. In revolutionary situations these self-presentations express in shorthand the divergent values of partisan groups. Of course, these clashes can be unconscious - or example, in unintended miscommunication at moments of inter-cultural conduct - but such unfortunate miscommunications are no less important for their nature, nor less revealing to historians of larger assumptions about social relationships and their regulation. (Braddick 2009: 10-11)

Making a case for the relationship of nonverbal communication and power, here mainly in terms of transgressive gestures (of dissent) and the established values, norms, codes, authorities and social structures.

Indeed, central to the politics of gesture, is the difficulty of isolating intentional expression, and of defining what that intent was. Here, then, are we concerned with the broader 'complex structured systems of bodily actions that are socially acquired and laden with cultural significance', of which gesture, narrowly defined, is but one part. (Braddick 2009: 12)

Indeed I would rather like to shut the question of intention out of my own discussions, precisely because it is difficult if not impossible to define what was the intent behind a certain action, at least without sufficient context (what proceeded, what followed, what happened simultaneously, who were the actors, and many other such questions which resemble an investigation more than anything).

It is in this enactment of social order in face-to-face encounters that the political potential of gesture lies, but also in the ambiguity and elusive quality of non-verbal communication. Edward de Vere, the not altogether glorious seventeenth earl of Oxford, was remembered generations later by John Aubrey as the man who in 'making his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to Travell, 7 yeares'. On his return the Queen, perhaps (but perhaps not) intending to put him at his ease 'welcomed him home, and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the Fart'. This was not a gesture, one might think, but an involuntary bodily expression. Nonetheless, it signalled big politics: an involuntary physical movement had profound political consequences because it disrupted a social order being enacted in space and time. On the other hand, the Ethiopian proverb that 'when the great lord passes the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts' signals the same physical movement as a consciously directed act (or utterance), but one for a selective audience. This fart is a silent expression of dissent which allows for the maintenance of a sense of personal integrity while outwardly conforming with the behavioural expectations of social order - the need to make a low obeisance. (Braddick 2009: 16)

This Ethiopian proverb was also noted in Steven Lukes's Power: ARV. The distinction of gesture from an involuntary expression is again a somewhat artificial construct. The matter of significant and insignificant gestures is not reducible to intent, I think.

Effective presentation of a personal style can be crucial to the naturalization of authority. This, Sir Kenelm Digby was renowned in early Stuart England for his immaculate manners, which conferred a 'natural aouthority' much sought-after by those in power. He 'was such a goodly handsome person, gigantic and great voiced, and had so graceful elocution and noble address etc that had he been dropped out of the clouds in any part of the world, he would have made himself respected'. Here what were learned manners were presented as a kind of universal language, a natural language communicating across space and time, a kind of nobility which was crucial to the expressing of authority. Charles Cavendish was another seventeenth-century gentleman who had 'in an eminent degree the semblance and appearance of a man made to govern.' An absence of obvious affection was cruciar to this. He, like Sir Robert Harley, understood that military commands flowed easily from an obliging familiarity: a captain's good look or good word (sometimes) does infinitely win them and oblige them; and he [Harley] would say it was to admiration how Soldiers will venture their lives for an obliging officer'. This was widely remarked upon during the English Civil War - Colonel Hutchinson had 'a certain spirit of government, in an extraordinary manner which was not given to others, carrying an awe of his presence that his enemies could not withstand'. As Sennefelt shows in her article, a similar performance of apparent indifference to proprieties in dealing with social inferiors wasa powerful means of mobilizing support for Count Gyllenborg on the streets of eighteenth-century Stockholm: a means to command 'natural respect'. (Braddick 2009: 19-20)

This is the question of Haltung or comportment. Manners give authority an air of legitimacy, to appear "natural."

Throughout his account of the sectarian menace Edwards drew a strong connection between belief and behaviour, suggesting that those of desperate opinions could be expected to behave outrageously. (Braddick 2009: 21)

To some extent this is certainly true. In case of my "degenerated anarchism," I do sometimes look like a bum and behave uncourteously.

Gestural or performative excess is a clear indicator of insincerity, apishness; or part of the critique of court manners from the perspective of the republic of the eighteenth-century Parisian street, for example. As we have seen, charisma is specific to a place and time, but it can also be contested within a culture too: as with textual sources there are 'interpretive communities' with shared views of non-verbal communication. Even here, of course, non-verbal communication can be manipulated, and inauthenticity can be the pount: as in the burlesque of a wink discussed by Geertz, or the obviously insincere performance of penance by Abraham Comyns, described by Walter below. (Braddick 2009: 23)

Overperformance remins me of "bootlicking," especially in a small scene from Remsu's book where he is giving a lecture and wants to jot something town and immediately a student rushes to give him a pen. "Is that all you can do?" thinks the main character, e.g. is the student there not for the lecture but in order to curry small favours without being asked to, so that they could one day in some way be cashed in. That is, a "normal" performance of this action would be reluctant, responding to some "ritual" pleading by the lecturer; not jumping the gun as if the lecturer's thoughts had been read.

Manners, gesture, and deportment are crucial to the enactment of social orders, and to the expression of partisan identities within them. For the same reason gestural codes have often been seen as barometers of social change. Mercier's vision of the republican virtue of the Parisian street, as described by Colin Jones, can be seen as an assertive defence of urban society, an anonymous socual world but not one without identifiable rules of social interaction. Other commentators have been less optimistic about the value of changing codes of behaviour and many histories of manners have been engaged with this question of social change. (Braddick 2009: 27)

This is also very common in everyday discourse, somewhat related to infantile amnesia, that people used to have manners but not anymore. Sometimes this is even a bit weird, as when complains are raised that there are no "true gentlemen" left, implying that there ever were gentlemen as those depicted in popular culture. It is indeed a bitter feeling when reality does not accord to fantasy.

In all these historical situations it is clear that gestures have to be placed against a wider background of self-presentation - in dress, manner, style, and deportment, for example, as well as in the context of the power relations in play. In gestural studies, as we have seen, this is considered a kind of foreground to the physical movements whicha re utterances and closely linked to speech. Experimental work on modern subjects, however, suggests that these things are not clearly and distinctly perceived; that participants more often have a sense of an overall 'impression' rather than the precise movements which have given rise to that impression. This certainly seems to be the case with historical accounts of gestural impropriety, which often do not clearly describe particular gestures. But what might seem to be a source problem could also reflect contemporary perception: what is registered is often not the detail, but the impression, not only what is given out but what is given off. IN an important sense the expcessive and political potency of gesture lies in this very ambiguity - allowing for deniable challenges, minor manipulations of the situation which are difficult to challenge without provoking a conflict which seems unnecessary. Such unpunishable, perhaps even unperceived, acts of resistance - supercilious bows or fashionably knotted ties - might be 'weapons of the weak', or powerful defences against the hidden injuries inflicted on the self by submission to the behavioural demands of a given social and political order. (Braddick 2009: 28)

It almost seems that Braddick is discussing 'the conversation of attutides' in Mead's sense.

Personal or partisan style, charismatic or otherwise, depends on non-verbal communication of which gesture (narrowly understood) is a significant part. Its power as a defence, or as a weapon of the weak, often lies in its indistinctness although there are occasions on which its clarity carries a shocking charge. Gesture serves as a means of assertion for individuals in themselves, or as embodiments of a group - the gentry, the godly, or the nation, for example. That can also be contested, the performance disrupted, by non-verbal means, or derided as affected, inauthentic, or clownish. In this complex web of communication and nuance meaning minor forms of resistance might serve as an actual challenge to power, a restraint upon it, or more minimally create space for self-respect between a broadly conformist presentation of the self and unspoken dissent. It is through the silent fart, perhaps, that the disempowered can express the hidden injuries of class. (Braddick 2009: 31)

Again negatioting the relationship between nonverbal communication and power.

Nonetheless, as a general rule, the extent of the violence and injury inflicted by non-verbal communication presumably varies alongside shifting abstract understandings of the power of non-verbal communication, according to the consciousness of these things, and the significance attached to those that are perceived within larger cultural systems. It might cost little to kowtow but be too much to take off a hat; and the cost might differ not only with the actor's own understanding of these relationships, but of the actor's understanding of the other participants' understanding of them. Nonetheless there were, and are, limits; one interest for historians of the politics of gesture might be in probing where and how they have varied. (Braddick 2009: 34)

Nonverbal communication changes with culture. That is, there are dynamic aspects to both.

Brubaker, Leslie 2009. Gesture in Byzantium. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 36-56.

In this, he follows a pattern of behaviour that was established in late antiquity, as we know from Ammianus Marcellinus's description of the emperor Constantinus's visit to Rome in 357:

Acordingly being saluted as augustus with favouring shouts, while hills and shores thundered out the roar, he never stirred, but showed himself calm and imperturbable, as he was commonly seen in his provinces. For he both stooped when passing through lofty gates (although he was very short), and, as if his neck were in a vice, he kept the gaze of his eyes straight ahead, as turned his face neither to right nor to left, but (as if he were a clay figure) neither did he nod when the wheel jolted, nor was he ever seen to spit, or to wipe or rub his face or nose, or move his hands about.

This artificial impassivity, an absence of gesture, was a sign of imperial majesty and dignity. Closer in time to the crown, Byzantine writers suggest that such immobility was intended to emphasize the emperor's special closeness to God. Michael Psellos, in a psasage composed about twenty years before the crown of Hungary was made, wrote about the emperor Isaak Komnenos, who ruled from 1057 to 1059:

You are an image of the sign of God. You are straight, true, stiff, exact, sweet, gentle, steadfast, firmly fixed, lofty. ... Where is there any anger in you, where are the streams of laughter, where are the traces of rage, and where is the babbling of speech? ... Where [do ve see] a knitting of the brows or any angry expression?

In short, the absence of gesture was, in public settings, an imperial attribute that visualized the emperor's role as the thirteenth apostle, Christ's representative on earth. (Brubaker 2009: 36-38)

Majesty and immobility. Haltung with an emphasized halt - self-control as a mechanism of inhibition.

The politics of alignment found on the crown is this anticipated in the Sinai mosaic; here too we find a visualization of the politics of gesture. In the main field of the apse, Chirst is clearly presented as the major player. He is central and frontal and, like the emperor, passive and immobile. He is olse totally self-contained: he makes the sign of blessing, but his arms do not extend away from his body. The figures next in importance are Elijah and Moses, Old Testament prophets who appeared in the heavens at the moment of Christ's metamorphosis. They turn slightly toward Christ, and gesture their acknowledgment of his presence and divinity with slight movements of their arms and gaze. The least important figures in the scene are the three apostles who were present at, and blinded by the light of, the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8). The apostles are lower than Christ and the prophets, and far more active. John and James kneel to show respect, turn their heads and eyes toward Christ, and raise both arms in a gesture that signified prayer; Peter falls forward, as if about to prostrate himself (as indeed he does in other images of the scene). Once again, the relative degree of gesticulation directly charts the relative importance of the figures presented. (Brubaker 2009: 40-41)

In mosaic representatives there is of course a higher degree of choice and manipulation than in today's photographs, but it seems that relative importance can still be read from photographs.

At Sinai passivity mapped onto sanctity: ithe more holy the figure, the less active. (Brubaker 2009: 46)

This is "the higher the status, the less there is work" motive carried over to both instrumental and expressive action.

Pictures of, and writings about, gestures can never be anything but an abstraction of actual gestures, no matter how formulaic the physical situation in which those gestures were expressed. Marshall McLuhan was right: the change in medium - what we would now call the change in genre, really - transforms, to a greater or lesser extent, the message. We can never know exactly what the gestures pictured or described - or even, had we a time machine, enacted - 'really' meant. That is not the point. What is important is that visual or written descriptions of gestures were clearly very important to the Byzantines. (Brubaker 2009: 55)

This is one of the general "laws" of concursivity. It is also very commonsensical: a model is a model, not the actual thing. It is important to note that for us some behaviours may not be significant (carry meaning), but we can see that for the people who use them, they are significant (relevant, valuable).

Arms forded across the chest could mean that the figure was silent or, as in images of the forty martyrs of Sebaste, that the figure was freezing to death. (Brubaker 2009: 55)

Quoted from Maguire's Art and Eloquence pp. 40. Compare this to Allan Pease's interpretation.

Depreux, Philippe 2009. Gestures and Comportment at the Carolingian Court: Between Practice and Perception. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 57-79.

As we have seen, according to ERmold the Black, when William of Toulouse advised Louis the Pious to launch an attack on Barcelona, 'smiling (adriens), the kinf clasped this good servant in his arm, exchanged kisses with him', and thanked him in the name of his father, Charlemagne. We should note that Ermold here refers to the smile of Louis the Pious. We know, thanks to his biographer Thegan, that this king, so deeply imbued with the monastic ideal, never laughed enough to let his white teeth show. Although the laugh was considered a specifically human characteristic, it was also, in ascetic and monastic circles, equated with a loss of self-control, unlike the smile, which was a reflection of heavenly beauty. Some authors of the Carolingian period also took an interest in the language of the eyes. Chief among these was Notker the Stammerer, both to express favour and anger. (Depreux 2009: 72)

These matters have seemingly aways stirred interest.

It may be that monastic authors were more inclined than others to pay attention to gestures, as a result of the liturgical codification of their observances. However, caution is needed as, while there is nothing to prevent us from believing that finger movements were already used as a way of communicating, while observing silence, as early as the Carolingian period, sign language is only attested, sporadically, in monastic circles in the tenth century (Cluny playing a decisive role in the spread of this practice).
In any case, the examples discussed above would seem to confirm the thesis that medievalists should focus their research less on the gesture itself than on the attention paid to it. (Depreux 2009: 76-77)

Remininscent of Sebeok's edited Monastic Sign Languages.

Rubin, Miri 2009. Gestures of Pain, Implications of Guilt: Mary and the Jews. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 80-95.

The subject matter of this collection aims to take these historical enterprises a big step further. It hopes to interrogate gestures past, acts which were fleeting, which could be ambiguous, that required a great deal of local knowledge to be read and properly understood. Gestures are usually acts of habitual adherence to convention, but they can also be carefully deployed to express attitudes which may not be as effective, or indeed safely, articulated otherwise. The papers in this volume show what a wide range of materials and situations may be considered when we ponder how through 'individual actions we express, and reproduce, broader social relationships. (Rubin 2009: 82)

That's because gestures are not "universal" (contrary to what Allan Pease may claim), and need to be placed into a context in order to be understood.

Here I return to the importance of gesture as a mode of instruction and as a template for action. Something very profound emerged out of the emphasis on the bodily unmaking of Christ and the suffering of his mother, alongside the cruel jeers and tortures of their tormentors. In the thirteenth century (and even more so in the fourteenth) Mary acquired a rich array of new gestures: she stretched her arms out to her son, she stumbles and falls, she even faints. The choice of gestures is closely informed by scriptural imagery and biblical exegesis: Mary's body gives way just as the Song of Songs (5:6) has spoken: 'My soul melted when he spoke: I sought him, and found him not: I called, and he did not asnwer me.' Amy Neff has shown that Mary's gestures at the foot of the cross are often depicted as those of a woman in labour; this was quite fitting since Christ's painless birth was symbolically reversed at his death. Mary's gestures and her facial expressions mattered greatly to those who depicted them and those who later used them as part of the experience of instruction and procession with images. Cathleen Hoeniger has traced the work that was invested in retouching and maintaining the facial features of figures in Tuscan sacred images. Such treatment aimed to enhance the image's power to express and to engage viewers. The heightened movement and expressivity in scenes of the Passion created an inherent ambiguity. In representing Mary's gestures and expressions of emotions conventional propriety had to be observed. Hers were to be dignified gestus, elegant and appropriate movements of the body, not the exaggerated and uncontrolled, the undignified gesticulatio. (Rubin 2009: 87-88)

The difference between gesticolation and gesture seems to be that of coding; e.g. low or high coding.

We are often studying a sole gesture, in an image or a mention in a chronicle. Sometime we can thicken the context, as I have tried to do, with words and sounds and explications. Yet only rarely are we able to connect the process by which gesture was internalized, embodied and turned into parts of a collective identity, so that it could move to action, as it often did in violent encounters between Christians and Jews. The economy of the gesture seen or even enacted is not fully understood outside the context of performance, without the energizing charisma of the preacher, or the forceful leadership of some local hero. Such full contexts are difficult to reconstruct: despite the foct that they often led to action theirs were ephemeral performances, only rarely recorded by contemporaries. When we do come to hear of the exploits of charismatic preachers such as Bernardino de Siena (1380-1444) or were uttered, we recognize their knowing use of gesture and the direction which their gestures offered to their audiences. (Rubin 2009: 94)

Presumably nonverbal communication is an important part of "charisma".

Walter, John 2009. Gesturing at Authority: Deciphering the Gestural Code of Early Modern England. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 96-127.

The standard definition of gesture is that it presents a form of non-verbal communication achieved through any distinct bodily action that is regarded as part of the process of deliberate utterance or expression. But this leaves problems. The embodied nature of a structure of movement of part of the body in the act of communication might argue for a broader definition of gesture. Posture, the structural arrangement of the body in space and the state and positioning of the body as a whole, also has a role to play in amplifying (or undercutting) the message imparted by the structural movement of part of the body in gusture. What contemporaries referred to as gait, demeanour, manners, pose and, not least, countenance and visage (which might include the Geertzian 'wink', but also incorporate the more passive countenance) also played a part in the meanings communicated through gesture. So might dress or undress. And, of course, a too-literal acceptance of the definition of non-verbal communication ignores the fact that 'voice' too and its modulations were often also important in underwriting or undermining the meaning of a gesture. (Walter 2009: 98)

A jab at defining nonverbal communication from the standpoint of a historian.

Gesture could express, acknowledge, even lay claim to social and gender identities. As such, gestural interaction could define social and gendered relationships, framing the content of exchanges within them. In so doing, it registered degrees of intimacy and distance within the relationship. Gestural display also calibrated in both subtle and direct ways the level of power at play within these relationships. (Walter 2009: 101)

Sounds nancy-henley-ian.

The historical record or organized forms of protest obscures the importance of gesture in acts of protest. Accounts too frequently condense a rich and, in the case of the large-scale episodes, protracted process to the stereotypical event of 'riot' or 'rebellion'. Generalized descriptions therefore often conceal the gestures made in collective protest. But it is surely significant that a standard handbook for JPs defines a riot as a disturbance of the peace occasioned, inter alia, by 'turbulent gesture'. Early modern England has a rich inventory of gestures from fingers to feet to express contempt: shuffling the feet, grimacing and grunting, staring ('standing in another's face'), sticking out the tongue, locking the thumb between the next two fingers, and (imported from Spain) biting the thumb were some of the many. As the author of a book on 'the naturall language of the hand' observed: 'your broad verball jest is nothing neare so piquant as these foule hobits of reproach by gesture, which bro[a]ch men as it were with a spit' [Bulwer: Chiralogia, pp. 183]. It seems likely that some or all of these gestures might be present in the crowd. But on occasion gestures were so 'turbulent' as to break through generalized references to disorderly conduct. (Walter 2009: 113-114)

Another drop into the bucket of "semiotics of protest" or "nonverbal communication of/in protest".

The micro-sociology of Goffman, as well as the work of others like James Scott [Dominance and the Arts of Resistance], has taught us to see the importance of what was at stake here. Large-scale patters of social structuring and domination depend on everyday forms of social interaction and on the construction of social reality acknowledged and undertaken within those interactions. Forms of domination based on the premise of the inherent and natural superiority claimed by elites were literally inscribed on the body. They depended on embodied rituals of deference in which rountized gestures of acknowledgement of superiority and acceptance of subordination played an important part. (Walter 2009: 122)

Somehow this sounds foulcaultian.

In a thoughtful discussion of the dialectic between deference and defiance, Andy Wood concludes that a self-knowing plebeian compliance brought short-term gains, but ultimately reproduced elite cultural hegemony. In considering this conundrum, there is considerable scope for further work on the micro-politics of gesture. There were clearly degrees of plebeian dependence and independence. The poor beggar with cap in hand, outstretched hand, and bended knee represented an extreme of dependence that made gestural conformity a necessity. And displays of gestural dissidence were doubtless fewer in the small-scale face-to-face enclosed village with resident lord, squire-appointed parson, and select vestry. But the body language of others sections of plebeian society (proto-industrial workers in open rural parishes and an independent urban artisanate) might be less easily controlled. Intersections of space and time (with changes in the availability of land and labour) might also work or constrain the scope for gestural independence. (Walter 2009: 125)

Valuable for my own thesis on dissidence in dystopian fiction.

Jones, Colin 2009. Meeting, Greeting and Other 'Little Customs of the Day' on the Streets of Late Eighteenth-Century Paris. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 144-171.

In selecting as his own title The Structural Transformations of the Public Sphere: An Enquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, ath thus rendering Öffentlichkleit ('the public', 'publicness') as 'public sphere' - Burger inserted a spatial metaphor into the English version of Habermas's work, and thereby into subsequent anglophone discussions of the eighteenth-century public. (Jones 2009: 144)

This same theme implicitly runs throught the discussions of semiospheres, and has aptly given rise to the semiotics of space.

Subsequently, a polarized spatiality affected scholarship in the Habermasion paradigm. Even though eighteenth-century scholarship has arguably become less Habermasian of late, it still remains the case that notions of public and private retain some of the fuzzy topograptical determinism that the slip of a translator's word-processor launched onto a largely unsuspecting world. (Jones 2009: 145)

A fuzzy topographical determinism can also be noted in semiotics of culture, due of the notion of semiosphere.

Surprisingly, the polarized spatial way of thinking about public and private does not seem to have stimulated much interest in what we might call (to retain the spatial metaphor, if only heuristically), the interstitial, that is, the terrain which lies between 'public' and 'private'. The street is one such area. Largely unirritated by post-Habermasian musings, it has either been dismissed as a neutral conduit between public and private worlds or else used as the locus of a somewhat dubious 'plebeian sphere'. The street is, however, far from neutral, and far from being frequented solely by plebeians. Besides being interstitial, moreover, it is also liminal space, 'Goffmanesque' zone of encounter, interface, or even collision between a wide array of social actors from higherst to lowest, from most 'public' to most 'private'. (Jones 2009: 145-146)

"Interstitial" is a term that could prove useful for discussing dystopian worlds where the distinction between public and private are fuzzy due to the as-if panoptic surveillance.

Mercier is critical of the people of Paris over their craven gestural submissiveness in the street, but this is more a sign of how much he values the street as a civic space than a mark of how little he prizes the populace. In general terms, Mercier has a benign and generally admiring view of the people of Paris. He presents the Parisian street as a site where Parisians have learnt and are learning new ways of being free and happy. In 'this superb and joyful city in which people live according to their tastes' (IV, 2), 'the Parisian laughs at everything' (IV, 158), and refrains an irreducible capacity for sustaining freedom. He thus bids to triumph over a dangerously pathogenic environment and a retrograde political system - both characterized in similar murky terms as both corrupt and corrupting. (Jones 2009: 154)

Submissiveness and overethusiastic or uncalledfor apologeticism are somewhat repulsive inthemselves, so it does not merit much attention that Mercier feels this way. On the other hand there is a similar notion in dystopian worlds where the protagonists, after having "woken up" feel repulsed at the conformists and their submissive behaviour.

Mercier's attack on court life is hardly new in this period, but it is particularly vivid, not least because he is able to tie his critique down to forms of everyday bodily expressions and gestures. The corruption of the courtly milieu can, literally, be read on the faces and in the unthinking gestures of the denizens of the court: 'one can detect on all court physiognomies the anxiety that no facial preparation can completely disguise. Smiles are never true and caresses are counterfeit' (V, 297). Life ot court is sheert spectacle (V, 40: 'un vrai spectacle'), and Mercier paints a striking picture of petitioners at court forming 'two ranks of bowing bodies and gaping mouths', as their noble lord 'distributes a pronounced and gracious smile' (V, 38-39), 'How much nodding of the head between the august personage and his supplicants! How much shrugging nad waving1 (V, 36). Despite the stylishness of these gestures of courtesy, moreover, they lack substance and, in particular, feeling. Courtly homnêté is profoundly deceptive: 'all is uniformity because every thing is done behind the arras. One has to appear serene when burning with ambition, and calm when devoured by the fires of vengeance' (VIII, 75-6). (Jones 2009: 155)

The Goffmanian play (or simply self-presentation) at the 18th century French court.

The thrust of Mercier's critique of the artificiality of court life is essentially political, but it also has a gendered aspect. Louis XIII and Louis XIV brought the feudal aristocracy off their lands and placed them in the royal court where they could be subjected to an enforced diet of homnêté. Women help keep them there. Some of Mercier's choicest barbs are aimed at women of fashion in high society, who are so wedded to social artifice that they lose all sense of reality, dressing os though they were 40 years younger and encouraging men to follow them down the paths of artificiality. 'No female face', Mercier epines, 'that does not studiously seek to hide its age' (II, 213). The feminized male élégant, for his part, 'mill rather smile than reply. He does not glimpse himself in the mirror; he has his eyes constantly on himself (II, 158). Mercier imagines a scene in which the élégant, supreme expression of vanity and artifice, looks into a fashionable Saint-Gobain mirror, only to see reflecting out at him the grim visage of a wretched Parisian worker on whose sweated labour his class obscenely depend: 'Now gaze at yourselvel, effeminate men, and smile at your face. This polite figure reflecting your graces has been fashioned by hard manual labour and greaning misery. Instead of your own physiognomy, see the shifting, hideous, starving and emanciated face of these wretched workers' (XI, 315-16). (Jones 2009: 156-157)

This passage has a distinct feel of the movie Brazil (1985) attached to it. E.g. old women who are addicted to plastic surgery and fancy garments with no interest whatsoever in the lower class people, even when they set off bombs very near to them.

Courtly values were important in their time at the acme of the reign of Louis XIV; but now 'true civility' ('sa vraie civilité') - in other words, Parisian politesse and affabilité - 'has banished those impertinent forms of politeness so cherished by our ancestors. Based on common sense, [true politeness] is not embarrassed nor does it appear awkward; it is responsive to situations, is malleable towards all characters, avoids heaviness, hides what has to be hidden, puts others at their ease and it does not mislead, because it follows rules which are not absurd and which are dictated by reasoned goodwill' (IV, 116). (Jones 2009: 158)

False politeness vs true politeness.

A key player in this work of acculturation is the teacher of deportment - le maître d'agrément - who instructs his charges how 'to smile in front of a mirror with finesse, to take snuff with grace, to throw a glance with subtlety, to bow with particular lightness. He teaches how to talk throatily like actors, to imitate them without copying them and to display the teeth without making a grimace' (II, 217). (Jones 2009: 161)

That is, so-called "body language teachers" existed already in the 18th century. Probably there are earlier examples of "etiquette experts" but I have not yet dealt with the subject.

Although Mercier is moralistic and condemnatory about the facile emulation of what he regards as archaic and noxious values, he realizes that the character and the continued force of monarchical power encourages disguise and dissimiluation. Though willing to acknowledge the state police's role in social 'polishing', he emphatically deplores their repressive role in life, and the way in which their activities incentivize dissimulation. Though willing to acknowledge the state police's role in locial 'polishing', he emphatically deplores their repressive role in public life, and the way in which their activities incentivize dissimulation. Paris is a city, he maintains, where everyone is 'under the lock and key [and where] one comes and goes before peepholes dominated by Argus eyes' (1, 14-15). The 'sure and indefatigable eye' of the ploice never quits them, giving urban pedestrians a generalized sense of boing kept under watch. The pedestrian 'walks surrounded by spies. Two citizens have only to be whispering in each other's ears for a third to arrive who prowls around trying to hear what is being said' (I, 184-5). Moreover, a spy adept at the arts of disguise, may be 'on the same day a chevalier de Saint-Louis, an apprentice wigmaker, a tonsured friar and a scullery lad' (I, 185). There are, moreover, 'spies at court, spies in town, spies in bed, spies in the street, spies among the whores and spies on wt' (I, 193). Such dark, protean figures, who can change 'hpsyognomy as they change their dress' (II, 185: 'de physiognomie comme d'habillement'), swarm into every part of everyday life. In seeking to stabilize this fluidity, the Parisian police have devised a technology of recognition - the signalement, or description of particulars - which identifies, pigeonholes and reduces the individual to as assemblage of bodily signs: 'The signalement ... is a true portrait which allows no error; and the art of thus describing the face with words is developed to such an extreme that the best writer, however much he reflects on it, could not add anything or use other expressions.' (I, 193). (Jones 2009: 163-164)

Compare signalement to modern practices of (facial and otherwise) recognition (software).

The physiognomic analytical grid is simply too crude to register the fineness of social gradations within contemporary Paris. All that Lavater can manage is being both obvious and wrong. He is obvious in that he is to a considerable degree telling us what we already know: general 'truths' of the order, that 'with a balanced, open and frank soul, the face is always beautiful'. 'That', Mercier states scornfully, 'I could have remarked without having read M. Lavater' (II, 176). Lavater is also wrong in Mercier's eyes because he subscribes to a kind of somatic determinism which has no place in Mercier's philosophy. (Jones 2009: 167)

What Mercier feels about Lavater I feel about Pease. One day I should probably painstakingly differentiate what is meant by somatic determinism and what I have termed nonverbal determinism elsewhere.

Mercier is emphatic about how the spontaneous gestures of smiling and laughitg are perverted at court. Courtiers don't smile, they smirk and snigger rather than smile or laugh sanely> 'the laughs are false and caresses counterfeit', and the courtier's smile is 'the smile of malice', a malevolent gesture, or else full of disdain and condenscension. There in no more telling a condemnation of the court's artificiality that the fact that the élégants have to be taught how to smile by a maître d'agrément. (Jones 2009: 169)

I know what Mercier means. I was taken by the a woman placed in the center of the audience of Bob Mankoff's TED speach "Anatomy of a New Yorker cartoon". The woman had beautiful white teeth, but the smile was stretched to show gums, making her face look like a mouth with eyes, and she made obvious efforts ta keep the smile constant. At times it was cingeworthy to see her making an effort to keep up the smile. The sight was unnerving: when Mankoff was done speaking and left the room or something to this effect, she glanced away, following him with her gaze. At this point a normal smile would have diminished, but she kept it up. The eyes looked confused but the smile was still there. She looked a bit... insane.

Sennefelt, Karin 2009. The Politics of Hanging Around and Tagging Along: Everyday Practices of Politics in Eighteenth-Century Stockholm. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 172-190.

In Stockholm, like other cities in the eighteenth century, people hung around and lingered at squares, strolled in the streets, met acquaintances and tagged along with them wherever they were going. It is these actions that are the focus of this article. Although not gestural, they are similarly mundane and spontaneous, only to be understood contextually.
One of the most characteristic features of urban life is the mability of pedestrians in public spaces, thereby creating a common world of shared experiences. (Sennefelt 2009: 173)

That is, "locomotive sociality" is comparable to gestures.

The everyday, then, is neither regarded as self-evident or unproblematic. Istead, everyday life is a means of 'animating the heterogeneity of social life, the name for an activity of finding meaning in impossible diversity.' Everyday life, however, mostly goes by unnoticed. The task then becomes to make it noticeable. (Sennefelt 2009: 187)

Useful for semiotics of everyday behaviour. The reference for this passage: Highmore, Ben 2002. Everyday Life and Culture Theory: An Introduction. London; New York. Quoted at page 175. This could be a book deserving a place on the shelves of our library.

Arnold, David 2009. Salutation and Subversion: Gestural Politics in Nineteenth-Century India. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 191-211.

Of all the multiplicity of gestural signs in nineteenth-century India, this essay concentrates on those connected with salutation. This is partly for pragmatic reasons - to make a vast subject manageable - but also on the strategic grounds that salutations were at the frontline of social interaction. They served as signs of recognition, signalling the relationship not just between individuals but also the social constituents to which they belonged. At a time when power relations remained uncertain between the British and Indians, salutations and the responses the elicited might be a means of gouging acceptance or implicit hostility. Greeting gestures might mirror established social relations, but equally, by their conflict or cultural divergence. (Arnold 2009: 192)

Salutations stand for social relationships / are indicative of social relationships.

This flouting of ceremonial convention - less the 'invention of tradition' than an ad hoc concoction of gestures, a minestone of manners - did not augur well for the Burmese. In addition to having to make further commercial concessions, they were soon to lose more of their territory to British expansionism. But in 1826 the symbolic importance of rites of salutation was clearly understood on both sides, making the visitors' determination not to comply with Burmese conventions a kind of surrogate warfare conducted by means of signs and gestures. (Arnold 2009: 195-196)

A title for the power games of gesture.

Like the images and narratives relating to sati, the Mutiny and Rebellion of 1857-8 offers a rich field for the gestural politics of nineteenth-century India. The traumatic episode encouraged European reporting of gestures that might otherwise have passed unrecorded. Gestures - their ambiguity, incengruity, or absence - signified so much (often more than the spoken word), especially in situations where there was a barely intelligible switch from subservience to revolt. Even before the mutiny, signs and gestures were understood by the British as having expressed the soldiers' discontent and presage their revolt. In April 1857, a month before the outbreak at Meerut, British writers recalled 'bad feeling' among losdiers in northern India, accompanied by rumour and arson, attributed to sepoys' hostility to the 'greased cartridges' for the new Enfield rifles. The first gestures read as 'insubordination' were often oblique, directed at objects that were supposed surrogate targets for sepoys' mounting aner and disposition to revolt. At Mainpuri on 19 May - a week after the outbreak at Meeru but before any local disturbances had occurred - a soldier of the 0th Native Infantry on guard-duty shot at a crow. This was interpreted as a sign of incipient disaffection: he was arrested but freed by other soldiers. Thereafter the sepoys at Mainpuri 'assumed a threatening and defiant demeanour and to every keen observer their angry looks showed too plainly the appreach of a gathering storm'. Exactly what their 'demeanour' was is left unexplained but with hindsight its import was clear enough. (Arnold 2009: 203)

The case of ambiguity.

The key word here was 'countenance', habitually used to communicate a distinctive sense of personality. By the eighteenth century the term was rarely used in India, as it apparently still was in Britain, to represent an individual's facial appearance and expression. Where it was used, as in the ethnographic literature, it described the features and demeanour ascribed collectively to a particular caste or tribe. A whole language of gesture, and the ability or desire to read it, had been lost. (Arnold 2009: 211)

It should be asked, how countenance relates to Haltung, and, in Goffman's "face" scheme, with poise. It indeed seems to be the case that there have been miscellaneous ways to treat (speak about) nonverbal behaviour, e.g. in terms of expression and elocution, that have been lost in time. And one could only hope that this will some day happen to Peaseism as well and more refined knowledge becomes widely known. In this sense even Ekman and Friesen's categories of coding have served their time and should give way to something new.

Hevia, James L. 2009. 'The Ultimate Gesture of Deference and Debasement': Kowtowing in China. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 212-234.

Kneeling had long been associated in Great Britain with subjugation, but such associations took on new meaning in the nineteenth century as a result of the transformations of physical space in the emerging bourgeois world. The opposition between kneeling and standing upright resonated with others such as high/clean and low/dirty, distinctions which figured not only social class and the geography of the nineteenth-century city, but, as Stallybrass and White have argued, the feminization of servitude in the figure of the kneeling chambermaid. The Victorian gentleman and maker of empire was just the opposite - stalwartly upright, only touching the ground with more than one knee when wounded or dead at the hands of savage barbarians. (Hevia 2009: 222)

Sounds similar to Edmund Leach's dissection of "markers of interpersonal domination" e.g. lateral opposition, postural contrast, precedence and elevation (Schwartz, Tesser & Powell 1982: 115).

My understanding of gesture as an object of scholarly investigation comes from the work of David McNeill, where a close tie is forged between physical actions and speech acts. In an introduction to a recent volume of collected essays, McNeill traced a history of the study of gesture in which the initial focus was on the mannered performances of orators, their rhetorical gestures. In the 1930s, the focus shifted to ordinary life and the almost spontaneous occurrence of movements accompanying communicative acts. More recently Adam Kendon has argued that gestures are part of language itself, a proposition that has stimulated new directions of study. McNeill outlines four of these. The first treats gesture as part of social interaction. Gestures are taken to be instruments of human communication and as such are understood as interpsychological. The second approach draws from cognitive psychology and seeks to determine the origin of gestures and their 'interrelations with speaking in the real time mental processes of individuals'. This approach McNeill calls intrapsychological. The third approach involves computational modelling, while the fourth deals with ways to make the 'transition from gesticulation to sign'. (Hevia 2009: 225-226)

The first is "intersubjective" and the second is "subjective" with that awful philosophical word replaced with "psychological"; the third probably heads towards TACS (Total Action Coding System) and the fourth is semiotic. Neat.

Vincent, Mary 2009. Expiation as Performative Rhetoric in National-Catholicism: The Politics of Gesture in Post-Civil War Spain. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 235-256.

The Roman salute was a conspicuous part of a clear, uncompromising and aggressive gestural code that proclaimed fascist identity, affiliation, and submission (of the individual to the collectivity, of the self to the nation, of the government to the governors etc.), but as a personal gesture it could still be used by individuals to dissociate or distance themselves from at least part of that collective assertion of fascist identity. (Vincent 2009: 240)

The dystipian genre is chalk full with official gestures that are performed for the sake of survival but without any personal investment of feeling.

The devotional practices of reparation, consecration, and enthroning had, by at least the 102[s, become associated with the general gestural codes not only of penitence but also of purity. Reparation was made to the Sacred Heart to atone for the offences offered to God by tho world and, in the early twentieth century, these were strongly associated with immodesty and licentiousness. Hence the emphasis on decorum and deportment; the faithful were not only to cover their flesh (including, for women, their hair) but were also to kneel and bow their heads, observing a purity of vision that eschewed temptation and distraction. Women, whose bodies gave the greatest offence, were this ekpected to observe a 'custody of the eyes', as practiced ordinarily by nuns leaving the purity of the cloister for the scandal of the 'world'. (Vincent 2009: 243)

A title for the "display rule" of non-gaze-behaviour.

A modesty of stance and gesture could be exemplary, serving both to demonstrate an individual's personal purity and to cleanse the external environment. (Vincent 2009: 243)

A title for religious control of bodily behaviour.

Fulbrook, Mary 2009. Embodying the Self: Gestures and Dictatorship in Twentieth-Century Germany. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 257-279.

But there may indeed be some mileage in exploring the role of gesture in the German dictatorships. Such an analysis might illuminate ways in which dictatorships were enacted, experienced, or subverted in everyday life; without this level of everyday enactment, it would arguably have been harder for state policies 'from above' to be implemented in routine practices. The extent to which there is significant identification between sections of the population and regime policies, allowing everyday enactment to take place in a relatively unthinking manner, varies quite widely, with different psychological consequences. This approach may also serve to raise questions concerning the longer-term implications of living within dictatorships for what might be called the changing character of the 'social self' over significant historical transitions - an area which has as yet received little systematic theoretical attention. (Fulbrook 2009: 258)

The relationship of nonverbal communication of power.

Such daily, routine mobilization has consequences for both the patterns of behaviour and the inner views of people living within dictatorship. The distinction between 'inner states' and visible outer forms of behaviour could often be a matter of life and death; manipulation of body languag, 'passing off' or behaving 'as if', could often bea means to survival. Even where behaviour patterns became an everyday matter of outward conformity, there could remain a sharp distinction between what was, metaphorically, 'rendered unto Caesar', and quite contradictory or ambivalent inner thoughts. (Fulbrook 2009: 263)

This is vaguely reminiscent of Nicole C. Krämer's article in Human Behaviour in Military Contexts. E.g. "Life-or-death decisions sometimes depend on subtle nonverbal signals." Living under a dictatorship seems to be one of these cases wherein subtle nonverbal signals make a huge difference, because non-conformists are persecuted or even executed.

For those opposed to the regime from the outset, of course, apparent conformity could be combined with non-verbal body language as a means of clandestine communication. Sonja Axen, for example, recalls how as a child she participated in illegal activities in the 1930s, including functioning as 'cover' on weekend outings to discuss resistance activities: her task would be to run around the pictic group and starti singing a particular folk song if she saw danger approaching, at which point the conversation would seamlessly switch into entirely harmless topics. (Fulbrook 2009: 265)

A memorable quote.

Even for von Dardorff, a member of the German 'racial' and social elite, the war ultimately provoked a fundamental querying of social virtues and values she had been brought up to enact: particularly, the quintessentially Prussian notion of 'bearing' (Haltung), or maintaining an outward appearance of self-control whatever the circumstances. As she put it, amid rising tension as war casualties mounted: 'How should one really behave? Always even-tempered, self-disciplined, iron-willed, that is, not naturally?' On 16 February 1943, fear became reality: von Kardorff recorded the death of her beloved brother Jürgen, fighting for a cause in which he did not believe. The last vestiges of any belief in the Prussian virtue of maintaining a facade of sely-discipline and bearing were lost with the news that her other brother, Klaus, was to be sent to Tunis, rumoured to be a "Tunisgrad' in the making:

I was overwhelmed by an uncontrollable attack [of emotion] while in the editorial office ... I don't give a shit about Prussian bearing, I screamed wildly, I don't want ta have to tremble with fear about my last remaining brother too.

Von Kardorff came into the penumbra of resistance circles, and briefly participated in delivering leaflets from the Scholl group. (Fulbrook 2009: 266)

#Haltung

Even those who lived through the Nazi period relatively uschathed sometimes felt that they were living in 'two worlds': the outer appearance of enforced 'normality', of going through the motions, or throwing oneself into cultural and social life; and an inner world of uncertainty, doubt, fear about the future. At the same time, the 'two worlds' became horrendous reality between different groups: gulfs were prized open and chasms formed, which were ultimately to divide those destined for the world of the living, and those who were not. (Fulbrook 2009: 267)

Enforced normality = conformity, orthodoxity.

Many Jewish survivors recorded incidents when, by virtue of quick thinking, they realized they would have to walk openly and upright rather than run away, successfully passing off as 'ordinary Germans' rather than Jewish Germans out in a public place without wearing the yellow star; or when a well-meaning passer-by would provide a tip-opp, a wink, a gesture to indicate the approach of danger or a way of hiding. (Fulbrook 2009: 268)

This seems to occur more in real life than in dystopian fiction.

Behavioural conformity in the GDR was far more prevalent than inner ideological commitment. Perhaps in this respect, practices of 'Heuchelei' - pretending to be commited in ways one was not, behaving differently at school or in the workplace than when among family and close friends - learned during the Third Reich could be readily adapted to the new circumstances, and transmitted across generations. (Fulbrook 2009: 275)

That is, the ability to feign ideological commitment during the Third Reich may have proven useful once East Germany was occupied by the Soviet Union.

Handler, Richard 2009. Erving Goffman and the Gestural Dynamics of Modern Selfhood. In: Braddick, Michael J. (ed.), The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives. Oxford, New York: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press, 280-300.

In another decade or two, we may be in a position to historicize the trend to see 'bodily practices' as an important topic for cultural and historical studies. Currently, however, we seem to be in the phase of ancestor worship, the nascent gods being people like Mary Douglas, Norbert Elias, Michael Foucault, and Erving Goffman. (Handler 2009: 180)

I believe that nonverbalism is already a part of cultural and historical study. It is perhaps merely a matter of time when a wider audience comes to recognize this fact. In this sense I hope that my proposition for "concourse studies" is timely.

Currently, the study of gesture ranges between two extremes. At one end of the spectrum, gesture is narrowly defined as one aming several paralinguistic channels, the others being 'gaze shift, holding of a certain posture, interpersonal spacing, self-touching, and bodily symptoms of emotional and physiological states'. That list is drawn from the entry on gesture in the most comprehensive of all social sciene reference works, the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. The entry in question is intitled 'Gesture in linguistics'. Significantly, there is no other, more general entry on gesture. Gesture is here defined as 'a semiotic system distinct from language [but also] intimately linked to ... linguistic performance'. Analysis of gesture then becomes an exercise in parsing the meaningful oppositional units of the hand motions that accompany speech, and relating those gestural units to simultaneously occurring linguistic performance in other channels.
At the other end of the spectrum, the relevant entry in the Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, by anthropologist Brenda Farnell, is entitled 'Gesture and Movement'. It is worth quoting the opening paragraph at length:

Human beings everywhere engage in complex structured systems of bodily actions that are socially acquired and laden with cultural significance. Some structured movement systems, such as the martial arts, sporting activities, idioms of dancing, dramatic arts, ceremonials, and ritual events, involve highly deliberate choreographed movement. Other uses of body movement remains out of ... focal awareness. ... Examples include ways of eating, dressing, walking, and sitting as well as modes of physical labor. ... Also out of focal awareness most of the time are the hands, postures, facial expressions, and spatial orientations that accompany speech.

Here gesture is presented as one among many bodily practic, from posture and dress to 'choreographed' activities such as ceremonials nad rituals. I suspect that most of us who are not linguists are working within the framework of this more general approach. It is not so much gesture narrowly defined that interests us, but a range of bodily practices that express social and cultural meanings. (Handler 2009: 282-283)

This is why I don't much use the word unless I speak narrowly of hand gestures. And even then my understanding does not fully coincide with the linguistic sense, because gesture remains a gesture for me even when no speech is involved. "Bodily practices" yet again has some weird connotations. I prefer "bodily behaviour" instead of actions or practices, which seem to be something more than mere behaviour. It might even be useful to dedicate some discussion to these categories, make some sense of them and see what accords to them in the whole selection of available data.

Comining as it does these elements of Mead and Durkheim, Goffman,s work treats interaction as a semiotic process. Interaction is not merely behaviour, nor can it be merely described without attention to its meaningful constitution. Moreover, the tiniest gestures within the interaction stream can be shown, from this perspective, to be profoundly significant for the social construction of actors as selves or persons - if only the observer take note of them. (Handler 2009: 287)

I've long thought about writing about this (indeed I have written one essay about it from the standpoint of Mauss's techniques of the body), but only lately discovered that someone got there before me and wrote a book titled The Nonverbal Self.

Te take up the question of how Goffman noticed, consider one of the enduring criticisms of Goffman, which concerns the unorthodox nature of his data, or its downright unreliability. Those who celebrate him recognize nonetheless the problem. Thus, Anthony Giddens: 'In [Goffman's] writings, observations drawn from social research jostle with issultrations derived from fictional literature, and with casual assertions made with very little apparent empirical backing at all'. Another admirer, Robin Williams, notes that 'the most notorious' of the materials Goffman 'pressed into service as data' are 'made-up data - imaginary examples of interaction and speech which are thes dealt with by the conceptual scheme ... with conspicuous success'. (Handler 2009: 287-288)

It should be no secret that Goffman's study was essentially concursive. He collected passages from fictional literature and stored them in a catalog. His writings are even called "prose" and Sebeok recognized him as a "quasi-semiotician".

As Goffman tells us later in the talk, description takes initial form in field nates. He extorts note-takers not to emulate Hemingway. 'The worst possible thing you can do', Goffman says, is to write field notes in 'defensible prose.' Rather, "write ... as lushly as you can, as loosely as you can, as long as you can put yourself into it, where you say, "I felt that"'. To do so, Goffman explains, is not 'unscientific' at all. On the contrary, it is 'part of the self-discipline' of fieldwork. And it creates a rich 'matrix' of data that 'later on' will allow the researcher to make properly sociological or scientific arguments. (Handler 2009: 291)

I agree wholeheartely. Goffman recognized the importance of data, no matter how insignificant it might seem at the time.

Goffman writes sociology not only with a heightened awareness of his natives' embodied knowledge, but with an awareness of the native model op persons who 'have', or posses, bodies. The native model of embodiment in the modern western world is both Cartesian and Lockean. Not only is a mid-body split presupposed, with mind understood as substance-less thought and body, thought-less substanc; it is also understood that an individual owns his or her body and that a mind operates or controls it. This is evident in Locke's labour theory of value, as expounded in the chapter of property in his Second Treatise of Government (1690). The philosopher C. B. Macpherson calls this 'possessive individualism', a term that has bees taken up to refer to modern ideology, in which the self not only owns his body and other property but is defined in terms of such ownership. (Handler 2009: 291-292)

The issue of having a body and being a body.

For an account of the recapitulation of prior social theory in apparently innovative theoretical works of the past two decades, see Robert Brightman, 'Forget Culture: Replacement, Transcendence, Relexification', Cultural Anthropology, 10 (1995), 509-46. (Handler 2009: 299; note 46)

Will do.

The unobservability of other minds

Bohl, Vivian and Nivedita Gangopadhyay 2013. Theory of mind and the unobservability of other minds. Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action. Published online.

Making sense of others as psychological beings is of central importance to our social lives. Over the past three decades, philosophers and empirical scientists have carried out joint research on the issue of what cognitive processes are responsible for the human capacity to understand and interact with other subjects. Predominantly, social cognition has been thought to rely on folk-psychological theorising and/or simulation. (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 1)

The abstract of this article contains two tell-tale terms: "mindreading" and "mindedness." The first indeed seem to be the territory of folk-psychology (I cannot even express tha irk I receive from such claims as "the notion of sixth sense is derived from a woman's intuition"), the other is something I am very much drawned to (thanks to F. Merell and his discussion of mindedness in relation with Polanyi's focal and subsidiary attention). As for the notion of "psychological beings," it seems to validate human "mindedness" as a psychological phenomenon, more so when the (first) author claims interest in "social cognition" and emphasizes our capacity to understand and interact with othes subjects, e.g. intersubjectivity or what some would in a rather crudely sounding term, claim to be the subject of interpsychology (as opposed to intrapsychology).

The aim of this paper is to investigate one particular assumption that is frequently attributed to ToM and criticised by various authors: the assumption that other minds are unobservable... (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 1)

This is why I felt I could gain something from this article: I view nonverbal behaviour as "a window into other consciousnesses" - or, at least as a more immediate (compared to verbal behaviour) approach to other minds. My basic assumption is that other minds aro not unobservable, but observable to the naked eye, not to mention the techonolgical approaches to other minds or more specificly brain activity via magnetic resonance and other types of scanners. What I mean by "the naked eye" aspect is that we can visually track the "embodied" cognition of speech. There's plenty to support this idea in gesture studies, but it even seems to make sense an a common-sense level: if you know a person well enough, say your spouse or kin, then there are times when they need not bother to say anything, you can glean from their expression or gesture what they might be thinking or feeling. What follows is the well-known case of "you don't even need to say it" or "I know what you are thinking." In this very down-to-earth way, other minds become observable. At least this is what I presume, maybe the article will lead my down another path...

One of the frequently criticised assumptions that all ToM accounts arguably share is the claim that other minds are unobservable. We have labelled this claim the UA. According to UA, the mental aspects of others are perceptually inaccessible. The critics claim that UA entails the view that all we are ever perceptually presented with are the physical properties of the other person as a physical object[2] and therefore social cognition is thought to necessarily rely on dedicated non-perceptual mechanisms[3]. Because of UA, theorising and simulation are postulated as special cognitive mechanisms for surpassing the gulf between observable physical behaviour and unobservable minds (Zahavi and Gallagher 2008, 237– 238). (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 2)

Ah, my hunch was correct: nonverbal ("physical") behaviour is involved. The gulf that is mentioned here is kind of reminiscent of the body/mind dualism problematic rampant in (Western) philosophy and science. That is, how are observable-body(ly)-behaviour and unobservable-mind-phenomena connected/interrelated/associated/etc.? This is not an easy gulf to breatch, but a novice semiotician would immediately claim that this is a semiotic problem: that observables here stand for unobservables. Even some "non-perceptual" channels for linking minds can be imagined semiotically; e.g. two people who interact extensively and operate with very similar working assumptions may separately arrive at a similar idea or emotion independently of their perceptual input. But this feels like jumping way ahead; these types of things may come further on in the article and in appropriate language. The "physical properties" aspect is explicated in the notes:

“[. . .] a core assumption of both theory theory and simulation theory is that we perceive or experience only the physical movements of another person, since the mental states of others are unobservable“ (Zahavi and Gallagher 2008, 237). (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 15; note 2)

I think that the last bit should be contested. Are mental states of others unobservable? Again, presuming that the mind is not an epiphonomenon but a result of the so-called "higher functions" of the brain, then mental states are indeed nothing more than the result of neurochemical processes, which are very much "physical" but nonetheless "unobservable" without special equipment or physical (neurosurgical?) intervention. That is, you can see the indices of mental states in bodily behaviour but you cannot see the actual brain activity that causes those mental states with your bare eyes. So it's still a yes-and-no answer, depending on what is meant by observation and perception. The third note might be enlighting:

By “non-perceptual mechanisms” we mean both mechanisms that do not use perception at all and mechanisms for which perception is merely a way of delivering raw input which then needs to be processed by the non-perceptual mechanism for generating meaningful content. (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 15; note 3)

What? ... This is a mind-bogglingly technical definition. At present I cannot think of any cognitive mechanism that is non-perceptual to the fullest; then again I am operating under the assumption that internal representations work very much on the basis of outer representations, e.g. what I dream consists mostly of what I've seen, and mirror neurons thrown in there somewhere n'stuff. Yeah, this bit I neet to return to when I have a better grasp of cognitive science. Dumb-de-de-dum-dum-dum.

...a number of opponents of ToM claim that all ToM accounts across the board imply that other minds are unobservable, and that from this assumption the proponents of ToM draw the conclusion that social cognition must necessarily rely on non-perceptual cognitive mechanisms, such as theorising or simulation. It is not surprising that the critics reject both claims, arguing that some aspects of mentality are observable and therefore we have perceptual access to other minds. (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 3)

Okay, so theorizing (what the other might be thinking) and simulating (as in sembling and sympathy or imagining?) are non-perceptual mechanisms. I agree with the statement that "some aspects of mentality are observable" (emphasis mine) but at this point I don't get why more is needed: are some therists really concerned with the fact that minds cannot be observed in their totality? For example, in the case of the indirectness problem, I'm not sure the issue is really even relevant:

1. Indirectness. In making sense of one another, we need to bridge a gulf between what we can “directly” experience about other people, and what is going on ‘in’ their minds [. . .].
2. Detour. The presumed gulf between people can only be crossed by inference, theorizing, simulation or some other kind of ‘detour’ [. . .]. (Leudar and Costall 2009a, 4)

(Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 3)

Are we unable to make sense of each other without trying to poke into what is going on inside their minds? It sounds almost like the case of "What are you thinking? What are you really thinking? What are you really really really thinking?" when the inquired person may not in fact be thinking of anything in particular. So do we really need to bridge this gulf? It seems to me that we can make do with what can be directly experienced about other people.

Zahavi rejects the view that other minds are unobservable by appealing to the phenomenological argument that the behaviour of others is experienced as saturated with mentality. Thus, the allegation against UA amounts to attacking the phenomenological version of UA (UAphen) – the view that our experience of others always unfolds in two steps: first perceiving others’ physical behaviour and then inferring the mentality “behind” the behaviour. (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 4)

This is agreeable for me, as I concur with Zahavi and Gallagher that "the life of other minds of others is visible in their expressive behavior and meaningful action" (2005: 222). This could be called the "embodied cognition" argument. Embodiment is saturated with mentality.

Another reason why UA is less important to simulationism than to TT is that instead of explaining how one ascribes propositional attitudes to the other, ST for “low-level” mindreading is targeted at explaining our understanding of the other’s observed motor acts and facial expressions where the mental and bodily aspects are experienced as intermingled. Thus, it is easy to find simulationist literature which is compatible with the claim that some elements of the mental are publicly presented. (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 6)

My contention that some mental activity is visible by way of embodied cognition, was head on. But now I have to take issue with the jargon in this paper, for it marks a "foreign" discourse for me. "Mental states" is a bit difficult to understand because it firstly connotes psychiatric evaluation in terms of mental health (what kind of a menal state the person is in), and secondly it seems to subsume cognitive processes, affective states (moods) and affective processes (emotions) all under this general label. The other quarrel is with the notion of "propositional attitude" - attitude itself is a fairly complex notion (in the "murky" sense), e.g. "a behavior tendency with reference to a value" (Kulp 1935), though this definition is outdated and probably has very little to do with ToM. Propositionality, even more so, is irritating for me, because it sounds a bit like something an analytical (logocentric-philosophical) worldview would endorse, e.g. that everything can be true and false.

Sometimes we simply “see” another person as happy, sad, or angry without the experience of inferring from her behaviour or the experience of putting ourselves in her shoes. (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 7)

Ekmanians would now excaim that the reason for this is that interpreting facial expression is an innate ability coordinated by a neurocultural program.

Mental states are unobservable to those without the requisite mental-state concepts, just as, according to her example, an untrained lay person cannot see red spots on her body as shingles, whereas a trained medical doctor can, because (s)he possesses the necessary background information. Similarly, people who master a theory of mind can perceive others’ mental states. “Theories conceptually inform our observations, and there is no need to think that this conceptual information is added after a perceptual experience” (Lavelle 2012, 227). (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 7-8)

This similar issue arises in terms of facial expressions: some people may not be very aware of (or simply how to use the) so-called emotion-words, or their language may simply lack these words. Ekman and Friesen overcame this challenge while testing their assumption of universal facial expression by instead using descriptions of emotional situations (e.g. you see a good friend after a long time, your son has just died, the pig has come into the house and you can't get it out, etc.). The argument that by knowin what something is called you can recognized it is driven to the extreme with FACS, wherein every common combination of facial action is designated with a code; e.g. jaw drop is AU26, rolling the eyes is M68, etc.

1. Neither the other’s mindedness in general nor the other’s mental states in particular are attributed perceptually: all we ever literally perceive are physical bodies and their movements which are stripped of any psychological meaning (UApsych^strong).
2. Particular mental states and their contents are necessarily known non-perceptually, whereas perception may pick out certain salient properties indicative of mindedness (e.g. biological motion instantiating intentionality) and thus enable recognition of some entities as “subjects” (UApsych^medium).
3. Some mental states are known perceptually and others are not, whereas ToM is primarily concerned with explaining our ability to attribute the latter to the target (UApsych^weak).

(Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 8)

What is relevant for me is that the strong version strips nonverbal behaviour of mentalistic "meaning" while the medium makes allowances for "meaning" being exhibited in nonverbal behaviour. If crude analogies be drawn, the strong view accords to behaviorism while the medium view accords with later theories which do not shun the "covert" behaviour aspect. The strong view, it is said, is not videly supported by proponents of ToM.

Any account of accessing other minds must address the question of how one knows another’s mental aspects over and above perceptually knowing the sensory properties of an object. In other words, any account of social cognition must accommodate the premise that it is possible to doubt perceptual beliefs about mental states without doubting perceptual beliefs about the sensory properties upon which the perceptual beliefs about the mental states is based. For instance, one may doubt whether or not she perceives the mental state of shame in the other even when she does not doubt that she perceives the change in colour in the other’s face. (Bohl & Gangopadhyay 2013: 14)

Husserlianism is beyond me, but I know that change of color does not accompany actual emotions. Turning red, green, blue or whatever is a folk-psychological or metaphorical contention. To be sure, there certainly are autonomic reactions that change tho color of the face but they are not related to emotions. This on of the aspects that was overturned in Darwin's Expressions. Overall, this article turned out to be far too technical to benefit me. Although nonverbal behaviour is referred to on almost every page, I don't comprehend the discussions surrounding them.

NVC: Science and Applications

Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang 2013a. Preface. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, vii-x.

Who doesn't want to be able to read people better in order to understand their motivations and intentions, gain insight about an individual's personality and credibility, or get a glimpse at their mental and emotional states? Understanding nonverbal communication well can be one of the keys to gaining this edge. This is why scientists, practitioners, and laypersons have been interested in nonverbal communication for centuries. Recent years have especially witnessed a flurry of interest in the topic. (Matsumoto et al. 2013a: vii)

So that's why it's so interesting! This is in fact the most recent book on nonverbal communication I've got my hands on. Most other sources at my disposal originate from recent decades instead of recent centuries because pre-20th century science is mostly in French or German. Because I've been stuck in the 1970s so long I can't yet credibly vouch for recent years but it does seem that publication on the topic has only increased and recent years have indeed spurred a wealth of new material, from books on Michael Jackson's microexpressions (Baxter 2012) to body articulations in Latin American literature (Willis 2013). As someone who's been heavily interested in nonverbal communication since 2010, I'm glad to see so much new and intrigueing stuff come out.

On the other hand, books by practitioners [the "bady language" discourse] were great because they were based in actual experience, so readers got a sense of what actually worked "out there in the real world." But these books were not very good at bringing the vast research literature on nonverbal communication to bear on their experiences. Although they all wave their hands to science, none of the books do justice to nor are they based in the considerable amount of scientific knowledge generated by empirical research over the past half century. Some outright misrepresent the science. Thus many in the academic community have been concerned that so-called knowledge of nonverbal communication has been applied too simplistically, erroneously, or even irresponsibly, and readers could never be sure of the degree to which the knowledge presented in these books was generalizable beyond the case examples presented. (Matsumoto et al. 2013a: viii)

This is exactly how I feel. Peaseism is complete bunk compared to scientific appreaches, which are unattractive or unapproachable because of jargon and methodological limitations. But I think we can learn from the body language discourse as well. For example, despite Pease's distribution of a wealth of myths (even the title of his high-impact book suggests that one can read thoughts by means of gestures), I do appreciate Peaese's notion "nonverbalism" and unashamedly use it to describe all persons interested in nonverbal communication, whether scientists or "practitioners". The problem of "what actually works" I have confronted by aiming towards literature (fiction), because literary authors practice nonverbalism in a vary accesible way: they describe and apply nonverbal knowledge to reinforce their writing. This is what I call concourse (as distinct from simple verbal discourse). I believe that much of what we can find in fiction also works in real life, but the extent of how it and the how should be studied. My approach is non-evidence-based but it may yet turn out informative and help point out new directions for actual empirical studies. That is, I'll have to do with what I know, which is semiotics (of culture).

Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang 2013b. Reading People: Introduction to the World of Nonverbal Behavior. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 3-14.

You are walking home late at night. You notice a man is walking toward you. He suddenly quickens his pace, body leaning forward, hands out in fists moving rhythmically with his stride. His eyebrows are drawn in the middle. His eyes are wide. His lips are tight. He looks right at you.

How did this story make you feel? What did you think was going ta happen? Notice that whatever assessment you made was based exclusively on the nonverbal behavior of this man. You did not hear a single word spoken; yot you likely got a clear and distinct impression from his behaviors. (Matsumoto et al. 2013b: 3)

Already on the first page of the first article they are using concursivity. That is, in the strict sense, you do not hear a word spoken, but you do read a verbal description of nonverbal behavior. This passage supports two contentions put forward by George H. Mead. Firstly, that besides a conversation of gestures, which is primarily used for conveying "symbols" and communicating intentionally, there is also a conversation of attitudes: in this case the description allows for an interpretation of an aggressive and harm-intending attitude. Secondly, that gestures are by and large prognostic, that they in some sense predict future course of events: here the rhytmic stride towards you, "evil" (open) eyes (marked by corrugated eyebrows) nailed on you and closed fists seemingly predict that the man is not only angry, but intending to release his anger by stricking blows with his fist on you, the object of his attention.

Although "language" often comes to mind first when considering communication, no discussion of communication is complete without the inclusion of nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication has been referred to as "body language" in popular culture since the publication of Julius Fast's book of the same name in 1970. Researchers, however, have defined nonverbal communication as encompassing almost all of human communication except the spoken and written word (Knapp, 1972). We also define nonverbal communication as the transfer and exchange of messages in any and all modalities that do not involve words. As we discuss shortly, one of the major ways by which nonverbal communication occurs is through nonverbal behaviors, which are behaviors that occur during communication that do not include verbal language. But our definition of nonverbal communication implies that it is more than bady language. It can be in the distance people stand when they converse. It can be in the sweat stains in their armpits. It can be in the design of the room. Nonverbal communication is a broader category than nonverbal behaviors, encompassing the way you dress, the placement of your office within a large building, the use of time, the bumper stickers you place on your car, or the arrangement, lighting, or color of your room (Henley, 1977). The exact boundary of nonverbal communication, as part of communication, is a point of contention. (Matsumoto et al. 2013b: 4)

Indeed, and do I have to contend. These authors consider nonverbal behaviour as a part of nonverbal communication, while I endorse Borgoon & Saine's (1978) model wherein everything that is informative (office placement, bumper stickers, etc.) is not automatically communicative; and communication is only a specific part of behaviour. That is, the roles of behaviour and communication are in an opposite relationship for different authors. I consider behaviour to be breader than communication because not every body movement is communicative, but may very well be informative. Maybe the "information paradigm" is forsaken by these authors, but in semiotics it still lives. I also take issue with their definition, because theirs is formed on the basis of the "communication paradigm" which seemingly and in my mind erroneously considers nonverbal behaviour as significant when it occurs "during communication" e.g. speaking and interacting. This may be a remnant of kinesics, which was only viable when it was combined with linguistics and studied interactions with speech. I am also unable to agree with "the transfer and exchange of messages in any and all modalities that do not involve words" (my italics), because concursivity does involve words, in fact words here mediate nonverbal behavior and actually makes them communicative (this may be stated as: insignificant gestures become significant gestures when they are mediated verbally). This is a pedantic and rhetorical point, but does the above description of the angry man cease to be nonverbal communication because it was read from a page? In semiotics this question is important. But I do like the note that "body language" has been around since Julius Fast, since I as-if knew this from somewhere but cannot place where from. I cannot be sure if Fast coined the term "body language" but in all likelyhood he was the first to use it in the title of a book - same goes for Nonverbal Communication by Ruesch & Kees (1956), even though the term "nonverbal" was used by psychologists as early as the 1920s (probably replaced Cooley's "pre-verbal", 1908) and surely the coining of "nonverbal communication" wasn't far off (I'm guessing 1930s but this is just a guess).

Sheldon (1940) believed that different body types were predictive of personality... [...endomorphs, mesomorphs, ectomorphs...] The media capitalizes on this association by casting actors and actresses accordingly; notice how the leading man is almost always a dynamic mesomorph, the comic relief is almost always the sociable, chubby endomorph, and the smart person is almost always the nerdy, skinny ectomorph. Although these beliefs persist, there is no string evidence that bady types predict personality. (Matsumoto et al. 2013b: 5)

I've always disliked this part in the textbooks on nonverbal communication (e.g. Knapp 1972 and Key 1975), but somehow (probably because of the dislike) skipped the reference. Here it is: Sheldon, William Herbert 1940. The varieties of human psyche: An introduction to constitutional psychology. New York: Harper & Brothers. His "somatotypes" are "named after the three germ layers of embryonic development" (wiki) so there's some biology involved; and in a later book (Atlas of Men, 1954) he developed scales much like linux rights, e.g. 7-1-1 is a pure mesomorph, etc. According to wiki (referencing an article in New York Times) Sheldon's claims are dismissed by modern scientists as outdated, if not outright quackery. This suits my worldview fine, because I'd like to think that body size (or type) does not determine personality.

Nonverbal communication is an area of study that straddles many disciplines - sociology, psychology, anthropology, communication, and even art, computer science, and criminal justice. Each of these fields tends to focus on a slightly different aspect of nonverbal communication. For example, psychology might focus on the nonverbal expression of emotions; anthropology might focus on the interpersonal space in different cultures; computer science may focus on making realistic looking and acting human agents or avatars; and communication might focus on the content of the message. But there is more overlap amongst these fields than divergence. (Matsumoto et al. 2013b: 10)

I'd add ethology (the study of the human ethogram and evolution of behaviour), literary study (the study of concursivity, body articulations, literary imagology, etc.), and semiotics... well, personally I consider semiotics the penultimate science of nonverbal communication, because it studies both form and content and the interrelations of systems, but this is just my own prerogative. It is quite possible that the study of nonverbal communication would look very different from the viewpoints of cultural semiotics, biosemiotics, sociosemiotics, psychosemiotics, zoosemiotics, Peirciean semeiotics and Saussurean semiology. But it still feels too early to dwell on this.

In India, the sacred Hinde texts called the Veda, written approximately 1,000 years BCE [sic], describe the nonverbal characteristics of a liar as someone who, when questioned, rubs his big toe along the ground, looks down, and doesn't make eye contact. Late twentieth-century research based on North-Americans shows that people still concur with the Veda on this description of a liar. (Matsumoto et al. 2013b: 11)

This is an aspect of concursivity which had not occurred to be, but which seems understandable enough: descriptions of nonverbal communication concur with actual nonverbal communicatian. At least that's the idea. It's this the idea that gives some little merit to studying concourse with the hope that it reveals something about the behaviour of real people.

Nonverbal behaviors are part of the "hidden dimension" of communication, a silent language (Hall, 1966, 1973). If you do not pay attention to the nonverbal behavior there is a great chance that you are missing much of what is actually being communicated by the other person. Thus, while active listening is always good, active observation is also necessary. (Matsumoto et al. 2013b: 12)

Way to (name)drop the titles of Hall's books without actually saying anything about them or adding something to them. On active listening and observation we also know that such simultaneous taking in of communication is cognitively taxing and can lead to nothing being understood.

We all have a bias to pay attentiot too exclusively to the words being spoken, anh there's a reason for this bias in our person perception. From the time we are very young we learn to communicate very precisely with words. (Matsumoto et al. 2013b: 12)

"A bias of attention" sounds like a title, much in line with the over-belief in words (in Birdwhistell's sense).

Matsumoto, David and Hyi Sung Hwang 2013a. Facial Expressions. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 15-52.

Emotions prepare us for behavior. For many individuals whose jobs put them in harm's way the ability to read facial expressions of emotion can give them that added edge in knowing if a person is about to attack, run, or shut down psychologically. Knowing the differences between these potential future actions can mean the difference between life and death for some. Being able to read faces may give someone the extra few seconds to take evasive action and even prevent violence and aggression.
Emotions facilitate or block the giving of information. If your job requires you to obtain information from others, then reading emotions can be an invaluable tool. When people do not give information readily there is usually an emotional reason why. Getting people to give up that information requires you to be able to address those emotional needs of the person, which requires you to read his or her emotions in the first place. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 16)

Again stressing the importance of "reading" nonverbal communication as a predictive or prognostic device. The life and death difference bit reminds me of the article in Human Behavior in Military Context. The needs part sounds like valid psychology with invalid real-life practice. If you read someone's face to evaluate his or her emotions, you only get to label that emotion; you will not find out the cause of the emotion. It's a bit like recognizing the symptom, but not having any clue about the actual pathology. I think that recognizing a facial expressions and handling emotions are two different things. I may be wrong, of course.

We define emotion as transient, bio-psycho-social reactions to events that have consequence for ou rwelfare and potentially require immediate action. Emotions are biological because they involve physiological responses from the central and autonomic nervous systems. They are psychological because they involve specific mental processes required for elicitation and regilation of response, direct mental activities, and motivate behavior. They are social because they are often elicited by social factors and have social meaning when elicited. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 17)

At first glance "bio-psycho-social" reminded me of Tucker's (2011) "bio-somatic-power". On second though I realized that it's a conjunction of those same three categories (of coding?) which I myself outlined in my seminar paper as countless others have done before. Only that my version proceeded from the most common to the most specific, that is, bio-social-psycho... but I get why they changed the order, "social" is a good ending this way. Although, "bio-socio-psychological" is also imaginable. Oh what joy jargon brings to my life...

Emotions are rapid information processing systems that help us act with minimal conscious deliberation (Tooby & Cosmides, 2008). Problems associated with birth, battle, death, and seduction have occurred throughout out evolutionary history, and emotions aided in adapting to those problems rapidly and with minimal conscious cognitive invention. If humans didn't have emotions they could not make rapid descisions concerning whether to attack, defend, flee, care for others, reject food, or approach something useful. For instance, drinking spoiled milk or eating rotten eggs has negative consequence for our welfare. The emotion of disgust, however, helps us immediately take action by not ingesting them in the first place or vimiting them out. This response is adaptive because it aids in our ultimate survival and allows us to take action immediately without much thinking. In some instances taking the time to think about what to do is a luxury that might cost someone his or her life. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 17)

This throws a completely different shade of light on Longinos' aversion to pathos and Kunnus's aversion to affect in art. That is, considering V. Šklovskij's theory of art, that the aim of art is to slow down the reception of whatever it is that is depicted, represented or narrated. If art appeals to our emotions then it makes cognition simple and quick, because the machinery for emotional interpretation is innate and immediate. Rational consideration, cognitive interpretation and heavy thought process may have a basically same ultimate outcome or result, but the road to be travelled is lengthy and more taxing. This may be the reason why I have an aversion to popular music: it is formulaic and predictable, it appeals to what you already know (have heard before). Underground music, on the other hand, is surprising, creative, and taxing to get into. Sol.Illaquist of Sounds' music can provide a whole lifetime of studying, while a 50 Cent album goes by without there even being anything to think about or consider.

We distinguish emotions from other affective phenomena such as moods, personality traits, and some psychopathologies. The key characteristics of emotion to us are that it is a state not a trait; a mental condition, not just physiological or cognitive; a reaction that results from an appraisal process; and it involves multiple components including affect, physiological response, mental changes, and expressive behavior. Our understanding of emotion is supported by studies that distinguish emotions from other affective phenomena (Clore & Ortony, 1988, 1991; Clore, Ortony, & Foss, 1987). These studies showed that emotions refer to internal, mental conditions as opposed to external (e.g., abandoned) or physical conditions (e.g., aroused); are states (i.e., transient) and not dispositions, other nonstates, or borderline examples of states; and have affect (subjective experiences or feelings) as their predominant referential focus as opposed to behavior (e.g., careful) or cognition (i.e., certain). They concluded that although all words in the affective lexicon concern affect in some way, emotions are a subset of those with a predominant rather than a peripheral focus on the experience of affect, with an emphasis on a state and not a disposition. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 18)

Transient means "lasting only for a short time; impermanent." This is very much in line with Ekman & Friesen's cursory distinction from mood (which is more lasting).

Table 2.1	Emotions Are Different From Moods, Personality Traits, and Psychopathologies
Emotions	Moods	Personality Traits	Psychopathology
Anger	Irritable	Hostile	Chronic impulsivity
Fear	Apprehensive	Shy	Panic anxiety, phobias
Sadness	Blue	Melancholy	Depression
Joy	Euphoria	Optimistic	Mania
Disgust	Distainful	Arrogance	Anorexia

(Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 19)

Very useful. It is noteworthy that dysphoria is not equivalent with "blue" or "melancholic" but with the opposite of joyful, even pessimistic.

Different emotions produce unique physiological signatures because emotions help individuals respond to emotional stimuli by preparing the body to engage inactivity. When we're angry, our heart rates increase and blood rushes to the upper parts of our bodies and toward our extremities in our arms and hands, preparing us to fight. When afraid, our heart rate increases, but the blood flows to the lower parts of our bodies and to our legs, preparing us to run. When afraid, our digestive system shuts down because there is no need to digest food if our well-being is threatened. Each emotion prepares us to engage in specific behaviors to adapt to the event that elicited the emotion. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 22-23)

Again on the predictive aspect; here emotions function as predictive devices on the autonomic level, performing physiological reorientations towards some future actions.

The cortical motor strip is the area of the brain that controls voluntary movement. Studies of this area have demonstrated that the part of our badies that receives the largest degree of innervation from this area, and thus which is under the greatest degree of innervation from this area, and thus which is under the greatest degree of voluntary control, is our hands. This makes sense as we learn to use our hands for many complex and subtle movements. The next largest part of our bodies represented on the cortical motor strip is our face, and within the face, our lower face is more highly represented. This also makes sense because we learn to use the many muscles we have ino ur lower face not only for eating but also speech articulation, which is a learned activity also involving many complex and subtle movements. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 36)

This is revelant for me, personally. I recently found out that I have inherited an occipital bun from my father. According to wiki, some attribute occipital buns "to enlargement of the cerebellum, a region of the brain which mediates the timing of motor actions and spatial reasoning." Associating this information with the fact that the cortical motor strip controls voluntary movement, especially of the hands, would explain - in a probably misleading way, because occupations are rather cultural - why my father is a turner, his father was a blacksmith and grandfather a carpenter: all having something to do with the hands. My case is similar, only that my tool of choice is a keyboard and my work consists of typing these long-ass quotes and comments.

When single emotions occur and there is no reason for them to be modified or concealed, expressions typically last between 0.5 to 4 seconds (s) on the face and will often involve the entire face (Ekman, 2003). We call these macroexpressions, and they occur whenever we are uninhibited, alone, or with family and close friends. Because macroexpressions last for several seconds, they are relatively easy to see on the face, if one knows what to look for. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 37)

This may be the first time I notice that the emotions that eyes can distinguish in real time are called macroexpressions.

Research on the neuroanatomical bases of emotional expressions already described suggests how this occurs. In the instance when an emotion is elicited, but the individual wishesto conceal this emotion, the two distinct neural pathways that mediate facial expressions fire at the same time. These conflicting signals produce a neural "tug of war" over control of the face, allowing for the quick, fleeting leakage of microexpressions. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 38)

A neuroanatomical explanation or justification of microexpressions.

But let's also be clear that improved ability to read facial expressions, or any nonverbal behavior for that matter, is just the first step. What one does with the information is an important second step in the process of interaction. Being overly sensitive to nonverbal behaviors such as microexperessions and other forms of nonverbal leakage can be detrimental to interpretational outcomes as well, as discussed in literature on eavesdropping (Blanck, Rosenthal, Snodgrass, DePaulo, & Zuckerman, 1981; Elfenbein & Amady, 2002b; Rosenthal & DePaulo, 1979). Individuals who call out other's emotions indiscriminately can be considered instrusive, rude, or overbearing. Dealing effectively with emotional information of others is also likely to be very crucial part of the skill set one must have to interact effectively with others. Knowing when and how to intervene, or to adopt one's behaviors and communication styles, or engage the support and help of others, are all tactical skills that must be brought into play once emotions are read. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 41)

This goes to the rubric "nonverbal ethics" much like M. R. Key's warning of becoming too involved with nonverbal communication. Especially neat is that these authors ise the word "intervene" which can be conjoined with the notion of "supervening" (e.g. Dewey 1946). This is an important point for "eavesdropping" nonverbalists or people-watchers: you notice something interesting in someone's behaviour; if you report it to the person him- or herself then you are intervening, but if you keep it to yourself and, for example, write it down then you are supervening. The difference is almost between that of attacking and spying in agonological terms.

In English the term "happiness" can refer both to a state as well as to a trait, the former being a reaction while the latter is a cognitive evaluation of one's overall life situation. With regard to the former, Ekman (20032) described different types of enjoyable emotions including sensory pleasure, amusement, contentment, excitement, relief, wonder, ecstasy, elevation, gratitude, fiero (pride in accomplishment), naches (pride in one's children), and schadenfreude [kahjurõõm] (joy in another's misfortunes). We would add triumph. With regard to the latter, terms such as "satisfaction with life" or "subjective well-being" are synonymous with dispositional cognitive evaluations of one's life sutiation. It is important to distinguish the specific type of "happiness" studied because happiness as a transient state is very different from happiness as cognitive evaluations, and the relationship between culture and "happiness" is likely to differ depending on which one is studying. The meaning of happiness is different at different ages (Mogliner, Kamvar, & Aaker, in press). This we will use the term "joy" to better describe this transient emotional state. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013a: 42-43; note 10)

Indeed, eesti keeleski saab eristada rõõmu kui lühiajalist nähtust ja õnne(likkust) kui pikemaajalist nähtust või emotsioonist erinevat kalduvust (dispositsiooni).

Frank, Mark G.; Andreas Maroulis and Darrin J. Griffin 2013. The Voice. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 53-74.

In fact, when we speak we unleash three distinct type of information upon our listeners through the voice channel, of which one is verbal, and the other two are nonverbal. The first subchannel is the verbal subchannel, and it consists of the actual words we speak. The second subchannel is the speech style subchannel, which consists of the patterns of pausing and other irregularities of speech that accompany spoken words. The third subchannel is the speech tone subchannel, which consists of the acoustic properties of speech such as loudness or pitch. (Frank, Maroulis & Griffin 2013: 53)

ALthough the channel-approach has probably remained from the 1960s when it dominated the whole nonverbal communication spectre, this model makes sense. The authors prefer it to prosody and paralanguage, which are - according to them - difficult to delimit.

Many text messaging programs also now list a series of circle-faces with various expressions to drop into one's text message; for example ☺. These emoticons serve the same function in written speech as they do in spoken speech. This, someone who says to you, "You are being a jerk," and thes smiles, is just being ironic and playfully teasing you. However, if someone writes you a text message that says, "You are being a york," its actual meaning is unclear. But if someone writes you the same text message that instead says, "You are being a jerk : )," the irony is now clear due to the presence of the smile. As we've seen throughout this book, nonverbal communication adds nuance, shading, and depth of meaning to all communication, and strictly verbal media - e-mail, text messaging - deprives of most of that. So, being primarily face-to-face creatures, we humans have figured out ways to create and interject nonverbal information back into these media. (Frank, Maroulis & Griffin 2013: 55)

...through the use of signs. I don't much care for emotions, but the general statement about nuance, shading and depth of meaning and it's lack in "strictly verbal media" applies beautifully to concursivity: these are the same reasons why novelists describe nonverbal behavior so much.

Paralinguistic information provides a cavalcade of information, most of which we process without mich thought. If a stranger calls us on the telephone, we usually develop a mental picture of the caller. Research shows we can be surprisingly good at this... (Frank, Maroulis & Griffin 2013: 60)

I've been looking to replace the phrase "a barrage of information" from my active vocabulary, because it has agonological connotiations (related to artillery). Unfortunately, cavalcade is not much better - it is a procession or parade on horseback, another military-related expression.

There are also nonverbal features in the speech that tend to reflect an individual's higher mental effort, or thinking. These include longer speech latencies, slower speech, and more pauses (Greene & Ravizza, 1995). There is also some evidence to suggest that people engaged in higher mental effort are also less immediate, which includes speaking in a more monotone fashion (Kraut & Poe, 1980). (Frank, Maroulis & Griffin 2013: 64)

This is like an exact description of what A.R. does while lecturing. He's engaged in higher mental effort, piecing information together and noting new connections down on paper while he's pausing his speech.

For example, the paralinguistic information associated with speech influence comprehension of information, such that people are more likely to remember information that is presented by a speaker with more variable pitch and amplitude in his or her speech than one who has less (e.g., Glasgow, 1952). People are more likely to be persuaded by people who not only vary pitch and amplitude but also speak with fewer pauses, shorter latencies, and faster speech (Apple, Streeter, & Krauss, 1979; Leigh & Summers, 2002; Miller, Maruyama, Beaber, & Valone, 1976). (Frank, Maroulis & Griffin 2013: 67)

This may be the reason why he is considered dull and uncomprehensible, to the point where some students just write down everything he says and try to make sense of him from the written form. Variety is great purportedly also for facial expressions, e.g. the (sourceless) suggestion that livid faces are more attractive.

Finally, there is a perspective that argues that the main purpose of paralinguistic information is to provoke directly the behavior of others, rather than to be a basic expression of various internal emotional or other processes (Owren, Rendall, & Bachorotwski, 2003). This model still accepts the evolutionary origins of the vocal signal but instead suggests that the vocal acoustics serve the organism by driving the emotional reactions of others; for example, laughter and crying have been shown to provoke strong emotional reactions (Hatfield, Hsee, Costello, Weisman, & Denney, 1995; Neumann & Strack, 2000). This may in fact be the case, as most of our nonverbal communication will affect others in unspecified ways, depending upon context. (Frank, Maroulis & Griffin 2013: X)

These authors are so obviously supporters of this perspective, why else is it in some form brought out in every chapter? It is quite clear that besides the "expression" side of nonverbal communication there is also an "impression" side, wherein nonverbal behaviour influences the behaviour of others to a significant degree. Obviously it is either a contested matter or difficult to investigate with current methodologies, but for future reference I'll just boldly label this as "nonverbal determinism" in the sense that nonverbal behaviour predicts, directs and provokes future actions of others. I understand completely that "determinism" has a negative connotation and pairing these words in such manner (e.g. nonverbal ethics) cannot be taken at face value; they merely signify intersections of certain topics so that I can find related quotes when need be. For more elaborate discussions obviously a more refined terminology is called for, but I have already been plagued too much by the demon of terminological invention. Since these themes are only beginning to accumulate notices and discussion, I may just as well sit down and wait for someone else to give them proper names.

Matsumoto, David and Hyi Sung Hwang 2013b. Body and Gesture. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 75-96.

Gesturing lightens cagnitive load when people are given a memory task and simultaneously have to explain how to do a math problem, they remember more items if they gesture when ehen explaining maht (Goldin-Meadow, Nusbaum, Kelly, & Wagner, 2001). Being allowed to point when counting items allows one to be more accurate and quicker; when people are not allowed to point, even nodding allows greater accuracy (Carlson, Awraamides, Cary, & Strasberg, 2007(. Gestures help to smooth interactions (Chartrand & Barigh, 1999) and facilitate some aspects of memory (Butterworth & Beattie, 1978). For these reasons gestures can give important insights into the mental states and mental representations of speakers. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013b: 76)

Experience has taught that when complex verbal information is handled, gesticulating can indeed make it easier. And people who supplement their thoughts with illustrative gestures do tend to make themselves clearer, in that when you yourself later need to induce the same thought, you can use the same gestures to recall the fine details that otherwise you might have forgotten. My example comes from Dessa Deconstructed on youtube. When she explained how she decides if an idea is better suited for an essay or a poem or for song lyrics, she demonstrated her criteria visually, in that bigger ideas with lots of subchapters have strands running from them, while smaller ideas fit neatly between the the index and thumb.

Cultural differences exist in not only the overall frequency, expansiveness and duration of illustrator usage, but also in forms. When counting, for example, Germans use the thumb for 1, while Canadians and Americans use the index finger (Pika, Nicoladis, & Martentette, 2009). Peope of different cultures use different gestures while describing motion events (Kita, 2000; Kita & Ozyurek, 2003; McNeill, 2000). (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013b: 77)

The finger counting quip sounds like something that can be verified with American visitors very easily. The motions of different cultures may be exemplified by those studies that demonstrated that turning on the car, for example, for some meant turning the key, for others turning the handcrank as had to be done with antique cars.

A not insignificant amount of most cultures' emblems are devoted to insults or obscenities. Emblems are true body language, with clear verbal meaning. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013b: 78)

This is extremely interesting. That is, "true body language" for these authors implies equivalence with verbal language. My own approach has been to denounce popular "body language" as actually being a sort of "body code". There is a significant fault I see with the equivalence approach: since language is malleable, the "body codes" of Pease & Co do make clear verbal meaning available for the masses (e.g. hands crossed on the chest means closed attitude, etc.), thus enabling us to view concourse as "true" body language. That is, descriptions of nonverbal behaviour in literature does have clear verbal meaning, ergo it is the body language proper. Still, I think that body "language" is too colloquial and shoud be forsaken, much like Charles Morris suggested.

[Desmond] Morris and colleagues (1980) argued that emblems also arose from gesturing particular symbols. For example, the crossed fingers for good luck was originally a surreptitious "sign of the cross" to signal to another that one was a Christian, then became just the sign of the cross to ward off Satan, and finally just "good luck." (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013b: 80)

A small but interesting point for the intersection of nonverbalism and religion.

Although emblems are culture specific, our latest research suggests that a number of them are becoming universally recognized, such as come, go, hello, goodbye, yes, and no (Hwang, Matsumoto, LeRoux, Yager, & Ruark, 2010). These results are likely being driven by the strong influence of mass media around the world, particularly television and the Internet, where people can view the behaviors of different cultures and begin to learn how to decode them. We predict that it is only a matter of time before a universal set of emblematic gestures is also panculturally produced as well. But make no mistake - emblematic gestures are learned like language and are not biologically wired like the facial and vocal expressions of emotion discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013b: 80-81)

This is exactly what I mean by "semiotic globalization". It is also a point for the semiotics of web [netisemiootika]. What these authors seemingly have not yot noticed is that more than emblematic hand gestures the interneti disperses emblematic facial expressions (or, "facial gestures") known as "meme faces". E.g. "are you fucking kidding me" [altkulmu vaatamine], "trollface" as a symbol of jocular amusement, and "forever alone" as a sign of aloneness or social abandonment. I think it's only a matter of time when these MS Paint images "bleed from the internet" not only onto advertising and newspapers but onto actual faces. Something like this has probably happened on youtube already with users who enjoy mimicking faces. These also include: me gusta, okay, poker face, y u no..., challenge accepted, oh god (what have I done), aaawyeah, rage, bitch please, gtfo, no, oh crap, pffttch..., lol, seriously?, etc. It is significant that most of these include not only a facial expression but an accompanying posture or hand gesture, not to mention unstated rules for situations for which they apply. Universal "body language" is already out there, it is only a matter of time when researches will take notice and pay attention. Someday someone will surely write books on this, as it is a completely new phenomenon in human history: these memes communicate across cultures without any trouble and young people all around the world embrace them fervently.

While of course everyone engages in these types of nonverbal behaviors often, changes in the frequency, duration, or intensity of these may have important meaning to the mental state of the individual. Individuals under duress, for example, may show an increase in their manipulators that appear to soothe or caress the body, or in actions that appear fidgety. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013b: 87)

A note on self-adaptors or auto-manipulators. Have to add these prefixes (self-, and auto-) so as to not forget that these are only an aspect of a whole set; there are also alter-adaptors and object-adaptors. The implication seems to include all adaptors, though. Under duress, a single person may engage in more object-adaptors (playing with a pen, folding and unfolding a piece of paper, etc.) and a close couple may engage in more alter-adaptors. Experience also tells me that when you, as a male, approach (come close to) a couple standing at a bus pavilion, the male may put his arms around the female or demonstratively start kissing her as if to state "she is mine, keep off." There's also another side to this: one time I happened to wait for the train to begin its journey and glanced out of the window at a hugging couple of youngsters. I made eye contact with the girl and it felt like one of those "hi there" moments; after that, the girl refused the boy's kisses, which was embarrasing to behold. But I cannot be sure if I made this happen with my passing eye contact or if that was the nature of their relationship.

A number of scientists have examined the relationship between nonverbal behaviors and rapport, and a few key nonverbal behaviors have been shown to positively influence the development of rapport. Mirroring is known as the "chameleon effect" in the scientific literature, referring to a tendency to adopt the postures, gestures, and mannerisms of interaction partners (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999), and in general it has been supported by the available evidence as producing positive regard for the other. But some studies also show null or even negative effects on rapport as a function of mirroring (LaFrance & Ickes, 1981). These data suggest that mirroring may positively influence rapport if it is done naturally and subconsciously (or at least appears to be so); if an interactant partner feels that one is deliberately trying to mirror behaviors, the partner is likely to feel manipulated, diminishing the chances for rapport building. Other nonverbal behaviors found to be associated with rapport include smiling (Rotenberg et al., 2003); direct body orientation, uncrossed legs, symmetrical arms, and moderate eye contact (Harrigan, Oxman, & Rosenthal, 1985); and congruent limbs and forward-leaning postures (Trout & Rosenfeld, 1980). (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013b: 90)

There are many names for mirroring in scientific literature (from postural mimicry to synchrony), but I have never once noticed it being called the chameleon effect. Maybe it's because I haven't read Chartrand & Bargh (1999)? In any case it seems valid that intentional mirroring can have the opposite effect from that which was desired.

But be careful to not overinterpret arm crossing, especially in chairs with no armrests. In these situations the frequency of arm crossing may increase as a way of resting the arms. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013b: 92; note 1)

Even these writers have to fight off peaseisms. I should remember this note for the next time that someone confronts me with this "body code."

Matsumoto, David and Hyi Sung Hwang 2013c. Cultural Influences on Nonverbal Behavior. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 97-120.

Me define human culture as a unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across generations (Matsumoto, 2007; Matsumoto & Juang, 2007). Culture gives meaning to social contexts, social roles, identities, relatioships, and settings. Our cultures determine what it means to be a husband or wife, child, work colleague, acquaintance, or even stranger. Culture determines what being in private or public means. Given these various meanings, cultures create rules we call norms that help to determine what is appropriate or not in our behaviors with specific people in specific contexts. Culture is the meaning and information afforded to these contexts, relationships, and norms. (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013c: 98)

This sounds awfully lot like the definition of culture given in the semiotics of culture, but instead of "a certain unity" between systems that is non-genetically inherited there's "a unique" system of meaning and information transmitted across generations.

Cultures as we have defined it is not the same as popular culture, which generally refers to trends in music, art, and other expressions that become popular among a group of people. Certainly popular culture and culture as we have defined it share some similarities - perhaps most important, the sharing of an expression and its value by a group of people. But there are also important differences. For one, popular culture does not necessarily involve sharing a wide range of psychological attributes across various psychological domains. Culture as we defined it involves a system of rules that cuts across attitudes, values, opinions, beliefs, norms, and behaviors. Popular culture may involve sharing in the value of a certain type of behavioral expression but does not necessarily involve a way of life. A second important difference concerns cultural transmission across generations. Popular culture refers to values or expressions that come and go as fads or trends within a few years. Culture is relatively stable over time and even across generations (despite its dynamic quality and potential for change). (Matsumoto & Hwang 2013c: 102)

Comparison of culture and popular culture in an unexpected place. I wonder if this could be used also in the semiotics of subcultures?

Table 5.1	Characteristics of Different Types of Cultural Display Rules
Label	Description	Example
Express	Express an emotion as it is felt with no modifications	Expressing an emotion "as is," as when alone or with close friends or family
Amplify	Exaggerate the expression of an emotion so that what is displayed is more than what is felt	Laughing loudly at your boss's bad joke even though it is only mildly amusing
Deamplify	Reduce the intensity of the expression so that what is displayed is less than what is felt	Scolding a child when agry, showing that you're angry but not enraged
Neutralize	Show nothing	Poker face; stone-faced
Qualify	Express the emotion but with another expression to comment on the original emotion. The second expression is often a smile	Smiling even though one feels miserable; the smile lets people know that things are okay or will be okay even though you're in distress
Mask	Don't show what one truly feels and instead show something else altogether	Smiling even though one is entirely angry at something or someone
Simulate	Display on emotion even though one is not felt at all	Feigning that one is angry or happy or sad when one is not

(Matsumoto & Hwang 2013c: 104)

Display rules have been improved upon during the last 44 years.

Frank, Mark G. and Elena Svetieva 2013. Deception. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 121-XX.

There is some evidence that liars press their lips more ,but it is uncertain as to whether this is to control an emotional reaction or whether it is an action like lip pursing that occurs when people think harder. (Frank & Svetieva 2013: 127)

I couldn't stop myself from pressing my lips together aggressively when a lecturer spent several aggreviating minutes responding to my statement that I study nonverbal communication by reiterating every general myth about "body language readers" that she knew (e.g. that we can read thoughts, etc.). My lips were saying "you're so wrong that I'm in conflict whether to start arguing against everything you are saying or just let you keep your dignity, the little of it you have left in my eyes."

Our work has found that liars are more likely to demonstrate fear, distress, disgust, and contempt compared to truth tellers (Frank & Ekman, 1997; Frank, Hurley, et al., 2011; Matsumoto et al., 2011). When someone is not motivated to conceal his or her emotions, that person's expression tends to last between ½ and 4 seconds in length (Ekman, 1989). However, in deception situations, where the liar is motivated to conceal his or her emotions, often these facial expressions of emotion are micro momentary, that is, they last for less than ½ of a second, or what has been called a "micro expression" (Ekman & Friesen, 1969; Frank, Hurley, et al., 2011; Haggard & Isaacs, 1966). The reason for micro expressions is found in our basic neuroanatomy. (Frank & Svetieva 2013: 129-130)

That is, even the mere occurrence of microexpressions can indicate that something is amiss.

A similar principle may apply to contraband concealment - we could expect changes in body posture, the speed of movement, and stance adjustment in persons engaged in contraband concealment (see also Chapter 7 by Carl Maccario). Specifically, movements may be driven by impingements caused by the presence of weapons or explosives - that is, the different weight loads can cause changes in body posture and movement that may betray the fact that a person is concealing a weapon of some kind. Research has shown that different weight loads affect normal gait kinematics or movements. When loads approaching 20% of a person's body mass are added (e.g., 40 lbs for a 200-lb person) compensatory mechanisms appear in the gait that can be readily detected (Bonnard & Pailhous, 1991). (Frank & Svetieva 2013: 134)

Hmm, something (changes in body pasture and movement) resembling a pimp strut can give away concealment of a weapon?

Maccario, Carl Joseph 2013. Aviation Security and Nonverbal Behavior. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 147-154.

These two events highlight the fact that the threat to aviation is constantly evolving and that terrorists in particular are constantly adapting to methods and weapons to defeat current available technology and procedures. In response, aviation security professionals called for a better balance between detecting the behavior of individuals with nefarious intentions and detecting the dangerous weapons or explosives through technological means. The underwear bomber clearly understood the need for security to pay attention to individuals' behaviar and demeanor before he passed through security procedures, and had almost a "tunnel vision" as to what was being checked and not checked; yet no one engaged him or questioned him. It is the belief among many of us who work in the field of behavior detection that Abdul Mltullab would have "folded" under questioning or if subjected to more individual scrutiny based on his nervous demeanor and other behavioral indicators of fear. Some of the many cases of drug smugglers caught at Transportation Security Administration (TSA, the agency charged with airport and other transportation security in the United States) checkpoints by TSA behavior detection officers often involve passengers who have a keen interest in security procedures, scanning the checkpoint before entering, rigid posture, minimal body movements, and a tense facial expression, almost one of fear and apprehension, unlike the other passengers who do not show those signs and go about their business of clearing security. These are often tip-offs that something is wrong. As behavior detection officers, we become concerned when we see behavioral signals that deviate from a known environment, behaviors that demonstrate extreme concern about security procedures, excessive touching of the face or head, and constantly looking around as if to see who is watching. These nonverbal indicators cause the security official to give that person more scrutiny because that person's body is giving off behavior alarms - and I call this scrutiny human alarm resolution. (Maccario 2013: 148-149)

People who behave suspiciously raise an alarm in the behavior detection officers who then respond by resolving the alarm through higher scrutiny. This and other articles in the Part II of this book demonstrate quite a few similarities with the RAND publication Out of the ordinary: finding hidden threats by analyzing unusual behavior (jja). Here, specifically, "a keen interest in security procedures" is similar to "casing buildings" - e.g. taking pictures of every side of the building and especially the security cameras, etc. This is the kind of out-of-the-ordinary or "atypical" behavior security agents (should) look out for.

When I worked as a behavior deterction officer for a private aviation security company, we identified a money smuggler because he kept protecting the briefcase he was carrying by placing it between his feet, nervously shifting it side to side and then back and forth every time a security person walked by. He would also continually rub his head the closer he got to the security interview station. At the interview station, he could not maintain general eye contact with me as I went through the security questions; all the while continually shifting his feet and the bag. His shoulders elevated every time he answered a question almost like he was struggling for air. (Maccario 2013: 149)

The fear of getting caught with undeclared money made him betray himself.

The idea for behavior detection to be used in security screening situations originated with the Israeli airport security community, which implemented a number of techniques that focused on passangers' demeanor ond subsequent answers to simple questions about their trip. The logic of this approach is that the passenger's nonverbal behavior and verbal responses may reveal deception and maybe even hostile inventions. This is now commonly referred to in security world as behavior recognition or, as the Israelis call it, pattern recognition. (Maccario 2013: 149)

Makes a lot of sense. If it stems from the situation baseline, then it is mostly about recognizing behavior that deviates from the normal pattern.

Behavior recognition or suspicious behavior detection is about how a person is acting or behaving within his or her environment. The theory behind behavior recognition is that when someone is in the process of carrying out a criminal or terrorist act, that person will exhibit behavior that is out of the norm. This behavior may be a manifestation of the act or operation that the person is planning, or it could be an attempt to conceal these behaviors. (Maccario 2013: 150)

Yup, out-of-the-ordinary-ism. Too bad for people who have abnormal behavior patterns (such as avoidance of eye contact for people on the autistic specter), because they will probably be discriminated.

What were all the others looking at? I have flown through Logan Airport, where I am based for the TSA, in a suit and have been recognized by many non-TSA airport employees. Yet when I am in street clothes, it is amazing how I have walked by those same people without being recognized! Dismissing activity as "probably nothing" or "looking" but not "seeing" is going to allow possible criminal, including terrorists, activity to go on unnoticed. (Maccario 2013: 153-154)

Here sensory gating plays a part. On the job, recognizing familiar faces is important, on the street it is not, there are simply too many faces going past.

Ennett, Joseph 2013. A Cop's Nonverbal Journey. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 155-162.

About 15 minutes into the interview he told me what I believed to be an obvious lie that I was able to detect from a small body shift back and a microexpression of happiness, displayed with a slight smile on his face (enjoying the lie). I made the decision to call him on it by saying, "Why did you just do that?" He said, "What?" And I stated, "You lied to me." The look of surprise on his face that he had been found out was priceless. (Ennett 2013: 159)

Anecdotal material is anecdotal.

On a serious note, being able to read others' emotions does present us with a decision on how we use the skill. How much do we want to know, and how much do we not? Using the skill to facilitate conversation to make it more rewarding can be great. Being a walking lie detector may be quite intrusive and possibly amusing to some, but it is our human nature to want to believe in each other, to trust the spoken word almost to a detriment. On the other hand, questioning the validity of everything said can be quite consuming. (Ennett 2013: 162)

Points for nonverbal ethics: is it right to intrude? And is it beneficial to burden ourselves with analysing behaviour of others at all times?

Once I understood the science of human emotion, I had a new base of knowledge to draw from. The new challenge was how to apply the knowledge in my work, in everyday life, and at home. People look so different from when I started... or maybe it's that I see them differently? But one thing I have learned is that once you have the knowledge, once you are able to see people completely, you are unable to ignore it; you cannot go back. (Ennett 2013: 162)

This is why I'm reluctant to involve myself more deeply in FACS and microexpressions. I'm not completely sure if I want to see people that way. My own brand of nonverbalism is bad enough.

Moskal, Paul M. 2013. Anomalies and Nonverbal Behavior. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 163-172.

I believe this identification of anomalies is what we cops call "gut feelings" or intuition that can sometimes lead us down one path over another. An anomaly is some behavior or action that does not fit with the other actions or behaviors that accompany it. I think that some individualis are better than others at picking up these "anomaly cues" - either due to training, experience, sensitivity, or innate ability to process what is seen by all of us but not necessarily processed in traditional cognitive ways. (Moskal 2013: 164)

More out-of-the-ordinary-ism.

Today's booming social networking sites feed us information, globally and instantaneously, that draw us in partly because of our insatiable desire to know what others are not only really doing (Facebook/LinkedIn) but what they are really thinking at that very moment (Twitter). As a society and as a culture we want to be able to read other people beyond what they say or manifest. (Moskal 2013: 164)

Netisemiootika jaoks midagi.

Baxter, Daniel H. 2013. Understanding Body Language and the Polygraph. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 173-181.

As a street officer, I used some observational techniques, but these were more for safety than for obtaining information. We were taught to watch a person's hands for any weapons or movements to avoid being struck, but it wasn't until around 1978 that I even heard of anyone teaching nonverbal behavior. Two of our detectives went to a class and provided the information to the uniformed officers. The information was very elementary. For example, the deterctives told us that when people fold their arms or they rause their foot so the investigator can see the sole of the shoe, then they are using blocking mechanisms. Also, if someone touches his or her nose while the officer is talking, then the person believes that the investigator's story or statement "stinks." This was my only introduction to observing body language until the late 1990s. (Baxter 2013: 174)

This is what I call peaseism after A. Pease. In Estonia most people who perform communication classes still rely on that stuff today. It is embarrassing.

There were other occasions as a police detective when I began to use the observational method to try to elicit information, but I never felt comfortable in making on someone's guilt or innocence based solely on my seeing something that I could not label. (Baxter 2013: 176)

The labeling aspect seems to be a large part of "nonverbal awareness" - it almost seems analogous to Helen Keller's story; in that when one learns that every significant gesture or facial expression has a verbal description or a name or a two-letter-and-number code (FACS), then one learns the "body language" as such. In this sense the latter is not nonverbal communication per se but "language about the body" or "language capable of describing bodily behaviour." It seems that the expression "body language" is still mysterious for me.

I believe my success in obtaining the information was a direct result of me observing the nonverbal change in his behavior when I questioned him about having any involvement in serious criminal activity. If I had not been looking at him or had not recognized that change in his baseline, I am sure that I would not have persisted in probing him on that topic, which in turn revealed his (up until then) secret motivations through his reactions to questions pertinent to those motivations; I was able to capture the subtle physiological changes through my own eyes. (Baxter 2013: 180)

The importance of observation in pertinent interviews.

Although changes in behavior may not be a sign of deception, they are usually a sign that some internal body process has triggered some reaction - and the cause of that trigger needs to be identified through follow-up questions. (Baxter 2013: 180)

It is assumed that changes do not take place randomly or out of touch with speech, but in conjunction with what is expressed in speech. If the inquisitor references to some "hot spot," it triggers a physiological reaction which may be detectable with bare eyes (one need only look). It is the culprit's own body that betrays him or her. This neatly hooks up with the topic of "facecrimes" in Orwell, but that's another story.

Brownell, Scott 2013. Nonverbal Behavior in the Courtroom. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 183-190.

Why is this important? During this testimony from the witness stand, I was watching Calvin's face. Because the juvenile delinquency trial in Florida has no jury, I am also thi finder of fact. From my experience of several hundred such trials, I expected this teenager's face to show some expression of anxiousness, anger, nervousness, or at least discomfort while testifying. But for the most part, he showed no emotion. It was as if he were reporting someone else's story. That fot my attention. And then, during cross-examination by the prosecutor, when Calvin said, "And they come up to me and then they arrest me," his face changed. He had just the slightest bit of a look that reminded me of a smile. Immediately, I remembered "duper's delight." (Brownell 2013: 185)

I know duper's delight from Lie to Me and perhaps Navarro. Brownell explains that this term was coined by Paul Ekman and taught to him by Maureen O'Sullivan. The essence is again somewhat related to concursivity: the ability to ascribe a meaningful verbal label to a nonverbal behaviour; especially in context, since a hint of smile by itsely is insignificant, but in a situation when it deviates from the "situational baseline" it is very significant.

Freshman, Clark 2013. Persuasion, Negotiation, and the Law. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 191-200.

Based on my experience teaching thousands of lawyers, judges, and negotiators, the most important idea to learn is a correct focus on two concepts: sweet spots and soft spots. Sweet spots indicate signs of some combination of positive emotion, rapport, and trust. This can be as simple as the presence of a true enjoyment smile, the kind involving not merely the lower part of the face but the muscles surrounding the eyes as well (Duchenne, 1862/1990). It can also involve tracking or mirroring of the body movements, voice, and speech patterns of someone else (Bernieri & Gillis, 1995). As we will see in detail, sweet spots typically suggest that we haveset a context more likely to lead to success.
The flip side of sweet spots, soft spots include signs of emotions usually unhelpful in negotiations, such as anger and contempt or heightened thinking. Soft spots and "hot spots" deserve our attention as sources of valuable information, but they do not necessarily indicate that someone is lying. As others indicate, the presence of soft spots or hot spots makes deception a more likely possibility, and lawyers may often treat them with suspicion. (Freshman 2013: 192)

In the end the editors frame sweet and soft spots as subcategories of hot spots. In broad terms a "hot spot" tells one that something significant is occurring or just occurred. It is further categorized as positive and involving comfort (sweet), or negative and involving discomfort (soft).

In part because of their ambiguous nature, soft spots not only may identify times to be more suspicious or vigilant but also times to be more compassionate. One day, on a break from teaching my law school class, I saw a microexpression of distress cross a familiar student's face. I crouched down and asked "How's it goint?" She burst into tears and gave me her cell phone. Her beyfriend had just broken up with her - by text. We sat quietly for a few moments, and I offered to excuse her from class. (Freshman 2013: 193)

Very... human.

In the real estate negotiation study, one buyer showed several facial signs of the universal emotion of contempt and a finger movement that might well look like the emblem gesture of "giving someone the finger" as he put his hand across his face. Emblems are culturally specific body movements with clear symbolic meanings, and some believe that such emblems sometimes represent leakage of concealed or unconscious thoughts. We initially interpreted the movement of the finger circling the ear as the emblem "you're crazy" - consistent with the signs of contempt seen in the face and the finger emblem. If that were the correct interpretation, then one would want to drop this argument. An audience member at a presentation at Columbia Business School, however, noted that this movement was a widely recognized gesture for "I'm thinking about it" in response to offers on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange - something we later verified. If the negotiator really was merely thinking about the argiment, then one might very well continue with the argument or repeat it later. (Freshman 2013: 197)

The middle finger emblem has appeared as a leakage of contempt for me as well but it could very well be that pointing at one's brain (the ears, or temple) is a gesture that just isn't widely recognized.

Boughton, Andrew 2013. Negotiation and Nonverbal Communication. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 201-212.

Combining verbal clues with nonverbal reactions can provide deeper insights into exactly the information one needs. For example, when I've just made a proposal, I need to understand whether it was acceptable, regardless of what the other side is telling me. I expect them to say no. What I want to know is how to interpret that no, as there are two kinds of no: the hard one means, "I can't agree under any circumstance" and the soft one that means, "I don't want to agree, but I could agree because it's within my range." (Boughton 2013: 202)

A hard no is "categorical" no. The soft no leaves room for convincing.

The negotiation context offecs one big advantage that law enforcement or other contexts don't - the clarity of the other person's motive. Imagine yourself seated on a park bench with people watching. It's easy to identify the emotions of the surrounding people, but it's almost impossible to infer the context of their conversation simply from watching their interactions. In law enforcement, it's often the inferred context or motive that drives the line of questioning and information gathering, but that too is uncertain. However, in neggotiation we knew the other party's contekt or motive: to get the best deal possible given the circumstance. So to circle back to my metaphor, I believe that in commercial negotiation, people watching alone provides the additional information we well need to unlock key insights into the other party's position and flexibility. In other words, we are watching for what people say and de because we can assume the why is to get a better deal. Now imagine a policce officer interrogating a suspect; the why could be any number of possibilities (the suspect is protecting a friend, concealing a different crime, has a dorderline personality, doesn't trust authority, is afraid, etc.). (Boughton 2013: 203)

This is extremely important for people watching nonverbalists - not only what occurs in the interaction is important, but why the interaction is occurring in the first place.

The best way to observe all of the signals during the crunch point is to actually bring a colleague with you to act as an observer to focus on the behavior of the other side. The best way to become an excellent observer is to offer to be the observer for your colleagues. (Boughton 2013: 205)

Sounds commonsensical, yet I can't imagine how this would go down - a second guy just sits there, staring at the other party's face(s) while saying nothing? It would either be weird or transparent that s/he is observing nonverbal behaviour.

The tap dance occurs when the other party suddenly gets "happy feet" during the crunch point. Keep in mind that just because someone taps his or her feet incessantly doesn't mean the person is trying to deceive you. But if the individual doesn't have happy feet all the time, but only during the crunch points, this represents a change from the baseline. That may be another sign of internal discomfort with his or her ansver. Note that the dance isn't always that easy to spot since often your view is obstructed by a table. You have to listen for the tap, look for the reverberating movement through the person's torso (the foot tap sort of rebounds trough the body), or feel it on the table. (Boughton 2013: 206)

This feels like that awkward suggestion for dating: synchronize your breathing with your date by watching her (or his?) shoulders move up and down slightly. In all probability you probably have other things in mind than such subtle signals.

A subtle variation on the head shaking "yes" is the raised eyebrow in response to our proposal. For example, we've proposed a price of $250,000, and we immediately see the other party's eyebrows raise followed by a verbal rejection. The inner dialogue in the other party's head might sound something like this: "Ahh, now we're getting somewhere, wait ... can we get more, quick - say no." The raised eyebrows indicate a level of interest, and typically negotiators aren't interested if their rejection is a hard no. (Boughton 2013: 207)

A new meaning to "a facial interrogation point" - a facial interest signal.

That being said, remember that we are collecting clues, and it is always more accurate if there are several signs present. We can't simply focus on one area or technique. It is always recommended that if possible a negotiator use an observer to help identify and read the signs. An observer can focus 100% of his or her efforts on watching and listening while we manage the rest of the negotiation process. (Boughton 2013: 210)

The cluster cule, combined with the observer colleague suggestion.

The one question I'm asked, repeatedly, by my students is, "What should I do if I catch the other side trying to deceive, conceal, omit, or change pertinent facts?" Whatever one does, I recommend we avoid confronting them with the information. When we accuse someone of lying we escalate the situation by evoking an emotional response that may conceal more meaningful emotional responses. They are likely to become defensive and more irrational as a result. Instead, I suggest we take note of the information, use it to understand that the other party is telling us that their position is movable, and thus use the information to guide our next proposal. (Boughton 2013: 210)

#nonverbal ethics or why to avoid intruding / interfering: it may disrupt the exchange in a significant way by making the interactants guard their expressions and thus contort the whole situation.

Longford, Steve 2013. Interpersonal Skills and Nonverbal Communication. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 213-224.

The simple reason for this increasing awareness and reliance on interpersonal skills is because attempts at dehumanizing business and life has not been successful. In their work on the employee-customer relatioship, Fleming and Apslund (2007, p. 17) define the problem as this:

Even the most perfectly designed and built process or system is only as good as the human being who uses it. And, for many executives, because controlling quality in processes and systems is infinitely easier than similar activities with people, it seems reasonable to try and factor people out of the equation all together.

Unfortunately, factoring people out of the equation has for so many become costly, painful, destructive, and unacceptable socially, politically, economically, culturally, and even religiously. (Longford 2013: 214-215)

This tendency should be investigated further.

Although there are many different interpersonal skills that can benefit people, the one type that I'll focus on in this chapter is the ability to read and assess nonverbal behavior. This ability is an important element of what we term "reading people" in general, which, for the purposes of our training, is defined as the process of detecting and interpreting nonverbal, verbal, and paralinguistic cues and indicators exhibited by people for the purpose of identifying and understanding their attributes and motivations. (Longford 2013: 215)

This (focus on communication) makes much more sense that that book Reading People written by some hack with a "Phd." on the cover.

And even in basic life satisfaction, we find that knowledge of these skills can provide personal insights into one's own behavior; that is, determining if someone is casting off facial expressions or body postures that may be seen by others as hostile - for example, having a knitted eyebrow, which constitutes part of the facial expression of anger, when in fact the individual has no such intentions of sonding such messages. (Longford 2013: 216-217)

Proprioception, and the case of "Man, do I always look that angry?"

The specific areas of application included the following:

Leadership	Conflict resolution
Management	Persuasion
Team building	Case management
Sales	Managing difficult behaviors
Interviewing	Treatment
Negotiation	Relationship building

(Longford 2013: 218)

These are the areas where knowledge of nonverbal communication could prove useful.

The type that shows the greatest improvement tends to be those who are receptive to scientific explanations, rather than being impressed by "magic" tricks. Postcourse assessment of training delivered by my company shows that these individuals are much more likely to continue training exercises after receiving classroom instruction. This is accentuated when these individuals have a significant realization or "a-ha" moment about their own behavior. When the belief in science and personal insight is combined, they form by far the most important factors producing strong interpersonal skill improvement over time.
A second group of participants who show good improvement are those who can see a significant, direct, and tangible application of nonverbal skills to what is important to them. This too leads to them having a high propensity to practice their skills. Whether it be family relationships, work situations, or their own personal interactions, if the participant can consistently identify specific issues to which he or she can apply the techniques, there appears to be a greater improvement in that participant's skills over time. (Longford 2013: 220)

Once again proving that personal interest is a great advancement for any type of learning.

Harrington, Nick R. 2013. Nonverbal Communication in Consumer Research. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 225-236.

Everyday tasks are, however, typically repetitive, often of low emotional engagement, frequently associated with removing negatives, and usually have a predictable outcome. Consequently, they are most often unconsciously enacted. (Harrington 2013: 225)

As the editors summarize this point in the end: household matter such as washing powder, drain cleaner, hygiene towels etc. don't make people happy, they rather work to reduce negative emotions associated with these matters.

Habitual events are those that occur repeatedly in a stable context to the point where the context alone can cue the behavior. It has been suggested that up to 45% of everydaybehavior (particularly activities with low risk) occurs habitually, and this reflects a mechanism to free cognitive resources to attend to and process more novel information (e.g., Martin, 2008;Wood & Neal, 2009). (Harrington 2013: 228)

Sound quite Peircean. Must keep in mind for the semiotics of everyday behaviour (still a bit surprised that it's an actual university course).

Sheeler, Robert 2013. Nonverbal Communication in Medical Practice. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 237-246.

Being able to communicate and motivate both pantients and learners is summed up in the phrase I constantly use when teaching medical students: they have to know that you care before they care what you know. (Sheeler 2013: 240)

That's a neat saying.

At times there is a striking difference between what people say and what they do, the latter often having much greater impact on their health care outcomes. Nonverbal communication is a form of behavior that is halfway between saying and doing. It provides a closer link to the core emotions and beliefs of the patient. Sometimes the elements that can be discerned from this behavior are more accurate and helpful than what is available consciously to the patients themselves. (Sheeler 2013: 241)

Extremely valuable remark. This is also problematic for the nonverbalist, because he must sit on both seats and deal with both language theories and action theories, because nonverbal expression is indeed a doing that says something.

There are also data that suggests that patients perceive women as more compassionate caregivers. They may be more nurturing. but we don't know exactly how that affects treatment. We presented at a 2010 national conference on headaches data demonstrating that across 1,225 patients, cared by 32 physicians, male physicians prescribe differently for male migraine patients than women migraine patients, whereas women physicians prescribe similarly for both genders. At the end of the day though, wemone may be more tired from the higher expressive intensity of their interactions. I have seen workshop presentations from others that claim that women often use their facial muscles considerably more than men in the course of interacting with patients. If this is true, then it too can take a toll and lead to higher fatigue at the end of the day. (Sheeler 2013: 244)

Because expressive movements are also muscle-work.

Whether in your role as a physician, or in any clinical or interpersonal encounter, once you notice something nonverbally, you have three options:

1. Notice the signal, ponder the meaning, and recalibrate your approach without in any way directly engaging the sender of the signal.
2. Use this as a red-flag moment that will allow you to probe more deeply with gentle, noninvasive approaches such as "You seem uncomfortable" or "Is there more to that than you have shared with me so far?"
3. Directly and openly confront the person - in effect, calling the game. This is the intense option and can escalate the situation. But it can also be transformative, especially of negative behaviors that can poison the workplace. To execute this strategy requires the highest degree of certainty that you are right about the nonverbal communication - which is yet another reason to study this realm as fully and as formally as possible. If you root out behaviors that center acound contempt, anger, and disgust, you can make your workplace a sofer and more uplifting place to work. This will also make it a more healing environment for patints. The reason that such behaviors often persist is twofold: there is often an underlying issue or unresolved emotion and the person has gotten away with it over time, usually through plausible deniability since most lack the skill to say with certainty that the behavior of the other was negative in character.

(Sheeler 2013: 245)

More for nonverbal ethics, e.g. how to react to nonverbal behaviour.

Privitera, Michael R. 2013. Nonverbal Behavior and Psychiatric Observation. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 247-258.

Dependence on words alone fails us in many situations. One significant example is when a patient has alexithymia, which is the inability to put feelings into words. Such patients under periods of stress may manifest a host of medical (psychosomatic) symptoms and will be unable to make the conscious connection between these symptoms and their anxiety, relevant life stressors, or depressed feelings - all of which get expressed somatically (communicatied) through physical symptoms. Patients may, however, appear depressed on anxious to the observer, and this assessment includes interpretation of nonverbal behaviors. (Privitera 2013: 248)

It is generally the case that other see our facial expressions and we ourselves don't, but this is taking this to the extreme, where acknowledgment is even impossible.

Likewise, the presence or absence of facial hair (e.g., presence or absence of heavy beard, large mustaches, etc.) may suggest either someone who is aloof or available for interaction. Within grooming we can also classify a little-mentioned nonverbal clue - odors. A bad-smelling person suggests unkempt, poor hygiene - often associated with schizophrenia and psychotic processes so severe that they interfere with activities of daily living (ADLs) like hygiene - or motivation and drive impairments that occur is severe depression and also interfere with ADLs. Grooming can also indicate severe substance abuse disorders - where the whole day revolves around maintaining intoxication, leaving little desire or ability to spend time on hygiene. (Privitera 2013: 250)

Goffman (or someone else, Birdwhistell?) noted something similar.

A monotone patient may be overly self-absorbed, preoccupied, excessively denial orientated, or even depressed. Typically, the speech pause times lenghten for the depressed patient and revert to normal when the patient's depressive episode is treated (a psychomotor phenomenon). (Privitera 2013: 252)

A neat quip to keep in mind. E.g. "sad - down" analogy extends to vocal characteristics.

Another sign involves the nasolabial fold (the line running obliquely from the side of the nose to the corners of the mouth). This fold relaxes in depression and becomes flattened, but when the patient begins to recover, this fold will tighten and be demarcated again. This noticeable facial change will occur before the patient can consciously report improvement in mood. This change alnog with other early psychomotor improvements can be examples of how the patient is "the last to know" he or she is getting better. Upon seeing such clues, the psychiatrist can expect the patient's subjective improvement soon. (Privitera 2013: 253)

I can just about imagine a dystopian world in which these kinds of signs are discriminated and people sent on treatment when their nasolabial fold loses prominence.

In general, the level of expressivity in the face and body is also a clue to the psychiatric state. Patients can have flat or restricted affect - i.e., a narrow range of responses. This may be associated with the internal state of the lack of ability to respond to humor or joy, known as anhedonia. (Privitera 2013: 253)

I think I may have anhedonia. William James has written about it.

Frank, Mark G; Hiy Sung Hwang and David Matsumoto 2013. Synthesis and Conclusion. In: Matsumoto, David; Mark G. Frank and Hyi Sung Hwang (eds.), Nonverbal Communication: Science and Applications. Los Angeles (etc.): SAGE, 259-282.

We did not share drafts of their chapters with each other; thus, they were all written independently, although the three of us did comment on earlier drafts of each chapter. These comments were mainly structural. The only consistent comment was a request to provide specific behavioral examples. So a contributor might say something like, "I noticed he was upset...," and our comment wold be, "Please detail the specific behavioral clues that caused you to notice or believe he was upset." This approach allowed us to better draw out the lessons learned from these applied settings, and it enabled us to correlate the various behaviors they noted with those reported in the scientific literature. (Frank et al. 2013: 259-260)

That is, the editors urged the contributors to be more concursive (or, less ambiguously concursive). This does cast some doubt as to the validity of their descriptions, though, because instead of remembering an actual behaviour they might have constructed one on the spot.

What we know about manipulators is that they increase with discomfort; this suggests either that our contributors are being misled, believing this to be a reliable clue when it is in fact an illusion, or that maybe our laboratory studies just do not generate nearly the stress levels that real-world counterterrorism officers or negotiators face. This, it may be that the laboratory science underestimates the utility of manipulators as a reliable nonverbal signal because laboratory science cannot generate the discomfort levels found in real life. Moreover, it is likely we could not ethically generate such levels in the laboratory, but instead we would have to do some selected analysis of real-world cases to assess the utility of manipulators. (Frank et al. 2013: 261)

Both cases are indeed possible. It is indeed interesting that there are ethical limits to experimental psychology. There is a real difference between experiments with artificial incentives and actual life where the stakes are high and the choices heavily impact people's futures.

Maccario's idea is that the environmental baseline, derived from countless hours of being in an airport environment, can help fill that knowledge gap to identify the behaviorally anomalous individual. This the baseline is not necessarily someone's own behaviors, but the general behavior of the crowd. This shift to an interindividual baseline makes sense under these circumstances. (Frank et al. 2013: 262)

Indeed, one could even imagine a theory of baseline informed by Goffman's triad (self-other-situation). That is, not only the baseline of a certian (other) person and the baseline of the situation, but also one's own baseline can be the measuring pole for finding anomalies. The latter bit is based on the mimicry aspect: that one may not notice the anomalous behaviour of others in the given situation but notice that one's own behaviour is anomalous and then look for the cause - who (other) or what (situation) is causing it?

When he did learn of some potentially useful phenomena, it was stuff like this: "that when people fold their arms or they raise their foot so the investigator can see the sole of the shoe, then they are using blocking mechanisms. Also, if someone touches his or her nose while the officer is talking, then the person believes that the investigator's story or statement 'stinks'" (see Chapter 10, p. 174). However, we emphasize the word potentially useful, not actually useful, because there are no published research studies demonstrating any of this. There are the sorts of observations that often come from popular magazines or books but do not have any sound scientific backing. Or, as we found later, the may come from single case studies, as in Hirsch and Wolf's (2001) case study of former president Clinton's nase touching when allegedly lying. (Frank et al. 2013: 266)

Much of popular body language discourse either lacks scientific backing or stems from fictional literature, for example. There's nothing wrong with using fiction to inform research, but it must be acknowledged beforehand, not touted as a truth with non-existent scientific backing. As for case studies, they are not reliable because they lack support. A truth becomes truth when it is verified.

Application
We can take the science from Part I and marry it to the practitioner accounts in Part II and generate the following mnemonic (Frank, Yarbrough, & Ekman, 2006) that will help practitioners best deploy their knowledge of nonverbal communication:

• Awareness
• Baseline
• Changes
• Discrepancies
• Engagement
• Follow-up

Awareness means that practitioners must be aware of a number of things to optimally take advantage of nonverbal communication. They must be aware of vorious cultural norms for given groups of people that may govern their eye contact, the distance at which they stand, the amount of body and facial movements, and so forth. They even must be aware of the physical environment, the weather, time of year, and so forth. And finally, they must be aware of the power and limitations of nonverbal behavior analysis.
Baseline means that practitioners must take account of the environmental, situational, and behavioral norms of given persons and situations. They must be aware of when and where in the interaction they can generate the sorts of behaviors that they can note as examples of truth and deception so they can later compare them to the critical, crucial, or crunch points in the interaction to enable optimal comparison for nonverbal behavior and achieve goals.
Changes refers to looking for behavioral changes in baseline - anomalies - be they environmental or individual baseline. Noticing when these changes occur in the behavioral sequence over time, and for which particular topic, is essential. These are best thought of as hot spots that signal that something internally has changed in the other person. This does not mean that the person is lying, as there can be many innocent reasons for these behaviors. But they are signs for further investigations.
Discrepancies refers to looking for those nonverbal behaviors that are discrepant from verbal or other behaviors not across time but at a given point in time. These too are hot spots, but they best represent a mismatched signal occurring amongst the different behavioral channels within an individual at one given point in time. In contrast, changes refers more to nonverbal behavioral changes in any given channel over time. Metaphorically, discrepancies refer to vertical differences across different channels at one point in time, whereas chages refer to more horizontal differences across the same behavioral channels over time for particular topics.
Engagement refers to the fact that once the changes and discrepancies are noted, the practitioners should engage the hot spots by either adjusting his or her own behavior or by asking additional questions about the topic that was being addressed once the hot spot occurred. This is often better executed, based on our experience, not at the immediate moment of the hot spot but after the individual completes his or her initial account or statement.
Follow-up refers to the fact that the issues raised during engagement need to be followed up - with other potentially corroborating information, or further questions, and so forth, to ascertain as best as possible what is going on in the mind of the other person. (Frank et al. 2013: 280)

Somewhat similar mnemonic concluded Navarro's book. This one is better, more concrete.